SPAWNING FORCE.
THE Census papers have been distributed, and on the 15th of April the population of England will, for the ninth time, be ac- curately numbered. The public looks to the result only with patient curiosity, for it has learnt to regard an increase of population in every decade as a matter beyond the region of speculation. Yet nothing can be more certain than that the increase of population is the greatest of political questions, or that there is no law known which should justify us in expecting the increase as a right. Indeed, judging from the analogies on which such law should be framed, the Anglo-Saxon race ought to be approaching its term of increase. Already it has certainly excelled every other existing pure* race, except the Chinese, and probably every race which has ever held power on earth.
1. We say the increase is the greatest of political questions, for though dominant races are not the only tribes which multiply, every race seems hitherto to have increased during the period of its ad- vance, and declined or remained stationary after its decline. The Greeks, from the dawn of their civilization, began to ,swarm off from their little birthplace, till, fifty years after the death of Alexander, Greeks had filled the islands of the Mediterranean and populated Asia Minor, were the sinew of the people of the countries we now call European Turkey, were the dominant race and city population in Egypt, and the warrior class of Persia, ruled in Bactria over a great kingdom, and founded all along the Mediterranean colonies which rose into great cities. Their rate of increase, if we may judge in the absence of statistics, must for some years have been as rapid
* There is no delusion more common or more baseless than the notion that the English are a mixed race. The Dane, Saxon, and Norman were of one blood, and from one place, and the main stock of the nation is as pure from crossing as the Arab or the Jew. as our own. Suppose it had gone on till the Greeks were as numerous as the Chinese ! The population of Rome and Roman Italy increased, in the face of devastating wars, throughout the whole period of the Re- public, perhaps later, for though the Emperors complained that Romans were wanting to fill the armies, they as colonists stamped their lan- guage, laws, and municipal habits deep upon the surface of the world. The rise of Mahomedanism must have been accompanied by a sudden increase in the prolificness of the Arab tribes, for though it is probable that the usual estimate of the population of Arabia is absurdly below the troth,* yet tribes unmistakably Arab in lineage are now found from the Riff to the mountains of Armenia. Suppose the multiplication had continued, and Arabs had spread as they ex- pected over the whole earth. So, too, the Turks, originally a clan, multiplied to about twelve millions, and it is because the spawning force is gone that the Turkish empire is perishing, as Lamartine said, Of want of Turks. We are accustomed to think much of the qualities of our race, but of what avail would its capacities have been but for this mysterious power of reduplication, which enables us to build mighty states with the mere surplus of our population. Sup- pose England had, during !modern history, remained five millions strong: or suppose the multiplication had ceased even in 1815, and we were left to maintain the terrible struggle for independence with fewer people than Prussia or the Hungarian kingdom. 2. There is no conceivable reason why we should not have been left, for, amidst a wilderness of theories, the only law discoverable is the total absence of law. Why should a race stop short at a given point. The instances we have quoted above would point to the idea that the vital energy which produces conquest produces also an increase of numbers. But the facts are wholly opposed to that belief. The Irish, before emancipation, while still one of the crushed races, multiplied like flies. The serfs of Russia increase as fast as freemen, and the negroes of the South faster than their lords. This last instance is not conclusive, for we do not know how far the in- crease is in the mulattoes, who may share the energy of their sires, but it is still fatal to the theory of the link between dominance and mul- tiplication. The common belief that the presence of means of sub- sistence will account for increased numbers is equally disproved. Irishmen, as they approached starvation, multiplied the faster, and all aristocracies, who are of necessity well fed, die out. Why, besides, should England with fifteen millions multiply while it did not multiply with five? Civilization, we have said, seems contempo- raneous with increase ; but the French stand in the front rank of civilization, and their increase has stopped. They gain by conquest, but England adds a new Savoy to her population every year without it. Why, moreover, should there be no increase among the Jews after their dispersion? They were not an effete race, bat outlived the bitterest of their persecutors. Suppose, after their dispersion, they had multiplied at the Anglo-Saxon rate. They would now exceed in number the whole existing population of the earth, and the history of the world would have been changed for ever. Yet why should Jews not multiply as well as Sclaves or Saxons ? We shall be told that there are moral considerations. Well, the negroes, among whom there is almost promiscuous intercourse, multiply faster than the Puritan population of Connecticut, and the Chinese, the worst race on earth, have grown from a tribe into a third of the population of the world. Why do races, again, which have once grown, stop growing ? There is no natural law compelling nations to stop at a number, as men stop at seven feet of height; for the Chinese are six times as numerous as the most numerous of civi- lized tribes. Suppose there had been three hundred millions of Greeks, or Roman citizens, or Frenchmen—we would add English-
men, but that we are still increasing at a rate which, if it continues, will make us in 1900 one hundred and twenty millions, and in 1940, less than a hundred years hence, more numerous than the whole population of Europe, Russia included. Forty years more after that, a space of time less than the reign of the tour Georges, would make us five hundred millions ; and, in all probability, sole masters of the globe. There are plenty of means of sub- sistence. Fill temperate America, North and South, as England is filled, and it would hold the whole, and leave ,great regions for still wider expansion. That any such increase is likely we do not believe, but that it should be even possible is a political fact, to which all European complications, and quarrels, and aspirations are the merest trifles. There is no ground on which to deny or affirm the speculation. The Athenian, the noblest human being who ever
appeared upon the earth's surface, has died out. The Chinese, who would have been missed just as much as a rat, has increased to three hundred millions. If he, why not the Anglo-Saxon, who owns already all climates, and who multiplies in all.
Previous page
