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general principles, and then endeavour to draw deductions from them; such deductions are more safely drawn from the same proofs from which the general principles themselves were derived.

Dangerous and deceitful as is the process of reasoning by ascent and descent, still, as it may lead to the wildest paradoxes, it has many attractions for Miss Martineau's imagination. If we examine, we shall find that she interprets every proposition in such a manner as to remove it as far as possible from the confines of common sense, as if this made it more scientific. She generally neglects those exceptions and qualifications, accompanied by which, the original inventors proposed their doctrines; nay more, in her zeal for paradox, she frequently gives, as an example of a proposition, the very case which the original framer of it mentioned as an exception. We have not room to enumerate all the instances in which her zeal has thus outstript her discretion: we shall merely refer the reader to a few, and his own industry will enable him to find more in every volume.

For instance, the late Mr. Malthus's doctrines on population are very generally known, and few people are disposed to think that he has not carried them far enough. But Miss Martineau was determined to outmalthus Malthus, and accordingly, in her "weal and woe at Garveloch," she makes the person whom she paints as a model of prudence and propriety, send word to his intended bride that he will not marry her, because, although his means and her's are amply sufficient to support a family, and to secure them from all dread or possibility of want; yet he fears, from the inconsiderateness of his neighbours, that the population will increase too rapidly, and therefore he breaks his engagement with the object of his affections, and resolves to dedicate himself to a single life, to counteract, so far, the tendency of the population to increase in an alarming ratio.

We believe that Miss Martineau is the first who advocated this extent of Malthusianism, which, by way of improving the condition of mankind, would consign the task of peopling the world to the spendthrift and the improvident. It is not enough, according to her doctrines, that the man VOL. VI.

who is about to marry should inquire into the tastes, habits, education and general circumstances of his intended wife, and find that they are so well adapted to his own as to create a rational hope of happiness; it is not enough that he should also see a fair prospect of his being able to support his family in comfort and respectability according to his station in life; but he must also inquire how many marriages have lately taken place in the vicinity, and what likelihood there is of those marriages adding to the population of the place, and what increase of popu lation the country can afford to maintain; of course he ought also to keep a sharp look out among the young men and maidens of his acquaintance, and interrogate them carefully to learn how many of their flirtations are likely to lead to matrimony. When these delicate investigations have been concluded, he may consult the most approved of anti-matrimonial tables, and make his calculations, and according to the result of these, he will keep or abandon his engagements with his beloved.

Assenting as we do, in a great measure, to the doctrines of Mr. Malthus on this subject, we still think that it had been better for the cause of truth that he had never written, or, at least, had never been commented upon. An injudicious marriage is merely an act of imprudence, of which, like other acts of imprudence, the consequences fall principally, if not entirely, upon

the

actors themselves; and those nearly connected with them, and society in general, suffers very little from them. The increase of population is a matter about which political economy need not concern itself, and with which legislation need not, and therefore ought not, to interfere.

Let the ordinary labourer, able to work and in full employment, marry if he is so inclined. He is able to support and bring up his family, if he does not meet with some extraordinary calamity; and against this, no foresight on the subject of matrimony can make any provision. If a large and increasing family sometimes makes him feel the pressure of poverty, and compels him to forego some of those comforts which we should desire him to possess; how often, to balance this, is the partner

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and companion of his toils found to be his guardian angel to incite him to a course of prudence and industry, and to dissuade him from crime. One thing must be set off against another, No sum that the labourer is likely to save while single, can add much to the comforts of his married life, even if he were not, during his period of prudent celibacy, less likely to save money than to acquire habits-perhaps irreclaimable-of indolence and profligacy. We suspect that the Malthusian dread of a superabundant population, has arisen, in a great measure, from this natural mistake among philosophic writers. They look to themselves, and thence form their judgment of others placed in far different circumstances. It may be said, indeed, that the highest and the lowest classes may disregard the admonitions of Mr. Malthus, or rather of his hypermalthusian followers, aud proceed as recklessly to stock the world as if the present was only the third generation from Adam. The wife's tender care, and the change in the habits of the man, which her presence and advice may occasion, will save as much as will repay the difference in expense between a married and a single life. Those who are born to opulence need not, and in general do not, save money: their establishment is ready for the reception of a wife; and whether they marry at twentyone or at forty-one, their circumstances are pretty much the same. Labourers, too, cannot save much money.

To a

man in this rank, a wife adds no expense, except the mere food and clothes for the babies; and the man who defers marriage will not be richer, but will probably be, from his habits, less able to earn a provision for his family. For early marriages among the poor there is also this argument, that the elder children, at least, may be able to do something for the family before the health and strength of the parents begin to decline. All that long and painful years of toil, and parsimony, and constrained celibacy, might enable an Irish labourer to hoard, would not be sufficient to support his orphan infant for two years. But the case is different with the middle classes, and especially with professional men and the cultivators of literature. These, in general, look for

ward to higher fortune than their present condition. Their character and acquirements place them in a station rather above their wealth; and those with whom they associate on terms of equality, are generally their superiors in wealth. Marriage would produce the necessity of a great and expensive change in their establishments to introduce their wives into that society which they had hitherto kept themselves. But their ability to support a wife and family is likely to increase every year, as age may, and generally does, increase the value of their labour; and they may reasonably hope that, if not hurried unexpectedly away, they will leave their families at least a decent competence by a little prudent delay in their marriages. Besides, their education and habits of mental activity give them a certain degree of strength to resist those temptations against which, in other cases, the gentle influence of a wife is the most efficient preservative. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that literary men, in their writings upon political economy, should have been such determined celibatarians, as to them the benefits of marriage are diminished, and its inconveniences considerably increased, by their circumstances and education. It is something, therefore, for Miss Martineau that she should have contrived to push the doctrine to a length to which none of them ever dreamt of extending it.

Another reproach which the followers of common sense use against political economy is, that it maintains the harmlessness of absenteeism. This doctrine, however, even when carried to the fullest extent, is not paradoxical enough for Miss Martineau; and she hints, "that an absentee will, ere long, be honored as a benefactor to his country." (Ireland, 102.) In her arguments, however, she gets a little involved, and tries to extricate herself by using the word "bustle" for "employment." She admits "that the residence of a landlord may affect the locality where his capital resides, and that a man, by sitting down in any place, may create a good deal of bustle there, but that some other class of persons will have less to do than when he was abroad." (p. 100.) Does not this admit the benefit of a resident gentry in reateing employment? "The locality is

affected by his residence; and may not the producers, who will, in consequence, have less to do, be the residents of Paris or Brussels? If Mr. Tracy lives in Ireland, and wants to have his house regulated, and papered, and painted, and repaired, and his clothes made, and his provisions dressed, and his gardens and gravel walks kept in order, and all the numerous personal services which a man requires, and for which he is compelled to pay, he spends so much of his revenue in giving food and clothes, or the means of purchasing them, to the persons who supply those wants. If he lives in England, he has the same wants, which must be supplied by English men, who, of course, must be paid. How is this payment made? Goods from Ireland must be exported to that amount. So far there is encouragement given to production; but the consumption of the Irish servants and labourers whom the absentee would have employed had he remained at home, is diminished to the same amount. Thus the consumption of Irish commodities is neither increased nor diminished; the only difference is, that part of the consumption is transferred from Irishmen to English

men.

Really the advocates of absenteeism appear altogether to mistake the question, and to imagine that the complaints are made by food calling for mouths to eat it, and not by mouths calling for food to fill them. Paddy complains that he has nothing to eat, though so much food is raised in the countryMiss Martineau tells him to have no concern about the matter, for all that food will certainly be eaten somewhere, and will still be a consumption of Irish produce.

The moral effects of residence and absenteeism are still more strikingly different but with this the political economist in general says he is not concerned, even where the moral differences are productive of most important results. How different is their mode of dealing with the poor-laws, where the moral consequences are ever in their mouths.

The theory of rent is another subject upon which the doctrines of the economists are exceedingly startling to the uninitiated. Of this theory Miss

Martineau is a zealous advocate, and as a friend she seems disposed to take liberties with it, which in an enemy might be deemed unfair. The vulgar think that rent is determined by the demand and supply for the produce of the soil, and that competition among landlords and tenants settles the amount. This loose and unintelligible doctrine is repudiated by the econo mists, who hold that rent is produced by the varying fertility of the soil. That the best land only is, at first, cultivated, and that as long as the produce of land of this best quality is sufficient to satisfy the wants of the population, rent will not exist. But when population increases, and inferior soils must be cultivated, the superior soils will be worth a rent equal to the difference between their produce and that of the superior soils. Rent, therefore, they say, is produced by the necessity of resorting to inferior soils, and is measured by the difference between the produce yielded by the same capital by other soils, and by the worst soils to which that necessity compels the population to resort for subsistence. To this proposition, with all the qualifications which the economists have gradually added to it, we are disposed to yield assent. But Miss Martineau will admit none of those qualifications, nor state the proposition in any manner to which common sense can submit. According to her, it is the actual cultivating of inferior lands, not the necessity of such cultivation to produce the required supply, that causes rent; and therefore any person, by merely tilling a few fields of very bad land, may increase the rents of all the farms in the country. Indeed this consequence is one of the facts which she states to illustrate the doctrine of rent. In Ella of Garveloch, she represents Ronald as regretting that, by tilling certain bad land, he had raised the rent of his sister Ella's farm. And a settler in America is prevented from taking in some bad land by the reflection that such a proceeding would raise the rent of that which he already had. In this tale Miss Martineau occasionally lays it down, that this increase of rent is not injurious to the farmer, since it is preceded or accompanied by an increase of prices that makes the land worth so much more rent. But

he opinions on this point are by no mean steady; for in the same tale, page 73, she observes, that "the time for Forbes to grow rich, was before he paid rent at all-when he kept all the produce himself;" and in, "For each and for all," page 75, mention is made of a man who is annoyed by the complaints of his neighbours, on account of his having cultivated some inferior lands, and thus raised rents and lowered profits through the country. We question if any of its opponents has done so much to raise a prejudice against the modern theory of rent, as Miss Martineau. Those who take the doctrine from her writings, must imagine that it is absurdly inconsistent with the reality of things. They know that no such considerations occur as she mentions, when a lease is about to be made that there are no such marked gradations of soil as she describes-that there is no possibility of distinguishing them merely by the amounts of produce they yield, since lands of different kinds yield different sorts of produce, and require different modes of cultivation, that vicinity to roads, markets, &c. are not capable of having their value thus measured and appreciated. The thing is done by the higgling of the market, that is, by competition, which Miss Martineau declares has nothing to do with the matter. She produces Angus, coming from America, where he had resided less than five years, and makes him tell how "Keith came with his axe, and cleared some land, for which he paid no rent; and how afterwards Angus advised Forbes to lay out his increased capital on his old land, which he did, and went on, growing rich, and laid out more and more capital on his land, though each time it brought him in a smaller proportional return, and thus went on improving for a long time, until at length he stopped, finding that he would not be repaid for a further outlay, and, in order to dispose of his capital, he agrees with the proprietor to advance part of the capital to make a good road. This is accordingly done, and all parties find the advantage of it. Keith began to prosper now, though he had to pay rent, and to see it raised from time to time." (p. 74.) Who does not see in this account that such events could not have happened in that period?

Everyone is disposed to reject a theory which he finds resting upon facts such as he never witnessed, although he may have been placed in such a position that he could not have failed to see them if they ever had existence. No person is so unwilling to adopt the modern theory of rent as the practical agriculturalist, because its supporters so often commence by assuming a variety of facts, every one of which he knows to be false.

A similar love of paradox makes Miss Martineau assert, in "French wines and politics," that in a famine the wages of labour rise in proportion to the price of food; and in the famine which she used to illustrate this proposition, she represents the price of food through the country to be so great, that three heads of cabbages are worth a very handsome diamond pin. Against this error, Ricardo, whose doctrines respecting the influence of the price of food upon the wages of labour Miss Martineau appears to wish to follow, expressly warns his followers.

It was a doctrine of Mr. Ricardo's that paper money or bank-notes not convertible into specie would not necessarily suffer any depreciation if the quantity issued was kept within proper limits: he even thought that by reducing the quantity issued its value might rise to any assignable amount. We do not object to this doctrine, with this qualification, that there should be some purposes, such as the payment of taxes, the discharge of existing engagements, &c. for which the use of this paper money is sufficient or necessary, otherwise it will not have any value. Miss Martineau, however, neglects all qualifications, and to illustrate the nature of currency, the value of which she supposes, by some strange confusion of ideas, to be at once completely arbitrary, and yet to depend upon the relation between the demand and the supply, she gives the following instances in "The Charmed Sea." She supposes a party of unfortunate Poles banished to the wilds of Siberia, who, being too poor to have gold or silver money, make use of skins of various kinds to serve the purposes of exchange. A party of travelling merchants rob them of all their skins, except five clipped and worn mouseskins, which is all the purchase-money

they are able to bring to the next market. The consequence of this is, that those mouse-skins rise very much in value, and circulate very rapidly, and are sought for with great avidity. A little girl, accordingly, purchases with her mouse-skin from a strange merchant a perfect pair of pattens, of the finest wickerwork, a large package of tea which had just crossed the frontier, pepper enough to last the winter, and a vigorous young rein-deer. (Be it observed that this rein-deer was killed the following night, and its hide converted into money the value of many mouse-skins.) Now, who does not see that it is perfectly impossible hat any temporary scarcity could give such value to a little piece of skin, of no utility to the wandering merchant who purchased it at so high a price? Can any greater proof be given of the unsoundness of a principle than the possibility of drawing such a conclusion from it?

Most of the errors of Miss Martineau which we have just enumerated are rather the blunders of a child who has forgotten or misunderstood what it has read, than any original fancies of her own. They are dangerous only so far as they may lead the reader to quit in disgust a science which, as Miss M. tells him, will lead to such absurdities. She is more dangerous when her enthusiasm leads her to adopt and propagate the "wild speculations" of modern philosophy about the perfectibility of man, and the progression of human society, and the sufficiency of reason and a knowledge of our temporal interests to keep us in the right way. She thinks that the time will come when every house will have alabaster lamps and damask curtains, provided people take due care to limit their numbers.

of the existing generation. But that very imagination which makes her fictions so agreeable, and which procured them such an extensive circulation, has led her to give credit to the most absurd doctrines. She adopts a test which cannot fail to mislead her. If an opinion is to be examined, her imagination instantly suggests incidents to illustrate and support it, and its accordance with these operates upon the imagination like an actual proof. The qualifications naturally sought for in those incidents is that they should be striking, or at least interesting, and that they should possess that kind of probability which is required in a tale of fiction: that is to say, they must not be so improbable, so inconsistent with the principles of human feelings, that the reader would feel "this is not natural; no testimony would induce me to credit this." But the incidents which illustrate political economy, and by reference to which only can its truth be tested, are the events which are every day taking place in the world. The subjects upon which its principles operate are the general mass of mankind, such as they are, with all their faults and follies, and mixed good and evil, not those interesting or remarkable characters which the novelist endeavours to describe. In short, of the infinite varieties of human character and conduct, those which are most striking are most suited to the novelist, those which are most common demand the most attention from the political economist.

We are not certain that Miss Martineau's plan may not partly have led her to commit those blunders. We have said that the use of fictitious examples is a fallacious mode of proving, and a dangerous mode of teaching doubtful propositions, and Miss Martineau's tales may be referred to in corroboration of our assertion. She found it as easy to create examples to illustrate false as true propositions. As a, novelist, only that she is deficient in humour, she would be inferior to few

Indeed, so ill-judged was Miss Martineau's plan, that she quickly found the impossibility of adhering to it. Many of her tales dogmatically assert her doctrines without attempting to illustrate them. Thus in " For each and for all," a peer, of talents and consideration, marries an actress, and the "happy couple" naturally spend the honeymoon in conversations upon political economy. Not a single principle is taught in any other manner than by those conversations. It is evident that the same story would equally serve to illustrate algebra and chemistry. The difficulty is evaded, but the proposed task is unaccomplished, if the science is taught not by examples or illustrations, but by conversations, or rather long speeches. Her stories frequently only serve the

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