forces, the little community dispersed, and its land returned to a state of nature; but when better times return, and the means of peaceable occupation are again restored, the remnant reassemble with their children in the paternal inheritance. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation returns; the sons take the place of their fathers; the same trades and occupations are filled by the descendants of the same individuals; the same division of land takes place; the very houses are rebuilt on the site of those which had been destroyed; and, emerging from the storm, the community revives, another and the same.'

*

"As the division of land is thus the great step in the progress of improvement, so its distribution among the lower orders, in civilized society, is essential to maintain that elevation of mind which the separation of employments has a tendency to depress.

It is too frequently the melancholy effect of the division of labour, which takes place in the progress of opulence, to degrade the individual character among the poor; to reduce men to mere machines; and prevent the developement of their powers and faculties, which, in earlier times, are called forth by the difficulties and dangers with which men are then compelled to struggle. It is hence that the wise and the good have so often been led to deplore the degrading effect of national civilisation; that the vast fabric of society has been regarded as concealing only the weakness and debasement of the great body by whom it has been erected; and that the eye of the philanthropist turns from the view of national grandeur and private degradation, to scenes where a nobler spirit is nursed, amid the freedom of the desert, or the solitude of the forest. To correct this great evil, nature has provided various remedies, arising naturally from the situation of man in civilized society; and one of the most important of these, is the distribution of landed property among the labouring poor. It is this which gives elevation to the individual character; which gives a feeling of independence to the industrious labourer, and permits the growth of those steady views and permanent affections; which both strengthens and improves the human mind." -Vol II. pp. 2–9.

"It is to be observed, however," our author continues, "that it is only where the possession of property takes place under a government which permits the develope

ment of the limitations intended for the modification of the principle of population, that these beneficial effects result from its establishment. Under an oppo

site system, the consequences which flow from it are very different. Where a subdivision of landed property exists among a people who are oppressed and degraded, who have no rank in society to support, and no prospect of bettering their condition to look forward to; who are not suf< fered to enjoy the fruits of their toil, and acquire the artificial wants and habits of prudence which spring from their posses. sion, it may often lead to the production of a great and redundant population. By affording the means of subsistence, at the same time that the propensities destined for the limitation of the principle of increase are prevented from being unfolded, it affords greater facilities to the operation of that principle than any other state of society which can be imagined. These habits are transmitted from generation to generation, and multiply with the subdivision of the property, which thus comes to be only regarded as subservient to their indulgence till at length the population becomes greater than the means of subsistence can adequately support, and poverty in its various shapes affords that check which the iniquity of government, or the wickedness of the people, prevented from being imposed at an earlier period, by the intelligence and prudence of the people themselves."-P. 20.

:

To this it should be added, and always borne in mind, that there is all the difference in the world between proprietorship of a portion of the soil and a mere tenancy. "Give a man," says Arthur Young, "the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden: give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert."

As the leading view here taken of the subject of population consists in upholding the moral restraints as sufficient, whenever found in healthy action, to preserve society from the dreaded evil of over-population, it follows that every institution, custom, or opinion, which bears upon these restraints, becomes a part of the author's subject. Thus the topics of good government, equal laws, education, secular and religious, pass in review before him. The freedom requisite to give to proprietorship its full enjoyment, is indispensable to that legitimate conflict and co-operation of the laws of property and population on which so much has been shown to depend. An average share of education also, as well of what the school

master as the clergyman supplies, is necessary before society can be said to be put upon its fair trial. Into these collateral though pertinent topics we cannot enter; and, therefore, we feel it impossible to convey to the reader a just impression of the varied interest of Mr Alison's book. We

cannot run over such a work as this, extracting here and there, without comment or connexion, passages which may have struck upon our fancy, or aroused our own reflection. Yet one such specimen we will venture to give; it shall be on a topic of equal interest to every subject of the British empire. Mr Alison is not disposed to exempt from the law of decay and mutability the great cities and great nations which are now flourishing on the earth; he sees their fate written in the decline and fall of their predecessors; nor does he promise to Great Britain any peculiar immunity from this common lot of nations. He pro.. vides for it, however, such a euthanasia as is almost covetable. The improvement which the agriculture of a country receives from its commercial wealth, is not always lost with the loss of commercial greatness. The population driven into the fields sustain these in their advanced state of culture, and even keep up their own numbers. Quoting from Chateauvieux, he says,-" Notwithstanding the great diminution of the population of the Italian towns, there is reason to believe, not only that the inhabitants of Italy, upon the whole, have gone on progressively increasing during all this period, but that they are at this moment more numerous than they were former period of its history, not excepting the most flourishing days of the Roman empire."-Vol. I. p. 176. Now, if a similar fate should attend England, and she should draw a large portion of her population out of her factories and her great towns, and spread them over her well cultivated fields, there would, perhaps, be little to regret, supposing always she retained her national independence. Mr Alison, in a very eloquent passage, prefigures such a destiny.

at any

"It is impossible to expect, however, that this state of extraordinary prosperity, arising from colonial advancement, is to continue permanent; or that England, by having planted her seed in so many distant parts of the world, is to avert the weak

ness of age, and escape the common lot of mortality. The parent of so mighty a progeny will herself descend to the grave; her full-grown offspring will break off from the empire; they may even themselves stab their progenitor to the heart. Already the British empire seems to stand on a dizzy pinnacle, and a false step in any direction might speedily precipitate it into ruin. Whether the present state of the empire be suited to withstand the shocks of adverse fortune, and whether the government which its vast and mercantile community has established, is endowed

with the strength and foresight requisite to maintain inviolate so colossal a power in the midst of innumerable dangers, it is not the object of the present work to enquire. But this much may be considered as certain, that, sooner or later, by the violent strokes of fate, or by the insensible decay of time, the industry and population of the British islands will become stationary or decline. Whether her naval supremacy is at once to be destroyed, and her colonial empire severed from her grasp, by a single or a few dreadful shocks, as was the case with Athens at Aigospotamos, with Carthage at Zama, or with Pisa at La Meloria, or with Genoa at Malmocco; or whether the gradual influence of the decay of time and retarding causes, in the later stages of society, is destined to weaken her resources, and she is to descend from her present pinnacle of greatness by as slow a decline as the Byzantine empire in ancient, or the Italian republics and Flemish commercial cities in modern times, at present

lies buried in the womb of fate.

But in

either case, the loss of our colonial empire and maritime superiority must undoubtedly ensue in process of time; the kind of decay and period of dissolution are alone doubtful. It is neither possible nor desirable for the interests of humanity, even in this country, that such a perpetual tenure of greatness should be assigned to any single state. And it is therefore a matter of the very highest importance to every friend of mankind and of his country, to consider what would be the probable fate of the people of the British islands, in the event of such a catastrophe either gradually or suddenly occurring.

"Involved in uncertainty, as all such speculations in regard to the future necessarily must be, there is yet reason to hope, from the experience of former ages, that this transition would not be attended either with the convulsions or sufferings which are generally anticipated. Other commercial states have undergone similar vicissitudes, and it is in them that we may see the mirror, if national sins have not called for some extraordinary national punishment, of the