peoples very early in history injured their climate by cutting down
their scanty forests, thereby diminishing their rainfall, and allowing
the soil to be washed off the hillsides. The coasts of the Mediterranean
are, in consequence, far less productive than they were two thousand
years ago. But in England, when the start was once made, all
circumstances conspired to turn our once beautiful island into a chaos
of factories and mean streets, reeking of smoke, millionaires, and
paupers. We were no longer able to grow our own food; but we made masses
of goods which the manufacturers ware eager to exchange for it; and the
population grew like crops on a newly-irrigated desert. During the
nineteenth century the numbers were nearly quadrupled. Let those who
think that the population of a country can be increased at will, reflect
whether it is likely that any physical, moral, or psychological change
came over the nation coincidently with the inventions of the
spinning-jenny and the steam-engine. It is too obvious for dispute that
it was the possession of capital wanting employment, and of natural
advantages for using it, that called these multitudes of human beings
into existence, to eat the food which they paid for by their labour. And
it should be equally obvious that the existence of forty-six millions of
people upon 121,000 square miles of territory depends entirely upon our
finding a market for our manufactures abroad, for so only are we able to
pay for the food of the people. It is most unfortunate that these
exports must, with our present population, include coal, which, if we
had any thought for posterity, we should guard jealously and use
sparingly; for in five hundred years at the outside our stock will be
gone, and we shall sink to a third-rate Power at once. We are
sacrificing the future in order to provide for an excessive and
discontented population in the present. During the present century we
have begun to be conscious that our foreign trade is threatened; and so
sensitive is the birth-rate to economic conditions that it has begun to