an excessive abundance of food stimulated the growth of population. This difference produced, as we shall presently see, many social and political consequences of immense importance. But before discussing them, it may be remarked that the only apparent exception to what has been stated is one which strikingly verifies the general law. There is one instance, and only one, of a great European people possessing a very cheap national food. This people, I need hardly say, are the Irish. In Ireland the labouring classes have for more than two hundred years been principally fed by potatoes, which were introduced into their country late in the sixteenth, or early in the seventeenth century.82 Now, the peculiarity of the potato is, that until the appearance of the late disease, it was and perhaps still is, cheaper than any other food equally wholesome. If we compare its reproductive power with the amount of nutriment contained in it, we find that one acre of average land sown with potatoes will support twice as many persons as the same quantity of land sown with wheat.83 The consequence is, that in a country where men live on potatoes, the population will, if other things are tolerably equal, increase twice as fast as in a country where they live on wheat. And so it has actually occurred. Until a very few years ago, when the face of affairs was entirely altered by pestilence and emigration, the population of Ireland was, in round numbers, increasing annually three per cent.; the population of England during the same period increasing one and a half per cent.84 The result was, that in these two countries the distribution of wealth was altogether different. Even in England the growth of population is somewhat too rapid; and the labour-market being overstocked, the working classes are not sufficiently paid for their labour.85 But their condition is one of sumptuous splendour, compared to that in which only a few years ago the Irish were forced to live. The misery in which they were plunged has no doubt always been aggravated by the ignorance of their rulers, and by that scandalous misgovernment which, until very recently, formed one of the darkest blots on the glory of England. The most active cause, however, was, that their wages were so low as to debar them, not only from the comforts, but from the common decencies of civilized life; and this evil condition was the natural result of that cheap and abundant food, which encouraged the people to so rapid an increase, that the labour-market was constantly gorged.86 So far was this carried, that an intelligent observer who travelled through Ireland twenty years ago, mentioned that at that time the average wages were fourpence a day, and that even this wretched pittance could not always be relied upon for regular employment.87
Such have been the consequences of cheap food in a country which, on the whole, possesses greater natural resources than any other in Europe.88 And if we investigate on a larger scale the social and economical condition of nations, we shall see the same principle everywhere at work. We shall see that, other things remaining equal, the food of a people determines the increase of their numbers, and the increase of their numbers determines the rate of their wages. We shall moreover find, that when the wages are invariably low,89 the distribution of wealth being thus very unequal, the distribution of political power and social influence will also be very unequal; in other words, it will appear that the normal and average relation between the upper and lower classes will, in its origin, depend upon those peculiarities of nature, the operations of which I have endeavoured to indicate.90 After putting all these things together, we shall, I trust, be able to discern, with a clearness hitherto unknown, the intimate connexion between the physical and moral world; the laws by which that connexion is governed; and the reasons why so many ancient civilizations reached a certain stage of development, and then fell away, unable to resist the pressure of nature, or make head against those external obstacles by which their progress was effectually retarded.
If, in the first place, we turn to Asia, we shall see an admirable illustration of what may be called the collision between internal and external phenomena. Owing to circumstances already stated, Asiatic civilization has always been confined to that rich tract where alone wealth could be easily obtained. This immense zone comprises some of the most fertile parts of the globe; and of all its provinces, Hindostan is certainly the one which for the longest period has possessed the greatest civilization.91 And as the materials for forming an opinion respecting India are more ample than those respecting any other part of Asia,92 I purpose to select it as an example, and use it to illustrate those laws which, though generalized from political economy, chemistry, and physiology, may be verified by that more extensive survey, the means of which history alone can supply.
In India, the great heat of the climate brings into play that law already pointed out, by virtue of which the ordinary food is of an oxygenous rather than of a carbonaceous character. This, according to another law, obliges the people to derive their usual diet not from the animal, but from the vegetable world, of which starch is the most important constituent. At the same time the high temperature, incapacitating men for arduous labour, makes necessary a food of which the returns will be abundant, and which will contain much nutriment in a comparatively small space. Here, then, we have some characteristics, which, if the preceding views are correct, ought to be found in the ordinary food of the Indian nations. So they all are. From the earliest period the most general food in India has been rice,93 which is the most nutritive of all the cerealia;94 which contains an enormous proportion of starch;95 and which yields to the labourer an average return of at least sixty fold.96
Thus possible is it, by the application of a few physical laws, to anticipate what the national food of a country will be, and therefore to anticipate a long train of ulterior consequences. What in this case is no less remarkable, is that though in the south of the peninsula, rice is not so much used as formerly, it has been replaced, not by animal food, but by another grain called ragi.97 The original rice, however, is so suited to the circumstances I have described, that it is still the most general food of nearly all the hottest countries of Asia,98 from which at different times it has been transplanted to other parts of the world.99
In consequence of these peculiarities of climate, and of food, there has arisen in India that unequal distribution of wealth which we must expect to find in countries where the labour-market is always redundant.100 If we examine the earliest Indian records which have been preserved – records between two and three thousand years old – we find evidence of a state of things similar to that which now exists, and which, we may rely upon it, always has existed ever since the accumulation of capital once fairly began. We find the upper classes enormously rich, and the lower classes miserably poor. We find those by whose labour the wealth is created, receiving the smallest possible share of it; the remainder being absorbed by the higher ranks in the form either of rent or of profit. And as wealth is, after intellect, the most permanent source of power, it has naturally happened that a great inequality of wealth has been accompanied by a corresponding inequality of social and political power. It is not, therefore, surprising that from the earliest period to which our knowledge of India extends, an immense majority of the people, pinched by the most galling poverty, and just living from hand to mouth, should always have remained in a state of stupid debasement, broken by incessant misfortune, crouching before their superiors in abject submission, and only fit either to be slaves themselves or to be led to battle to make slaves of others.101
To ascertain the precise value of the average rate of wages in India for any long period, is impossible; because, although the amount might be expressed in money, still the value of money, that is, its purchasing power, is subject to incalculable fluctuations, arising from changes in the cost of production.
<p>82</p>
Meyen (Geography of Plants, 1846, p. 313) says that the potato was introduced into Ireland in 1586; but according to Mr. M'Culloch (Dictionary of Commerce, 1849, p. 1048), ‘potatoes, it is commonly thought, were not introduced into Ireland till 1610, when a small quantity was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to be planted in a garden on his estate in the vicinity of Youghall.’ Compare Loudon's Encyclop. of Agriculture, p. 845: ‘first planted by Sir Walter Raleigh on his estate of Youghall, near Cork.’
<p>83</p>
Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. xi. p. 67) supposes that it will support three times as many; but the statistics of this great writer are the weakest part of his work, and the more careful calculations made since he wrote bear out the statement in the text. ‘It admits of demonstration that an acre of potatoes will feed double the number of people that can be fed from an acre of wheat.’ Loudon's Encyclop. of Agriculture, 5th edit. 1844, p. 845. So, too, in M'Culloch's Dict. p. 1048, ‘an acre of potatoes will feed double the number of individuals that can be fed from an acre of wheat.’ The daily average consumption of an able-bodied labourer in Ireland is estimated at nine and a half pounds of potatoes for men, and seven and a half for women. See Phillips on Scrofula, 1846, p. 177.
<p>84</p>
Malthus, Essay on Population, vol. i. pp. 424, 425, 431, 435, 441, 442; M'Culloch's Political Economy, pp. 381, 382.
<p>85</p>
The lowest agricultural wages in our time have been in England about 1s. a day; while from the evidence collected by Mr. Thornton in 1845, the highest wages then paid were in Lincolnshire, and were rather more than 13s. a week; those in Yorkshire and Northumberland being nearly as high. Thornton on Over-Population, pp. 12–15, 24, 25. Godwin, writing in 1820, estimates the average at 1s. 6d. a day. Godwin on Population, p. 574. Mr. Phillips, in his work On Scrofula, 1846, p. 345, says, ‘at present the ratio of wages is from 9s. to 10s.’
<p>86</p>
The most miserable part, namely Connaught, in 1733, contained 242,160 inhabitants; and in 1821, 1,110,229. See Sadler's Law of Population, vol. ii. p. 490.
<p>87</p>
Mr. Inglis, who in 1834 travelled through Ireland with a particular view to its economical state, says, as the result of very careful inquiries, ‘I am quite confident, that if the whole yearly earnings of the labourers of Ireland were divided by the whole number of labourers, the result would be under this sum —Fourpence a day for the labourers of Ireland.’ Inglis, Journey throughout Ireland in 1834, Lond. 1835, 2nd edit. vol. ii. p. 300. At Balinasloe, in the county of Galway, ‘A gentleman with whom I was accidentally in company offered to procure, on an hour's warning, a couple of hundred labourers at fourpence even for temporary employment.’ Inglis, vol. ii. p. 17. The same writer says (vol. i. p. 263), that at Tralee ‘it often happens that the labourers, after working in the canal from five in the morning until eleven in the forenoon, are discharged for the day with the pittance of twopence.’ Compare, in Cloncurry's Recollections, Dublin, 1849, p. 310, a letter from Dr. Doyle written in 1829, describing Ireland as ‘a country where the market is always overstocked with labour, and in which a man's labour is not worth, at an average, more than threepence a day.’
<p>88</p>
It is singular that so acute a thinker as Mr. Kay should, in his otherwise just remarks on the Irish, entirely overlook the effect produced on their wages by the increase of population. Kay's Social Condition of the People, vol. i. pp. 8, 9, 92, 223, 306–324. This is the more observable, because the disadvantages of cheap food have been noticed not only by several common writers, but by the highest of all authorities on population, Mr. Malthus: see the sixth edition of his Essay on Population, vol. i. p. 469, vol. ii. pp. 123, 124, 383, 384. If these things were oftener considered, we should not hear so much about the idleness and levity of the Celtic race; the simple fact being, that the Irish are unwilling to work, not because they are Celts, but because their work is badly paid. When they go abroad, they get good wages, and therefore they become as industrious as any other people. Compare Journal of Statistical Society, vol. vii. p. 24, with Thornton on Over-Population, p. 425; a very valuable work. Even in 1799, it was observed that the Irish as soon as they left their own country became industrious and energetic. See Parliamentary History, vol. xxxiv. p. 222. So, too, in North America, ‘they are most willing to work hard.’ Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, 1849, vol. i. p. 187.
<p>89</p>
By low wages, I mean low reward of labour, which is of course independent both of the cost of labour and of the money-rate of wages.
<p>90</p>
In a recent work of considerable ingenuity (Doubleday's True Law of Population, 1847, pp. 25–29, 69, 78, 123, 124, &c.) it is noticed that countries are more populous when the ordinary food is vegetable than when it is animal; and an attempt is made to explain this on the ground that a poor diet is more favourable to fecundity than a rich one. But though the fact of the greater increase of population is indisputable, there are several reasons for being dissatisfied with Mr. Doubleday's explanation.
1st. That the power of propagation is heightened by poor living, is a proposition which has never been established physiologically; while the observations of travellers and of governments are not sufficiently numerous to establish it statistically.
2nd. Vegetable diet is as generous for a hot country as animal diet is for a cold country; and since we know that, notwithstanding the difference of food and climate, the temperature of the body varies little between the equator and the poles (compare Liebig's Animal Chemistry, p. 19; Holland's Medical Notes, p. 473; Pouillet, Elémens de Physique, vol. i. part i. p. 414; Burdach's Traité de Physiologie, vol. ix. p. 663), we have no reason to believe that there is any other normal variation, but should rather suppose that, in regard to all essential functions, vegetable diet and external heat are equivalent to animal diet and external cold.
3rd. Even conceding, for the sake of argument, that vegetable food increases the procreative power, this would only affect the number of births, and not the density of population; for a greater number of births may be, and often are, remedied by a greater mortality; a point in regard to which Godwin, in trying to refute Malthus, falls into serious error. Godwin on Population, p. 317.
Since writing the above, I have found that these views of Mr. Doubleday's were in a great measure anticipated by Fourier. See Rey, Science Sociale; vol. i. p. 185.
<p>91</p>
I use the word ‘Hindostan’ in the popular sense, as extending south to Cape Comorin; though, properly speaking, it only includes the country north of the Nerbudda. Compare Mill's History of India, vol. ii. p. 178; Bohlen, das alte Indien, vol. i. p. 11; Meiners über die Länder in Asien, vol. i. p. 224. The word itself is not found in the old Sanscrit, and is of Persian origin. Halhed's Preface to the Gentoo Laws, pp. xx. xxi.; Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. pp. 368, 369.
<p>92</p>
So that, in addition to works published on their philosophy, religion, and jurisprudence, a learned geographer stated several years ago, that ‘kein anderes Asiatisches Reich ist in den letzten drey Jahrhunderten von so vielen und so einsichtsvollen Europäern durchreist und beschrieben worden, als Hindostan.’ Meiners, Länder in Asien, vol. i. p. 225. Since the time of Meiners, such evidence has become still more precise and extensive; and is, I think, too much neglected by M. Rhode in his valuable work on India: ‘Dem Zwecke dieser Arbeit gemäss, betrachten wir hier nur Werke der Hindus selbst, oder Auszüge aus denselben als Quellen.’ Rhode, Religiöse Bildung der Hindus, vol. i. p. 43.
<p>93</p>
This is evident from the frequent and familiar mention of it in that remarkable relic of antiquity, the Institutes of Menu. See the Institutes, in Works of Sir W. Jones, vol. iii. pp. 87, 132, 156, 200, 215, 366, 400, 403, 434. Thus too, in the enumeration of Foods in Vishnu Purana, pp. 46, 47, rice is the first mentioned. See further evidence in Bohlen, das alte Indien, vol. i. p. 22, vol. ii. pp. 159, 160; Wilson's Theatre of the Hindus, vol. i. part ii. pp. 15, 16, 37, 92, 95, vol. ii. part ii. p. 35, part iii. p. 64; Notes on the Ma-habharata, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. vii. p. 141; Travels of Ibn Batuta in Fourteenth Century, p. 164; Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, vol. i. p. 499, vol. ii. pp. 44, 48, 436, 569, vol. iii. pp. 11, 148, 205, 206, 207, 266, 364, 530; Asiatic Researches, vol. vii. pp. 299, 302; Ward on the Hindoos, vol. i. p. 209, vol. iii. p. 105.
<p>94</p>
‘It contains a greater proportion of nutritious matter than any of the cerealia.’ Somerville's Physical Geography, vol. ii. p. 220.
<p>95</p>
It contains from 83.8 to 85.07 percent of starch. Brande's Chemistry, vol. ii. p. 1624; Thomson's Chemistry of Organic Bodies, p. 883.
<p>96</p>
It is difficult to collect sufficient evidence to strike an average; but in Egypt, according to Savary, rice ‘produces eighty bushels for one.’ Loudon's Encyclop. of Agriculture, p. 173. In Tennasserim, the yield is from 80 to 100. Low's History of Tennasserim, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. iii. p. 29. In South America, 250 fold, according to Spix and Martius (Travels in Brazil, vol. ii. p. 79); or from 200 to 300, according to Southey (History of Brazil, vol. iii. pp. 658, 806). The lowest estimate given by M. Meyen is forty fold; the highest, which is marsh rice in the Philippine Islands, 400 fold. Meyen's Geography of Plants, 1846, p. 301.
<p>97</p>
Elphinstone's History of India, p. 7. Ragi is the Cynosurus Corocanus of Linnæus; and, considering its importance, it has been strangely neglected by botanical writers. The best account I have seen of it is in Buchanan's Journey through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. i. pp. 100–104, 285, 286, 375, 376, 403, vol. ii. pp. 103, 104, vol. iii. pp. 239, 240, 296, 297. In the large cities, millet is generally used; of which ‘a quantity sufficient for two meals may be purchased for about a halfpenny.’ Gibson on Indian Agriculture, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. viii. p. 100.
<p>98</p>
Marsden's History of Sumatra, pp. 56, 59; Raffles' History of Java, vol. i. pp. 39, 106, 119, 129, 240; Percival's Ceylon, pp. 337, 364; Transac. of Society of Bombay, vol. ii. p. 155; Transac. of Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 510; Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. i. pp. 228, 247, vol. ii. pp. 44, 64, 251, 257, 262, 336, 344, vol. iii. pp. 8, 25, 300, 340, vol. iv. pp. 82, 83, 104, vol. v. pp. 241, 246; Asiatic Researches, vol. v. pp. 124, 229, vol. xii. p. 148, vol. xvi. pp. 171, 172; Journal of Geograph. Society, vol. ii. p. 86, vol. iii. pp. 124, 295, 300, vol. v. p. 263, vol. viii. pp. 341, 359, vol. xix. pp. 132, 137.
<p>99</p>
Rice, so far as I have been able to trace it, has travelled westward. Besides the historical evidence, there are philological probabilities in favour of its being indigenous to Asia, and the Sanscrit name for it has been very widely diffused. Compare Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 472, with Crawfurd's History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. i. p. 358. In the fourteenth century, it was the common food on the Zanguebar Coast; and is now universal in Madagascar. Travels of Ibn Batuta in Fourteenth Century, p. 56; Ellis's History of Madagascar, vol. i. pp. 39, 297–304, vol. ii. p. 292; Journal of Geograph. Society, vol. iii. p. 212. From Madagascar its seeds were, according to M'Culloch's Dictionary of Commerce, p. 1105, carried to Carolina late in the seventeenth century. It is now cultivated in Nicaragua (Squier's Central America, vol. i. p. 38) and in South America (Henderson's Hist. of Brazil, pp. 292, 307, 395, 440, 488), where it is said to grow wild. Compare Meyen's Geography of Plants, pp. 291, 297, with Azara, Voyages dans l'Amérique Méridionale, vol. i. p. 100, vol. ii. p. 80. The ancient Greeks, though acquainted with rice, did not cultivate it; and its cultivation was first introduced into Europe by the Arabs. See Humboldt, Nouvelle Espagne, vol. ii. pp. 409, 410.
<p>100</p>
So far as food is concerned, Diodorus Siculus notices the remarkable fertility of India, and the consequent accumulation of wealth. See two interesting passages in Bibliothec. Hist. lib. ii. vol. ii. pp. 49, 50, 108, 109. But of the economical laws of distribution he, like all the ancient writers, was perfectly ignorant.
<p>101</p>
An able and very learned apologist for this miserable people says, ‘The servility so generally ascribed to the Hindu is never more conspicuous than when he is examined as an evidence. But if it be admitted that he acts as a slave, why blame him for not possessing the virtues of a free man? The oppression of ages has taught him implicit submission.’ Vans Kennedy, in Transactions of the Society of Bombay, vol. iii. p. 144. Compare the observations of Charles Hamilton in Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 305.