NATURAL ADAPTABILITY OF
POPULATION.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
[January 7, 1907.
the birth rate is return to natural conditions
HENRIES and their great successor | again with surprise like poor ghosts from ELIZABETH, England had made enormous the other world, congratulate each other on advances both at home and abroad. From being yet alive, and take their pleasure being a third-class Power, scarcely ventur- together. According to the continuator of "those that survivel, men and ining a remonstrance here and there on the Nangis,
taken up her position s politics of the Continent, England had women, inarried in multitudes. The women reckone with in the affairs of the world.
a power to be conceived beyond measure. There was not New schemes were started at home and
one barren: nothing was to be seen this abroad; the North American colonies were produced some two, some thres at a birth. way or that but pregnant women. They
founded, and a serious attempt at seizure of the commerce of the East entered the pestilenes ".
the A sava ze rejoicing, an orgy of heirs, followed And here a new condition on. England under her Tudor sovereigns of affairs has recently come into play. During had certainly advanced both in population the latter part of the nineteenth century the and wealth, as well as in the comfort of her average life of the individual had consider. people generally, and the mental activity ab'y increased, owing to the increased of her people found abundant outlets for comfort of living, and the general improve- expansion. With the accession of the mirror ment of sanitation. The expectation of life of wisdom, JAMES 1, the inducements to at the age of five, which from 1838-54 enterprise in a great measure ceased, and a humdrum mediocrity succeeded to the term 1871-80 to 52, and had sensibly had stood at 50 years, bad mounted in the activity of the Tudor period; we have no increased during the rest of the century. exict statistics to guide us, and <<
Mrs. The result of this was seemingly that a GRUNDY" had not yet commenced to renewed lucreas of the population had set terrorise the nation; but doubtless had in, the decennial increment in 1901 amount. these come into existence we should haveing to 12.17 per seat. This, however, wai beard complaints of growing luxury and evidently to be accounted for by the vice equal to those with which we have overlapping of the tables, the birth-rate for recently been deluged. The results were, however, equally plain, and the population on record.
the last year ng actually the lowest From the above remarks it for a considerable period remained practi- will, Łowever, be clearly evident that al- cally coust int, or even declined. Towards though the increase during the last century the close of the seventeenth century the was distinctly abnormal, and brought about gradual destruetion of the forests began to by causes not likely to be repeated; those raise fears as to a coming dearth of fu-1,
causes in themselves were perfectly natural, an efforts began to be made to utilise the aud followed simple natural laws. The coal deposits known to occur in various present reduction in parts of the country; but here the presence properly only a of water began to interfere with the pro- after a period of undue inflation. Nor is ductiveness of the mines, and men like the the fact that the increment has been Marquis of WORCESTER and NEWCOMEN greatest amongst the less opulent classes in begau to exercise their minds in producing any way a thing in itself out of order; such adequate machinery. It was not till the being the universal experience in all ages, scientific brain of WATT made a practical and amongst all peoples. machine out of his improved steam engine that a new era commenced to open, and that men began to appreciate the fact that many industries till then carried on by manual labour could ELAY be profitably worked by machinery, the fuel for which was to be found in the hitherto neglected coal mines of the land. At first there was a fear that the use of machinery would diminish the demand for human labour, and that the industrious classes would eventually be reduced to beggary, but presently the new openings for industry created such a demand for skilled labour that for a prolonged period England became the workshop of the world. Under this new stimulus the natural laws of adjustment were thrown into gear, and England found, not only that she could supply all the hands she needed for carrying on her manufactures, but that. besides so great was the stimulus, that she had actually a surplus to send abroad to start new fields in the fertile lands of her dependencies. Te natural checks to increase of popula. ion were in fact for a time abrogated: the increment which for two centuries hal been almost at a stand-st Il grew so that in the first decade of the nineteenth century it had arrived at fourteen per cent in the second decade it increased further to eighteen per cent. No need here for calling in the aid of any extraordinary change in the moral coudition of the people. From that period, there being comparatively fewer new fields to occupy, the rate of increase has shown a steady diminution, till in the decade ending 1891 the decennial rate fell to 11.65 per cent. MACHIAVELLI tells of a like instance
IN PASSING.
(Daily Press, 29th, December) Not the least remarkable phenomenon the economical history of the world is the wonderfully fine adjustments by which natural laws preserve with the least possible friction the balance between population and the means of subsistence. A century ago MALTHUS Astonished the world by bringing forward his theory that population had a tendency to grow in a geometric ratio, and unless we ourselves took the question in hand human existence in the near future would become a matter of increasing difficulty and struggle. We have lived rather more than a century since MALTHUS first published his conclusions; the popula- tion of England and Wales has increased nearly four-fold, that of Scotland rather less than three-fold, and that of Ireland has actually declined rather more than a third. Moreover in all these cases the comfort of the populations, 80 far from bearing any proportion to the rate of growth or the contrary, has in all
three distinctly advanced; and during the last thirty years the average length of the life of the in- dividual has very perceptibly increased. MALTHUS' gloomy prophecies have thus to a very considerable extent been falsified, and yet the grounds on which he based his arguments were indisputably correct; the fact was of course that he looked at but one side of the question, that which momentarily concerned him or rather that which those who commented on his arguments assumed had only one side. If, however, a century ago the country was frightened by the im- pending dread of the evils to accrue through an increase of population, the same class of semi-instructed individuals to-day are pro- phesying the same ୨୦୧୫ through the acknowledged recent decline of the birth- rate. The facts are even more extraordinary than these modero quidnunca have any conception of.
We have no statistics to show the exact population of England and Wales during the reign of Queen ELIZABETH, say the last quarter of the sixteenth century; from various circum stances it may probably be assessed at something over four millions; that is to say in two centuries the population doubled, whilst in the following century the population, as we have seen, practically quadrupled. There was no very serious destruction of life during, the two centuries; there had been the was attendant on the fortaation of the Commonwealth, and there had been the great Plague, but in neither of these checks could the actual loss of life have been serious enough to materially affect the population generally. Through out the periol was one of enhanced, rather than diminished comfort, and popular tradi- tion invariably represents the period as the happiest through which the country had ever passed. Equally certain is it that no reflection has ever been cast on the morality of the period; the court of King CHARLES II, taking its model from that of Versailles, was indeed debauched, but the country at large felt scandalised by its excesses and the evil example never spread beyond the walls of the Palace. When, however, we come to look narrowly into the conditions of the two periods we shall find some noteworthy differences; and differences so grave that probably to them must in great measure be attributed the distinctive after the Black Death on the continent. grinning face with almost equally blenching character of the population lines of growth. The event was equally due to natural effects. To add to the tale of sorrow, we The fifteenth century, occupied in large, causes. We quote MICHELET's History of have but to remember that the year was a measure hy the Renaissance, had been a France. He describes love passages in a bad one for plague and other communicable distict period of growth, and under the
mourning church. The paramours meet disease. Mankind's behaviour, already
j
It
This
(Daily Press, 31st December.) For the first time for several years we are enabled to take leave of a passing year and to welcome a new one without any real necessity to mention the word war has been, in comparison with so many of its predecessors, a year of peace, and this happy characteristic was happily marked during its course by the visit and entertain. ment of the squadrons of two Powers with whom Great Britain is on particularly cordial teras, France and Japan. As if to emphasise the point still more, 1906 closes with our harbour and city crowded with the ships and sailors af various Powers, all friendly with each other and with us. is gratifying enough, but the retrospect of the year's events is hound to chasten rejoicing, for though mankind has behaved ou the whole fairly well, Natube bas been in one of her most cantankerous moods. If the year has to have a denominative of any sort, it will probably be known as “the typhoon year ", not b. cause of any abnorinal frequence of these distressing storms, but because of the extraordinary mischief which the typhoon of September 18th was allowed to wreak. Earlier in the year Hongkong and Macao were agitated by earthquakes and by talk of earthquakes, and these local tremours were but unappreciated fure- runners of the sensational cataclysms at San Francisco, Valparaiso, and Northern India. Se though the murderous guns of war have been silent, death has shown his
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