any rate adult men and women are naturally worth far more than their keep, as we see by the very high price of young and sound-bodied slaves. Slaves in the United States, in recent history, sold too at a higher price when they had a religious character. Only, if people are too proud to look for work except in spheres where they are not really wanted, this makes it appear that there is too much population.' May it not rather be too much luxury, too much pride, too much folly ? It certainly appears very unfortunate that Malthus's Essay instantly gave excuse, and was used as justification, for landlords clearing the peasantry off their estates. It could not be justly deduced from his doctrine; for, except by causing them to perish by misery, it did not diminish the total number in the country. But one powerful impression was made by him on men's minds, and all besides that he wrote went for nothing. Instead of regarding the multitude of men and women as the wealth and strength of a land, they were accounted a weakness and a nuisance. The odious phrase a pauper warren' arose, to describe a quickly multiplying people; and powerful landlords claimed and used the right of treating men as rabbits-as vermin, to use farmers' language. Our laws and practices still move on in the same groove. Economists happily (not without valuable aid from J. Stuart Mill) have learned new lessons concerning tenure and rights of land, also concerning the distribution of wealth, which will, it is to be hoped, in time bear fruit; but they have scarcely begun a reaction against the misanthropy which deplorably followed the publication of Malthus's Essay. In this school, many of the declining and of the rising generation have learnt to call by the name of austerity or old-fashioned superstition sentiments which are as deeply seated with Christians as aversion to cruelty or love of truth. At all times worldly wisdom has censured an imprudent marriage more severely than immoral connections, or even than seduction; but such worldly wisdom never mistook itself for sacred wisdom-never affected airs of high and commanding morality. Now we find a pretentious medical science fortifying itself with utilitarian argument and political economy in the recommendation of immoral practices as moral, if cleverly and discreetly pursued ; as tending to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and of course to philosophic perfection. Among the peculiar maxims of this school, it is taught that a man who has too many children wrongs mankind; and such odious monstrosity passes itself off as Malthusianism. To sum up it has been intended here to insist, (1) that Malthus erred in thinking it equitable to deny the right of the poor to a maintenance and to marriage, while not denying the rightfulness of the legal powers exercised by landlords to keep them from the soil; (2) that he greatly underrated the ability of so powerful a country as England to support an increase of population-by further cultivation, by economy-by importing food and by emigration; which last expedient more and more aids to the importation of food. But it remains to do homage to his positive merit, and take to our hearts the high lessons which he teaches. He showed undeniably that most rude nations, or occupants of a narrow soil, have been actually at the point at which, with their limited means, increase of numbers was very difficult, and continuous, natural, or any equable multiplication was quite impossible; and that hence arose either wars to seize new land, or infanticide and vice, except so far as moral restraint was practised. The same kind of pressure must come in time, first upon one, then on another country, finally on all; that is, that the population either will not be able to increase at all, or certainly not continuously, nor at a rate approaching to what is natural. When we are sensible of the pressure, how are we to deal with it? Are we to proceed thoughtlessly or thoughtfully? Are we to deny the difficulty and think thereby to evade it? Or are we to acquiesce in unnatural vice or infanticide as a remedy? matrimonial relation. When circumstances press so hard that a nation actually cannot increase, his principles clearly would lead him to advise rather that half the nation die unmarried, than that any restraint be placed on the number of children to a marriage, except what arises from the ability and inclination of the married pair. Here Malthus clashes abruptly with his pretended followers, whose opposite principles make marriage itself unholy. To press this argument in detail is too painful, and, it is hoped, needless. Celibacy, which tens of thousands of Englishwomen Of course human population endure cheerfully, ought not to be would long since have perished off thought miserable by Englishmen ; the earth, unless the power of the much less ought it to be thought race to multiply itself on occasion an excuse for vice. Here lies the far exceeded the ordinary necessity. difficulty of censuring improvident This belongs to all living creatures. marriage: vicious celibacy is so Hence to imagine it a hardship that common, that, in comparison, imthe power must be ordinarily kept provident marriage becomes a virin restraint is at once a grave and tue. The economist, who urges a puerile mistake. The male sex celibacy, either becomes or seems here is put to shame by the superior to become an adviser of immoral virtue of the other sex. How selife. We men are in general corverely do we exact chastity of them! rupted from boyhood: here is the how shameless is our own licen- fountain of evil. We perhaps attiousness! A solitary life is any tain middle manhood before we can thing but pleasant to a woman; learn that the moral restraint which yet how cheerfully and actively do Malthus and Christianity preach is they live unmarried, or widowed! no hardship, but is an ordinary Malthus demands of men, under the duty nine times out of ten to all name of moral restraint,' precisely men. No considerable improvement, the same purity as men exact of which may be called national, can be women. Inasmuch as, after mar- hoped until women insist on exactriage, the number of children can ing from men the chastity which we in no way be à priori limited with- claim of them. Under this wholeout far greater evils than the evils some pressure we shall learn new of a large family, he leaves this lessons: the doctrine of sexual matter undecided by any rule, and purity will not seem to us 'harsh is satisfied with deprecating reck- and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' less haste, juvenile thoughtlessness, but an obvious necessity for virtue, and unprovision in forming the manliness, honour, and self-respect. 6 FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. " AUSTRALIAN TENDENCIES. BY AN OLD COLONIST. HE following remarks are merely speculative, and do not profess to be prophetical. Indicating only general tendencies, and out of many of these selecting such only as seem to have the most direct and obvious political bearing, they must of necessity be sketchy and incomplete. Ultimate political results depend upon many tendencies, of which the keenest observer can trace but a few. Of the six Australian colonies, Queensland, Victoria, and Tasmania are selected, not as the most influential or important in themselves, but as the most typical. New South Wales and South Australia are politically most like Victoria, and where they do not resemble it (speaking, of course, generally, for each colony has certain characteristics of its own), they may be said to resemble either Queensland or Tasmania. Western Australia, though by no means the youngest of the colonies, is still in a comparatively undeveloped state. Owing to the poverty of its soil it attracts but few new colonists from England. It may be compared, mutatis mutan dis, with Tasmania about thirty years ago. Speaking, then, generally, the tendencies of these three colonies would seem to be: In Queensland to an aristocracy: one ruling class, and that the upper. In Victoria to a progressive or unstable democracy: many classes actively competing and evenly balanced. In Tasmania to a conservative democracy: the great majority of the population of one class; that class, therefore, all-powerful. 1. In Queensland the industrial conditions point both in pastoral and in agricultural pursuits to the employment of large capital in few hands. English readers that in Australia pastoral and agricultural pursuits do not go together, and are not carried on by the same class. On the contrary, the pastoral and the agricultural classes are more often in direct antagonism than any other two classes that could be named. The pastoral tenant, or Squatter; requires a large extent of land, because it takes very little more labour, and costs very little more, to keep many sheep or cattle than it does to keep a few. It is considered that about sixty thousand acres is generally the most convenient and profitable size for a sheep-station, and that a station of less than ten thousand acres cannot as a rule be made profitable at all. Cattle-stations are usually larger. In Queensland there are some of as much as seven or eight hundred thousand acres—as much as an English county. The amount of labour employed on a station is very small; and as a rule the Squatter rather fears and dislikes having much population on and near his Run, because it obliges him to incur additional expense in fencing and in guarding his flock from depredations. On cattle-stations this is particularly the case, because, for some odd reason, it is held less wrong to steal cattle than to steal sheep. It is notorious that in some districts cattle-stations have had to be given up on account of the depredations of the small settlers, who made cattle-stealing one of their means of subsistence. On the other hand, the ordinary agriculturist, or grower of corn, unable to obtain any labour but his own and that of his family, needs but little land on which to settle. Nor is he likely to increase his farm; for however prosperous he may be, it is seldom profitable for him, with labour so dear and corn so cheap, to employ hired labourers, except at harvest time when he runs the risk of not being able to get them on any terms. But a certain amount of population is in the absence of good road or water carriage almost a necessity for him; otherwise he has no market for his produce, which cannot like sheep and cattle be easily transported to a distance. Now Queensland, owing to its position, climate, and other natural circumstances, is likely for a long time to come to have a population small in proportion to its vast extent. The greater part of the inland country is more or less well adapted for pasture; but except in the few localities where gold has been found there would seem to be few inducements to any but those engaged in pastoral pursuits to settle at any considerable distance from the coast. The heat is excessive. Droughts are frequent and severe. Large and costly dams are necessary, and the runs must cover a large extent of ground to insure the certainty of water in some part of them—all which increases the tendency to large proprietorship. Moreover, in agriculture, the tropical, or semi-tropical, climate of Queensland makes the cultivation of cotton, coffee, tobacco, and other products of a hot country more profitable and successful than growing wheat. These crops require large capital, and labour organised and subject to authority. White labour, too, will not be employed where other can be got. Chinese and South Sea Islanders are being introduced, and will probably largely increase in numbers. Thus, there will be side by side a superior and inferior race, the superior being divided into an upper and lower class, of which the upper will be numerous, rich, and powerful, maintaining more or less distinct lines of demarcation between class and class, and retaining the preponde rance of political power in its own hands. 2. Victoria was in its early days, even more than Queensland is now, peculiarly the colony of Squatters. Its capabilities had remained undiscovered up to a comparatively late period in Australian colonisation, and its rich pastures were taken up principally by settlers from the three neighbouring and older colonies, without any considerable town population being formed within its limits. Owing to this want of population, there was scarcely any market for agricultural produce. Hence very little land was taken up for agriculture; there were very few small proprietors, and almost all the country within a practicable distance of the sea was occupied by sheep or cattle Runs. But with the discovery of gold came a sudden and enormous influx of population. Large towns sprang up in the midst of the Bush. Land within reach of them acquired value for the supply of the wants of the inhabitants. Throughout a great part of the colony the demand for land became so great as to make it impossible for the squatters to be permitted to retain their Runs on the easy terms they had hitherto done; and though a few profited by the new order of things, many succumbed to it. By the side of the gold diggers a class of merchants and tradesmen sprang into existence. Fortunes are made faster by trade than by land, and the new class soon began to outstrip the squatters in wealth, numbers, and consequently in political power. Then grew up the agricultural class. At first they were mostly men without capital or experience, tempted, by the high price of provisions and by the ambition of possessing land, to take to wheat-growing, in numbers far too numerous to enable them as a rule to succeed. For prices, of course, soon came down. Many, unable to make a living from their land, and disinclined to work as labourers, levied a sort of black mail on the unfortunate squatters by settling on their Runs, where, if they could not do themselves much good, they could do the squatter much harm, and oblige him in self-defence to buy them off at an extravagant sum. But though not at first a very thriving or reputable class, they are finding their level; in the neighbourhood of large towns they succeed well enough, and from their numbers they constitute an important and powerful element of the population. Lastly, as manufactures have been introduced, the artisan class has increased. Possessing all the power, for good or evil, which trades-unionism gives them, they are not factory-workers living in smoke and foul air, but physically a picked body of men (for weakly men do not emigrate), working short hours, earning high wages, certain of constant employment, eating cheap food, enjoying frequent leisure. Victoria has every advantage of soil, climate, harbours, and lastly central position among the other colonies. It is hard to say whether corn, wine, wool, meat, or manufactured articles will hereafter constitute its chief products and employ most industry. The growing size and importance of Melbourne, already by far the most considerable city in Australia, will give a political colour to the colony. In times of excitement the lower classes, being the most numerous, will possess political power enough to do almost what they like. In quieter times superior education and position may have their natural weight. Where in a State all classes have equal power, there is necessarily a Democracy, that is, a Government of the people; not of the mob which is merely a part of the peo ple. Where also, the balance being equal, now one party, now another getting a temporary ascendancy, there we may expect fluctuations of policy, keenness of controversy, bitterness of hostility, and a general excitement of politics, drawing all classes more and more into its vortex, and intensifying the Demo cracy. Where again there are vast and varied resources facilitating progress, and few vested interests hindering it; a mixture of many races meeting on equal terms, and exhibiting every variety of opinions, manners, and industrial methods, accustoming people to see things from numerous and novel points of view; with conditions of industry still new and comparatively untried, yet highly favourable; there will be rapid development with constant change-little distrust of novelty, therefore little conservatism; the Democracy will be an unstable and changing one. We may expect sudden, perhaps violent changes-brilliant, perhaps dangerous experiments. 3. Tasmania started under intensely aristocratic conditions: a large Government Staff, military officers, and an organised and tightlyheld population; a steady, influx of educated men as visitors and often as settlers, (Indian officers induced to come by the peculiar regulations then in force in the East India Service); then large grants of land to encourage the influx of capital, with an almost unlimited supply of cheap convict labour and almost unlimited authority over it-hence a body of large landed proprietors. Add to this the distinction between bond and free, and you have marked separation of classes and strong feelings of caste-two classes only, an upper and a lower, and power exclusively in the upper. A large Government expenditure |