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Untitled Article
but it is only where the people are free , happy , and enlightened , that they will do this with discretion . In France , as elsewhere , there is , and has been , and will be , occasional distress , and people , who have never thought on the subject but superficially , or who are interested in assigning any but the true cause , readily ascribe it to over population , and that over population ( where it suits
their selfish purposes ) to a division oflanded property sufficiently extensive to shock the prejudices and alarm the fears of a coldblooded monopolizing aristocracy ; whilst in fact it is to be attributed more truly to misgovern men t with its incubus of over taxation , and its never-failing goule-like attendants of multitudes of idle gentlemen , who in secret devour the substance and neutralize the labours of the industrious . As to the idea of
France being at present over populous , nothing can be more absurd . If the noble energies and astonishing activity of the French people are not again misdirected and their confidence abased ; if the lands of France capable of bearing food for man be brought gradually into cultivation ; and if a great proportion of those lands now under cultivation be improved in any degree
approaching to their capabilities , France may double her population without fear of its exceeding the means of comfortable subsistence ; and provided also that subsistence be but reasonabl y and equitably distributed . * In the department of the Indre and Loire , certainly one of the finest districts of France , there are still nearly 200 , 000 English
acres of totally uncultivated land , besides extensive half-stocked forests , and thousands of acres of swamps and lakes (^ tangs ) capable of being drained to great advantage ; together , nearly equal to one third part of the cultivated land , terre labourable / of the department . In France , and in all other countries , provided the g overnment , be in deed and in truth , a government for the many , and
not a government for the few only , administered on the firm basis of civil and religious liberty , in the simple but genuine spirit of unsophisticated political economy , the time is so remote when the means of subsistence need inconveniently press on the population , that the rnost timid may dismiss all apprehension on that score , and safely leave the contingency , whatever it may be { , and
whenever it may arrive , in the hands of that Providence , who heareth the ravens when they cry for food , ' and without whom a sparrow falleth not to the ground . ' We cannot for one moment believe that He who formed the earth and hath ' given it to the children of men , ' has established taws of human procreation incompatible with the dimensions and capabilities of the physical world ; and
entertaining no doubt that the earth is calculated to maintain a vastly greater population than has ever yet existed upon it , we cart with tfte Utmost confidence leave the ultimate result to the disposal of * In England we have a \ a . w to compel the poor to maintain their relation ! it hen in want , but this is practically applied to the lower classes only .
Untitled Article
346 French Laws of Succession .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 346, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/58/
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