Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.306
This happened in the reign of Louis XVI., and one might wonder how the humble Pierrot's disappointed love could influence the destiny of the king of France; and yet it did so. Pierrot had quitted Paris with his heart full of bitterness against the aristocracy; but more especially against the king, who had rejected Geneviève's petition; and against the queen, who had disdained her tears and prayers. After staying a short time in his formerly happy home, the contrast with the past, and the cruel recollections constantly suggested, became too bitter for him, and he wandered away, living an irregular sort of life, and mingling more and more with the violent republicans, to whom his only tie was, that they, too, hated the court and the courtiers. The course of his travels having at length brought him to St Menehould, he happened to be one day lounging in the streets, when, observing two carriages approaching, he stopped to see them pass. His surprise may be conceived when, on the driving-seat of one of them, dressed as a servant, he recognised the Comte de Fersen! Such a disguise could not be worn for nothing, and urged by hatred, he drew near the carriage, and looked in. There sat the queen of France, whilst the king, attired as a valet, was awkwardly endeavouring to perform the duties of his supposed office. It was Pierrot Dubourg who whispered to Drouet the postmaster who the travellers were, and it was he who accompanied Drouet's son in pursuit of the unhappy fugitives, who were overtaken at Varennes, and brought back to Paris. Pierrot Dubourg came too, and after losing sight of him for some time, we find him again filling the office of assistant executioner, in which situation he witnessed the beheading of his once-loved Geneviève, who was guillotined on the same day with Madame Dubarry.
Monsieur Arago, in his éloge of Lavoisier, relates that this great chemist might possibly have escaped the death inflicted by his ignorant and ungrateful countrymen, who told him they had no more need of learned men, had he not been more anxious for the safety of others than his own. A poor woman in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg had received him into her house, where she neglected no precautions for his safety and concealment; but his alarm for the consequences to his benefactress should he be discovered, distressed him so much more than his own danger, that he made repeated attempts to escape from her friendly roof, which she, by her vigilance, defeated. One night, however, he succeeded in eluding her watchfulness, and the next day saw him in the Luxembourg, whence he was removed to the Conciergerie, on his rapid way to the scaffold.
Condorcet, the great mathematician, is said to have lost his life by not knowing how many eggs there should be in an omelette. Aware that he was suspected by Robespierre – for though a republican, he had dared to pity the royal family – he disfigured his face and hands with mortar, and fled from Paris in the disguise of a mason. After passing twenty-four hours in a wood, hunger drove him to a little inn, where he ordered an omelette.
'Of how many eggs?' asked the servant.
'Twelve,' replied the philosopher at random. A mason ordering an omelette of twelve eggs awakened suspicion; he was searched, and a volume of Horace being found in his pocket, he was arrested. Unable to face the scaffold, Condorcet took poison, and died on the road to Paris.
Everybody knows that the horrors of the French Revolution were redeemed by many noble actions. We have told the story of Bouchotte at St Pelagie. Benoit, the keeper of the Luxembourg, also distinguished himself by many generous and courageous deeds. He saved the life of the Duchess of Orleans, the mother of Louis-Philippe, by refusing to give her up when summoned before the Committee of Public Safety. He declared she was ill – dying – all but dead, and thus averted her fate till she had an opportunity of obtaining protection.
A lady called Jeanne Faurie also found a powerful friend in a jailor of the Luxembourg. She was young, and extremely beautiful, and although Rifaut was looked upon as one of the most inflexible of functionaries, her bright eyes melted his rigidity. He procured her pens, ink, paper, and books. 'I know my character and my life are at stake,' said he; 'but speak! command me! Whatever you desire I will do.' When he heard that she was on the list of persons to be executed, he gave her a disguise and all the money he had, and set her at liberty. For some time he concealed the lady's flight; but when it could be no longer kept secret, he went to Benoit, confessed his fault, and demanded the punishment. Benoit, however, did not betray him; and Jeanne Faurie's escape was not known till there was no danger in making it public. The Luxembourg was called the Reservoir of the Conciergerie, and Josephine Beauharnois was confined here before being transferred to the latter prison. It is related that when she afterwards resided in the Luxembourg as wife of the First Consul, she one day intreated Bonaparte to accompany her to the cell she had formerly inhabited. When there, she asked him for his sword, with which she raised one of the flags, and there, to her great joy, she found a ring given her by her mother, on which she set the highest value. She told him that when she was summoned to quit the prison, supposing she was going to the scaffold, she had contrived to conceal the jewel, which she could not bear to think should fall into the hands of the public executioner.
NEW THEORY OF POPULATION
Amongst the names inscribed on the keeper's register of the Luxembourg, are those of the ministers of Charles X. in 1830, and also that of Louis-Napoleon, the present President of the French Republic, who was confined here after the unsuccessful affair of Strasburg.
The idea of Mr Malthus, that population has a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence, unless some powerful and obvious checks be interposed to keep down the race to the level of subsistence, has been recently met by Mr Doubleday with a denial and an effort at refutation. From an article by Mr Hickson in the last number of the 'Westminster Review,' we learn that Mr Doubleday endeavours to show grounds for believing that, while there are powerful tendencies to increase beyond the limits of subsistence, there are likewise tendencies to a decrease, which must result in preserving what may be called a balance between the quantity of food and the number of people. Mankind, from Adam downwards to our own day, have gone forward and backward in numbers by a series of fits and starts – they have by no means been going on as a constantly-increasing quantity. Look at the countries in the East mentioned in the Bible – Egypt, Judæa, Asia Minor, Persia, Assyria. Once densely peopled, they are now either desolate, or inhabited by a poor decaying remnant of the proud races which formerly inhabited them. Egypt would soon expire as a nation if not constantly recruited by fresh arrivals from abroad. Neither China nor India is so populous as it was two thousand years ago. The cultivated aboriginal races of America, who left monuments of their greatness, long since disappeared, and were succeeded by tribes of Indians, who are now rapidly disappearing. The history of the world presents many other instances of an entire disappearance of populations.
No doubt war, pestilence, famine, vice, and misery, have all played an important part in sweeping away nations, or in reducing the numbers of their people; but Mr Doubleday holds it to be demonstrable that redundancy of population is prevented in a less continuous degree by these causes, than by one which Malthus altogether overlooks – one, in fact, which militates against his theory. The mention of this check, which is only of recent discovery, will come upon most persons as a surprise: it is comfort– easy circumstances, allied with cultivated feeling; and, to all appearance, the easier the circumstances, the less the increase. Mr Doubleday thinks it would not perhaps be going too far to say, that by carrying these influences a certain length, the race might become extinct. As proof, he refers to the gradual dying out of families among the aristocracy and baronetage – two orders of persons who, above all others, might be expected to be prolific in descendants: —
'Thus it has been,' proceeds this writer, 'that the peerage of England, instead of being old, is recent; and the baronetage, though comparatively of modern origin, equally so. In short, few, if any, of the Norman nobility, and almost as few of the original baronets' families of King James I., exist at this moment; and but for perpetual creations, both orders must have been all but extinct. * * * Of James I.'s creation in A.D. 1611, only thirteen families now remain; a decay certainly extraordinary, and not to be accounted for upon the ordinary ideas of mortality and power of increase amongst mankind.'
Commenting on these facts, the reviewer observes: – 'Several instances from humbler, but still wealthy, or at least comfortable classes of society, are given by Mr Doubleday, tending to the same conclusion, that an ample provision of the means of subsistence does not necessarily act as a stimulus to population, but often seems to have a directly contrary tendency; as if ease and abundance were the real check of population, and a certain amount of poverty and privation were essential to any considerable increase. Thus he mentions the case of the free burgesses of the wealthy corporation of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a body, in 1710, of about 1800, possessing estates and endowments, and exclusive privileges, amply sufficient to protect every individual among them from want; and shows that, although all the sons of every citizen were free by birth, their numbers would have diminished had they not been recruited from without; and that, even with the aid of contested elections, when freemen by purchase were admitted for the sake of votes, the entire body of burgesses remained nearly stationary for upwards of a century. This, too, while the poorer corporation of Berwick-upon-Tweed doubled the number of its free citizens during the same period.
'The examples of the corporation of Durham and Richmond in Yorkshire are adduced to the same effect; but we need not go so far north for corroborative evidence of the same class of facts. In the corporation of London, all the children of a citizen, whether male or female, enjoy the right of freedom by inheritance; and as many of the exclusive privileges of this body have not yet been done away, women still exercise in the city various avocations in their own name (such, for instance, as the trade of a town carman), from which the rest of the inhabitants of the metropolis, non-freemen, are excluded. Until recently, the freedom of the corporation of London was essential to a share in the administration of revenues amounting to upwards of a million per annum, and is still indispensable to a large portion of them. We may reasonably conclude that it was an object of some importance to the ancient citizens of London to keep the patronage connected with such large funds in their own hands, or to leave it in the hands of their own posterity. This object, however, has been so entirely defeated, that if we now inquire into the origin of the present holders of the good things in the gift of the London corporation and the trading companies, we find they are nearly all north countrymen, who have elbowed their way into the city from Scotland or the provinces, and that the descendants of such men as Sir William Walworth and Sir Thomas Gresham are nowhere to be found.
'During the forty years from 1794 to 1833, the admissions by patrimony to the freedom of the corporation of London were only 7794 out of a total of 40,221 admitted – a third of the number having been strangers who purchased their freedom, and one-half sons of strangers obtaining their freedom by apprenticeship.'
Mr Doubleday's explanation of these phenomena is to the effect, that it is not misery, but comfort, which deadens the principle of increase. It is notorious that the poorest parents have, as a general rule, the greatest number of children. Only feed people on potatoes and salt, oatmeal-porridge, or any other plain fare, and let them at the same time maintain a struggle to get even that, and sure enough their firesides, or the places where the fire should be, will be garnished by as plenteous a crop of youngsters as you could wish to behold! How these children are fed it is often so difficult to comprehend, that one is almost driven to the conclusion that they somehow live and have strength to romp about on the mere element – fresh air. It is very clear that nature abhors all sorts of codling and pampering: —
'It is a fact, admitted by all gardeners as well as botanists,' says Mr Doubleday, 'that if a tree, plant, or flower be placed in a mould either naturally or artificially made too rich for it, a plethoric state is produced, and fruitfulness ceases. In trees, the effect of strong manures and over-rich soils is, that they run to superfluous wood, blossom irregularly, and chiefly at the extremities of the outer branches, and almost, or entirely, cease to bear fruit. With flowering shrubs and flowers the effect is, first, that the flower becomes double, and loses its power of producing seed; next, it ceases almost even to flower. If the application of the stimulus of manure is carried still further, flowers and plants become diseased in the extreme, and speedily die; thus, by this wise provision of Providence, the transmission of disease (the certain consequence of the highly-plethoric state, whether in plants, animals, or in mankind) is guarded against, and the species shielded from danger on the side of plenty. In order to remedy this state when accidentally produced, gardeners and florists are accustomed, by various devices, to produce the opposite, or deplethoric state; this they peculiarly denominate "giving a check." In other words, they put the species in danger in order to produce a corresponding determined effort of nature to insure its perpetuation – and the end is invariably attained. Thus, in order to make fruit-trees bear plentifully, gardeners delay, or impede, the rising of the sap, by cutting rings in the bark round the tree. This, to the tree, is the production of a state of depletion, and the abundance of fruit is the effort of nature to counteract the danger. The fig, when grown in this climate, is particularly liable to drop its fruit when half-matured. This, gardeners now find, can be prevented by pruning the tree so severely as to give it a check; or, if grown in a pot, by cutting a few inches from its roots all round, so as to produce the same effect. The result is, that the tree retains, and carefully matures, its fruit. In like manner, when a gardener wishes to save seed from a gourd or cucumber, he does not give the plant an extra quantity of manure or warmth. He does just the contrary: he subjects it to some hardship, and takes the fruit that is least fine-looking, foreknowing it will be filled with seed whilst the finest fruit are nearly destitute. Upon the same principle, it is a known fact, that after severe and long winters, the harvests are correspondingly rapid and abundant. Vines bear most luxuriantly after being severely tried by frost; and grass springs in the same extraordinary manner. After the long and trying winter of 1836-37, when the snow lay upon the ground in the northern counties until June, the spring of grass was so wonderful as to cause several minute experiments by various persons. The result was, that in a single night of twelve hours the blade of grass was ascertained frequently to have advanced full three-quarters of an inch; and wheat and other grain progressed in a similar manner.'
It is shown by facts, that in the animal economy a low physical state, of course along with air and exercise, is equally favourable. In proportion, therefore, as conditions adverse to this simple principle are encouraged, so will the ratio of increase be limited. Indulgent idleness, want of out-door exercise, codling with cordials, dosing with medicines, tight-lacing, late hours, mental excitement, and fifty other things, induce the physical weakness and irritability which renders the production of offspring an impossibility. Causes of this kind, operating along with those artificial restraints, the validity of which Malthus is so far right in recognising, are mainly concerned in keeping population within bounds. It would then appear, that so long as there is an abject, struggling poor, ignorant and ill-fed, there will be a vigorous growth, a dangerous population – dangerous, because redundant as respects their capacity and will to work. On the other hand, by an universal spread of education, by the cultivation of rational tastes and habits, and by the simple mode of living which such tastes would engender, there will ensue something like a medium between a relatively-redundant and a comparative extinction of population.