in the tale of William Lambert. "Brast" (burst)—“ fay," (faith)" gar"-(make)-" natheless" (nevertheless) — "toled" (beguiled)—“trow" (think)—“wend” (go)—“wot, weet, wiss," &c. (to know) "wassail" (drinking and carousing) "welling blood," &c. are expressions peculiarly appropriate in translations from the ancient poetry of the northern nations, amongst whom, many of these and similar words are still in use. We think the author might have explained the nature of the "Berserker" and " Berserksgang" more fully by a reference to the Scottish dialect, in which the word serk is still used for an under garment. The word "Berserksgangr," translated "champion's fury," seems to denote a mad custom among these champions, of going about in their bare serks to fight any person they chanced to meet! We beg leave to submit this explanation to the consideration of Mr. Herbert, and to assure him, that it will give us pleasure to renew our acquaintance with him, as he appears from the specimens here given, to be eminently qualified to throw 'some light on the language, the literature, and the manners, of the Northern nations.

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Dissertations on Man, Philosophical, Phisiological, and Political; in Answer to Mr. Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population. By T. Jarrold, M. D. 8vo. pp. 367. Price 10s. 6d. 1806. THERE is not any subject that has more engaged the attention, and invited the investigation of philosophers who speculate on the history and condition of man, particularly of those called POLITICAL Economists, than population. It is in population, if not chiefly, yet in a very great measure, that the strength of a nation consists. It is in populous states that we find that ready intercourse and collision of minds, that general fermentation of sentiment which produces inventions and discoveries; and thereby advances the comfort, dignity, and power of mankind; and the greater the population, the greater the sum of individual security and enjoymentindeed statesmen and philosophers, at least Political Economists, appear to have been commonly more attentive to the means of encreasing the population of countries, than to the health, virtue, and happiness of the people: though these, no doubt, are connected with population in the relation of cause and effect. But, there is a very wide difference between the condition of man, in the state of a cultivator of the ground, and that of an owner or keeper of herds and . flocks, and that of a manufacturer and artizan, pent up in a populous town, and confined to the unvaried mechanism of

a single employment. On this point, some very fine as well. as just observations are to be found in Dr. Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, Professor Ogilvie's Essay on the Right of Property in Land, and also in some of the writ ings of the French economists. Sir William Petty, who wrote at a time when the republic of the Seven United Provinces was in the zenith of its glory, was greatly struck with the advantages of a compacted or condensed population; and went the length even of affirming that the wealth and power of England would be greater if Ireland and other dependencies or branches of this country were sunk into the sea. It is better, however, for all good purposes, that men, instead of being huddled in great numbers into towns, should be scattered as much as possible over the soil, so long as there remains an acre of land to be reduced from waste ground, or farther improved by better modes of cuiti

vation.

Manufactures and commerce, to a certain extent, will always attend agriculture, out of which they spring; but agriculture is to be preferred, in respect of health, happiness, substantial wealth, and population, wherever there is any waste land, or wherever agriculture has not been carried to the highest possible pitch of improvement. Many books have been published in France, some in America, and a few in this country, though in opposition to some of the doctrines of the celebrated Dr. Adain Smith, in proof of this assertion. But both the economists and other friends to the agricultural or rural system, and those who magnify the advantages of the carrying trade to a state, are of one accord in this, that in every system or plan, regard is to be paid to the advancement of population.

Not so Mr. Malthus. He considers the rapid progress of population as a most formidable evil: there is nothing he dreads so much as its excess; that it should outrun the means of subsistence, so inadequate, he thinks, to the principle of propagation in man, and every thing that lives. Neither disease or death, or any natural cause, is a sufficient barrier against the progress of this dreadful evil, which is not to be counteracted but by other evils: war, murder, famine, pestilence, and misery in a thousand forms. The voice of nature as well as of divine revelation says, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" the consequence of obedience to this law of natural instinct, and positive institution, would be inevitable destruction. But our readers must hear Mr. Malthus himself.

"The principal object of the present essay," says Mr. M. fis

to examine the effects of one great cause intimately united with the very nature of man, which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers who have treated on this subject.-The cause to which I allude, is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it. That population has this constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence, will sufficiently appear from a review of the different states of society in which man has existed. But before we proceed to this review, the subject will perhaps be seen in a clearer light, if we endeavour to ascertain what would be the natural increase of population, if left to exert itself with perfect freedom; and what might be expected to be the rate of increase in the productions of the earth, under the most favourable circumstances of human industry. A comparison of these two rates will enable us to judge of the force of that tendency in population to increase beyond the means of subsistence which has been stated to exist.

In the northern states of America, where the means of subsistence have been more ample, the mauners of the people more pure, and the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population was found to double itself for some successive periods every twenty-five years; yet even during these periods, in some of the towns, the deaths exceeded the births, and they consequently required a continued supply from the country to support their population.-According to a table of Euler, calculated on a mortality of 1 in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to 1, the period of doubling will be only 12 years and 4-5ths; and these proportions are not only possible suppositions, but have actually occurred, for short periods, in more countries than one. Sir Wni. Petty supposes a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years. But to be perfectly sure that we are far within the truth, we will take the slowest of these rates of increase; a rate in which all concurring testimonies agree, and which has been repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only. It may safely be pronounced, therefore, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years, or increases in a geometrical ratio; (suppose a population of one million of people, in one period of 25 years they will increase to two millions, in the second period to four millions, in the third to eight, and so on :) but the increase of subsistence cannot be at the same rate; if by good management, the quantity be doubled in 25 years, in the next period of 25 years it cannot be quadrupled. The rate of doubling in the population is geometrical, but in the subsistence it is only arithmetical.

"The necessary effects of these two rates of increase, when brought together, will be striking. Let us call the population of this island 11 millions, and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number; in the first 25 years the population will be 22 millions, and the food being also doubled, the

means of subsistence would be equal to this increase; in the next 25 years the population would be 44 millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 33 millions; in the next period the population would be 88 millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half that number; and, at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be 176 millions, and the means of subsistence equal only to the support of 55 millions, leaving a population of 121 millions totally unprovided for. The human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, S, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the produce of the earth, yet still the power of popu lation being in every period so much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power."

The way in which this law of necessity acts may be classed under the two general heads of the preventive and the posi tive. By the preventive, Mr. M. understands celibacy; by the positive," all unwholsome occupations, severe labour, and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of common diseases and epidemics, wars, pestilence, plague, and famine. To these are added, promiscuous intercourse, unnatural passions, violations of the marriage bed, and improper acts to conceal the consequences of irregular connexions,"

Agreeably to this theory, Mr, Malthus lays down the following propositions. 1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks. 3. These checks, which repress the superior power of population, and keep its effects on a level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery. The truth of the first of these propositions is not to be questioned. Dr. Jarrold observes, that on perusing the system of which this is a sketch, attention is roused, and strongly interested by the statement, that the principle of increase in population is stronger than the possible increase of subsistence. "This idea," he continues, “so calculated to startle and confound, which at once seems to have its origin in nature, but is contradicted by experience, which accounts for the population of the globe by increase from a single pair, but excludes the Deity from the government of it, is so important in its consequences, so plausible in its relation,

and in every way so interesting, claims a fair, a full, and an impartial investigation."

It was proper, in the prosecution of this subject, that some country, whose increase in population and in the means of supporting it, is known, should be mentioned as a standard by which to measure or judge of others. For this pur

pose, Mr. Malthus has selected America, and at once as sumes it as a fact, that the natural power of increase, in every country, every age, and every stage of cultivation, is the same as in America. In this assumption, Dr. Jarrold apprehends he has committed his leading error; though his whole book insists on it as a fact, that the population of every state which does not increase at the rate of doubling its numbers in 25 years is prevented by the operation of vice, misery, or moral restraint, and consequently, that in the state in which the increase in population is the slowest, vice, misery, and moral restraint are the most prevalent. In opposition to this doctrine, Dr. Jarrold sets himself to shew, that neither is population so much retarded as Mr. Malthus believes, by vice and misery; nor so much encouraged and accelerated by their contraries.

"For instance," he says, "the Jews, when captives in Egypt, suffered all the miseries of slavery, their food was scanty, and their labour excessive, which, doubtless shortened the lives of some, and prevented the births of others, yet they doubled their numbers, by actual increase, in 15 years. The American colonists, whom Mr. Malthus selects as a standard for the whole world, were not under more favourable circumstances than the generality of persons in Europe, yet in Europe a doubling is not effected in fewer than 500 years. The colonists were exposed to a climate injurious to their health, and had to contend with numerous tribes of fierce and barbarous natives, who sought their extermination; they also suffered from the injurious privations incident to a thin population and a foreign country: in Europe, evils greater than these are seldom felt; and there have been periods of 15 or 25 years, in particular states, when all the felicity, and all the plenty, America in her best years could boast of, were enjoyed in them, without a similar increase in population following.

and ask what China knows more than America? an anChina, for many successive

"If we pass from Europe to Asia, of vice, misery, and moral restraint, swer will with difficulty be found. years, has suffered nothing from war, from famine, or from pestiLence; but whilst America makes rapid advances in population, China remains without increase. If what is here advanced be correct, the principles Mr. Malthus supports, have not that influence on population he contends for: hut.let us examine his positions a tle ore mimately,