ART. III.-1. The Preacher and the King; or, Bourdaloue in the Court of Louis XIV., being an Account of the Pulpit Eloquence of that distinguished era. Translated from the French of L. Bungener; with an Introduction by the Rev. George Potts, V.-History of Europe, from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart.................... VI.-1. Theological Essays. By Frederick Denison 2. Grounds for laying before the Council of King's College, London, certain Statements contained in a recent Publication, entitled Theological Essays, by the Rev. F. D. Maurice, M.A. Pro- fessor of Divinity in King's College.' By R. W. &c. &c........ 200 ART. I-1. The Ethiopic Didascalia; or, the Ethiopic Version of the Apostolical Constitutions, received in the Church of Abyssinia. With an English Trans- lation. Edited and Translated by Thomas Pell 2. The Apostolical Constitutions; or, the Canons of the Apostles, in Coptic, with an English Transla- tion by Henry Tattam, LL.D., D.D., F.R.S., &c. III.-1. Histoire Critique et Religieuse de Notre Dame de 2. Instructions Historiques, Dogmatiques, et Morales, sur les Principales Fêtes de l'Eglise. Par un 3. Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise Catholique. Par ART. V.-1. The Correspondence of Thomas Gray and William Mason. With Notes and Illustrations, VI.-1. Lectures on Social Science, and the Organization 2. The First Report of the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations. To which is added, a Report of the Cooperative Conference held in &c. &c..... 457 THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER. JANUARY, 1854. ART. I.-1. Census of Great Britain, 1851. Population Tables. 2. Results of the Census of Great Britain in 1851. By EDWARD CHESHIRE. London: J. W. Parker. race, THE opening of the present century was characterised by a panic fear amongst the political economists. A series of bad seasons, raising corn to six guineas a quarter, with now and then a further advance-till, in 1801, wheat reached 180s., and the quartern loaf was for a month as high as 1s. 10d.—were, it must be owned, no unreasonable causes for depression, and very naturally turned the current of public thought into gloomy channels. In the time of adversity there is no remembrance of prosperity; want and famine grew to be considered necessary conditions of our being; not so much evils to be delivered from, as to adapt ourselves to. Men began to have hungry eyes, to grudge new sharers in such short commons; and the cry arose that the world was becoming too populous. New terms were invented, suited to the magnitude of the evil: and the superfecundity' of our our English race especially-was enlarged upon with morbid anxiety, and a dismal pleasure in proving the imminence of the danger. It was pronounced that, at our present rate of increase, there would soon not be standing room. England's geographical area was measured out, and the arithmetician discovered that its twelve millions of millions of square inches would, in five hundred years, at an unlimited rate of increase, have twelve millions of millions of families to provide for. And while the human race thus increased in a 'geometric ratio,' it was discovered—from reasons best known to these calculators— that the produce of the earth could only increase in an arithmetical ratio. We need not say that the produce, marshalled forth as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, made a poor figure in the race against the rapid advance of the consumers, represented by 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512. With such ocular demonstrations, it needed but a limited acquaintance with numbers to fore see hideous famine, and every horror humanity can be subject to, as the necessary concomitants of such a disproportion between supply and demand. Indeed, these calamities could hardly be otherwise than welcome to imaginations haunted by an intolerable apprehension of want of breathing space. War, pestilence, and famine, were positive reliefs in the inevitable predicament; they were accepted as a natural law-the drains by which the wealthy, thinking, and otherwise respectable classes, were to maintain their ground. As for the labouring classes, the vast bulk of mankind, there was no rational hope of their deliverance from a perpetual pressure against the limits of subsistence,-famine always near, want a condition of their being, with only such temporary remission from this horrible struggle as a raging epidemic, or a desolating war, or an absolute famine could bring,but temporary resources, all of them, to check the hordes the prolific future would pour in to fill the vacancy. The destroying angel must always stand on this awful limit,' his sword drawn in his hand, sweeping away the helpless crowds which the blind impulses of human nature would for ever thrust up against it. Such were the apprehensions a few years' scarcity, and the flagrant evils of our then Poor-Law system, could raise in the minds of intelligent, if we cannot call them sensible men. That we have not misrepresented these fears, a few extracts will show. Our first is from Senior's Lectures on Population.' We have seen that, as a general rule, additional labour, employed in the cultivation of land within a given district, produces a less proportionate return. And we have seen that such is the power of reproduction and duration of life in mankind, that the population of a given district is capable of doubling itself, at least every twenty-five years. It is clear, therefore, that the rate at which the production of food is capable of being increased, and that at which population, if unchecked, would increase, are totally different. Every addition made to the quantity of food produced, makes in general a further addition more difficult. Every addition to the existing population diffuses wider the means of still further addition. If neither evil, nor the fear of evil, checked the population of England, it would amount in a century to above two hundred millions. It is clear, however, that long before the first century had elapsed, no excellence in our institutions, or salubrity of climate, or unremitting industry, could have saved us from being arrested in our progress by a constantly increasing want of subsistence. If all other moral and physical checks could be got rid of,-if we had neither wars nor libertinism,—if our habitations, and employments, and habits were all wholesome, and no fears of indigence or loss of station prevented or retarded our marriages, famine would soon exercise her prerogative of controlling, in the last resort, the multiplication of mankind.'Senior's Lectures, pp. 12, 13. Malthus, vigorous and plain-spoken, and led on by his theory into a total disregard of the feelings, or, as he would hold them, weaknesses, of all whose ideas of humanity he outraged, thus complacently dwells on his favourable aspect of exterminating diseases : |