forms us indeed in his Appendix, that he has taken great pains in procuring lifts for his own fatisfaction. I fhall continue (fays he) to collect them, and doubt not being able to convince the public, as far as any authority, except directly numbering the people, will allow, that the numbers, fo far from declining, advance confiderably; which may be seen by the great increase of births in very many places fince the reftauration.' But till thefe lifts are fufficiently perfect to be laid before the public, we must judge according to the evidence with which we are already furnished. Advance in the price of labour and increase of employment, in the branch of agriculture particularly, seem to us very doubtful principles: in fome places, we are fatisfied, they are contrary to fact and obfervation; and were they more general and certain, they do not appear fufficient of themfelves to eftablish the Author's favourite opinion. It would not be difficult to retort most of the reasoning and conclufions founded on these principles on the Author himself, and to evince the decline of population from many of the numerous and boasted improvements in agriculture, to which he afcribes its increase. And yet from these doubtful, partial, and fallacious principles, the Author somewhat too confidently determines, that the facts upon which the arguments for our depopulation are founded, are abfolutely false; that the conjectures annexed to them are wild and uncertain, and that the conclufions which are drawn from the whole, can abound in nothing but errors and mistakes.' And in the fame high ftrain, having fummed up all the figns of depopulation in decrease of shipping-decline of manufacturesdecline of agriculture-and a general fall of prices, he concludes, Whenever therefore we hear of other caufes of depopulation, fuch as engroffing farms, inclofures, laying arable to grafs, high prices of provifions, great cities, luxury, celibacy, debauchery, wars, emigrations, &c. we may very fafely refolve them into a string of vulgar errors, and reft affured that they can have no ill effect, while the five great caufes mentioned above do not subfift.' The main defign of this work is to reconcile the feeming contradiction, and to confirm the paradox included in the above paragraph. On our Author's views and principles, nothing that is an apparent check to population, such as debauchery and celibacy, not to add the engroffing of farms, and the advance of the means of fubfiftence; nothing that evidently lays wafte population, fuch as wars, emigrations, and great cities, very properly denominated the graves of the human fpecies,' does it any injury. Let all the buxom breeders in the kingdom emigrate, or all the males undergo an operation that may make them harmless, and population will ftill flourish. Population (fays the Author) is a fecondary object; and as the section to which 2. which this title belongs contains fome curious remarks, we shall felect fome of them for the aufement of our Readers : • What I would here inculcate is the idea (in case of a suppofed competition) of keeping population ever fubordinate to agriculture. If a measure is beneficial to the latter, give no attention to those who talk of injuring population. If you act primarily from an idea of encouraging populoufnefs, you may injure husbandry; but if your firft idea is the encouragement of the latter, you cannot hurt population. If this idea was acknowledged to be juft, there would be no neceffity for a dif cuffion of it--but as many are of a very different opinion, it is neceffary to urge a right conduct, though upon motives apparently deceitful. I have before mentioned, that application of the foil to be most beneficial, which yields the greatest neat profit in the market. Aye, fays another, provided it be food for man, thereby promoting population. But I admit of no fuch provifion and I am clear, that the population of a country will be most advanced by the farmer's growing rich, whether by hops, madder, or woad, as well as corn: but granting the truth, ftill let the farmer act as he finds beft, because he had better increase his wealth than the nation's people. The farmers are defirous in fuch and fuch districts to convert their arable lands to grafs-No; they are told, that will injure population. This reafoning is all on false principles. Do not the husbandmen best know what their lands are proper for ? If they defire a change, is it not plain they do it for their own intereft? Will they not grow more wealthy from hence? Will they not proportionably encourage and confequently increase all the claffes that depend on and are connected with them? And how can a conduct in fuch a train, be in the end an injury to population? M. de Mirabeau has obferved in France, and I have repeatedly made the fame obfervation in England, that great farms are of far more advantage to husbandry than fmall ones: the fame gentleman tells us, no matter; fmall farms are the most beneficial to population-I have proved this to be falfe, from the regifter of all the farms on more than 70,000 acres of land in, various parts of the kingdom. But granting they are right, yet the advantages of agriculture are never to be opposed on that pretence; for a good fpirited, and accurate cultivation, carried on by wealthy farmers, is of more confequence to the nation than population. This whole matter is reduced fimply to this; national wealth raifed by induftry, is more advantageous to a nation than an increase of people. Why are you ftrenuous for population? It can only be with views of national defence. But the number of people in a modern ftate, is by no means the measure of strength: this is wealth alone. Men were never wanting wanting where money, flowing from induftry, was plentiful; but if money is wanting, your population is of no confequence. All modern experience is but a collective proof of this. My principles are these: I mean to befriend population, and I think the only way to do it is to promote every branch of national industry, and never throw out any restrictions, laws, or rules, with a view to population.-Ever let it be a fecondary object flowing from wealth, if you would in fact have it the firft. Farmers, manufacturers, merchants, &c. conducting their business after their own ideas, and from the increase of their private wealth, enabled to be more active in their refpective provinces, and increafing the general confumption of all commodities, muft, in the very nature of things, promote population infinitely more than it is poffible for you to do by your cautions, regulations, and restrictions. Those who are fo eager in favour of population, should reflect, that a very numerous people, raised by any means but the gradual progrefs of wealth and industry, would, in moft, cafes, be burthenfome. Suppose the farms fo fmall as to be juft able to feed a family, and that the farmers were (as they muft be in such a cafe) their own landlords-Suppofing by fuch a minute divifion of the territory the people fhould increase, but to what purpose? Merely to ftarve one another; they can fell nothing, wanting the whole produce for their own fupport.Land-taxes on them would reduce them to beggary, and they can confume no excifable commodities, for how are they to buy them? Thus fuch a fyftem gives you no public revenuenor yields any products for exportation, fcarce any even for fale of what good therefore is this part of your territory? Why it breeds people. True; but does it maintain them? No. Here therefore would be a furplus of population; but you want no fuch furplus-your army is full; your navy is full; and your manufacturers have far more hands than they can employ-why then increase your people? They can be nothing but a public burthen, if they do not leave a country which cannot fupport them.' We fhall leave these extracts to the judgment of the attentive Reader, and obferve upon the whole, that although we are not fatisfied with the ingenious Author's principles and reafoning on the fubject of population, and think him rather deficient in point of respect and candour to those who have already diftinguished themselves in this department of political science, yet bis book contains many juft and ufeful remarks on the state of agriculture in this kingdom, and on the general caufes that. have contributed to render it fo far fuperior to that of fome neighbouring nations. R-$. MONTHLY MONTHLY CATALOGUE, AMERICAN AFFAIRS. Art. 1o. An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of T HE Author of this Appeal is an able advocate for the colonists, not as compofing diftinct ftates, but as having, in common with British subjects, an indefeasible right to an exclufive difpofal of their own property.-He maintains with Mr. Locke, "that the fupreme power, however it may make laws for regulating the fate, cannot take away any man's property, without his confent:" that all taxes are free grants of the people, by their reprefentatives, folfowed by an affent of the other branches of the legislature, according to the forms of legiflation which are neceffary to authorize and prefcribe the modes of collecting them: that fuch legiflative affent always fuppofes a previous grant on behalf of the people whofe reprefentatives for that purpofe have the exclufive right of originating money bills and that the King gives thanks for the grant before he affents to the law for collecting it.-In fapport of this doctrine our Author cites various ftatutes, charters, &c. and enforces his arguments by numerous facts, drawn from the political hiftory of this kingdom by the practice of the clergy, who until they were admitted to a reprefentation in the Houfe of Commons, enjoyed the exclufive privilege of taxing themfelves in convocation; their grants afterwards receiving the affent of Parliament for the fame reafons that fuch affent is given to the grants of the laity by their reprefentatives the House of Commons: by the cafes of Wales, Chester, and Durham: and especially by that of Ireland; more particularly in the inftance in which King Edward the Third fummoned knights, citizens and burgeffes from thence to fit in the Parliament of EngJand, the better to obtain fubfidies which the Parliament of Ireland had refufed to grant. And this exclufive right of the people to dif pofe of their own property independent of the fupreme legislative power, is, he fays, neither the difcovery of Mr. Locke, nor the peculiar provifion of the English conftitution. It was long fince fet forth by Cicero in thefe words: Hæc funt fundamenta firmissima libertatis, fui quemque juris retinendi ac demittendi esse arbitrium. It pervaded every feudal conftitution in Europe, and was exercised with as much precifion and jealoufy by the fates of France, and the Cortes of Spain, as by the English Houfe of Commons. Auxilia, fays Bracton, fiunt de gratia et non ae jure; cum dependeant ex gratia tenantium et non ad voluntatem dominorum. Dr. Robertfon tells us (Hift. Ch. V.) "When any extraordinary aid was granted by freemen to their fovereign, it was purely voluntary;" and again, "it was a fundamental principle in the feudal fyftem of policy, that no freeman could be taxed unless by his own confent. Every one knows, from the most authentic accounts, that in the German conftitution, from its earliest date, all the people had a right to be prefent in their affemblies, and affent to what bound them. And I am well informed, continues continues he, that at this very day no taxes can be raised on the free cities of Bruffels, Antwerp, &c. without the confent of every individual citizen who is prefent in the affembly." To the facred, eternal, and universal right of giving property, even a tyrant of the North has been obliged to bear his teftimony. We have heard the prefent King of Sweden publicly declare to his people, "That to be taxed by others was repugnant to the most precious part of their liberty, which confifts in taxing themfelves."" To this right, fays he, of the nation to tax itself, I would have the greatest attention paid, because I am engaged, by oath, to let my fubjects enjoy their liberties and privileges without any restriction." After thus denying the right, our Author proceeds to expofe the impolicy of raifing a revenue in America against the will of the people; and this leads him to a fevere reprehenfion of our late measures, and an alarming prediction of their confequences. B. Art. 11. A Letter to a Member of Parliament, on the present un. happy Difpute between Great Britain and her Colonies. 8vo. 1 s. 6 d. Walter. 1774• This Writer is an advocate for the measures of government, though we hope that they who direct thofe measures will not own him as their advocate, or avow his opinions; fome of which are; that it is fafer to enforce a doubtful, or even pernicious, measure, than tamely to yield a point;'-that when the feveral eftates of the kingdom have once etablished a law, nothing on earth fhould be received to controul it, till the fubjects, by dutiful obedience to its mandates, place themselves in a fit condition humbly to petition or remonftrate, as the cafe may require, in confequence of the real and unaffected evils which they have experienced, under a full execution of the actor in other words, that a pernicious act of parliament fhould not be repealed until the people have fuffered all the evils it can produce:-and that to talk of a fupreme power, and strip it of a right of taxation, is downright nonfenfe. Here poor Locke, and all the authorities cited in the preceding article, are, by a fingle elevation of this Gentleman's foot, kicked out of doors.-We believe indeed this incivility to have been unintentional, and that the Gentleman was as ignorant of what he thus rejects, as he appears in other inftances to be of the nature of Britith government, and the political history and conftitutions of the colonies. He goes on to affirm, that the fupreme power of parliament has been either exprefsly and directly, or tacitly and impliedly announced in every grant, charter, or public inftrument, iffued by the crown from the original fettlement of English plantations. And if, continues he, the Americans will produce any records in the face of this pofition, I will take upon me to fhew them their free and abfolute emancipation from all reftraints, either of King or Parliament, fairly intcribed in legible letters on the back.'-Had fuch an obliging offer been made by thofe of fuficient power, it would doubtlefs be accepted by the colonifls, who, we fuppofe, among other "records," might produce the charter of Maryland. This Writer, in the courfe of his Letter, often confounds the terms power" and "right."-The following paffage difcovers that he allo confounds the ideas belonging to them: What I confider alfo, says he, as ridiculous in the conduct of the Americans is, that they 112 should |