Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/17

9 densely populated as Lancashire with 1,000, having regard to their relative capacities. So Belgium, with 580 persons to the square mile, may not be over-populated; while China, with 292 to the same space, may have a larger population than she can decently or economically support. A closer test which has found some favour at different times is to divide the total estimated wealth of the country under consideration by the number of its inhabitants, and thus to arrive at the average amount possessed by each; if this amount is adequate to maintain the individual in a state of physical efficiency (to keep him, in fact, just above what Mr. R. S. Rowntree calls "the poverty line") the population is deemed "sufficient." The validity" of this test, however, is very doubtful. In the first place, if it is pushed to its logical conclusion, it results in a reductio ad ahsurdum. By this method of calculation every decline in the total number of the people will show an increase in their individual wealth until the maximum national wealth coincides with the complete extinction of the nation! In the second place, it assumes that the "sufficient" population for a country is the maximum number for which it could provide a bare living.

A little consideration will show us that such a definition is far from satisfactory. The supreme ideal is not that every rood of ground should maintain its man. The world in those circumstances would lose much of its desirability as a place of residence. Teeming millions with a low standard of living, such as are found in some Asiatic countries, are no proof of prosperity. A healthy life and good social conditions are the most important elements in the well-being of a people; and it is to these we must look to decide whether the country is in a satisfactory condition or the reverse.

Where the national standard of living is low, and the population has multiplied to the limits of subsistence, there is no margin of economic safety. The lives of the people are at the mercy of the thousand accidents of human affairs; a war cutting off their markets, a new invention cheapening some competitive product of other countries, the removal of trade restrictions—it may be on the far side of the world—involves them at once in ruin. When, on the other hand, population is very sparse and too widely scattered to enjoy the benefits of social organisation, the country suffers equally. It requires a certain concentration of humanity to reap the full advantages of social life and the economy of time and effort produced by the division of labour. No one would deny, for example, that Canada, with less than two persons to the square mile, is much underpopulated. In the remoter districts the lack of the common conveniences of civilisation constrains many of the inhabitants to expend all their energies in the daily quest for bread, and leaves them no opportunity for developing their faculties or leading a full life. Between these two evils the population of a country may, I would suggest, be considered as having come to a happy equilibrium when it has reached the maximum