State Directed Emigration.
According to the economist Say, "it may be laid down as a general maxim that the population of a State is always proportionate to the sum of its production in every kind."
He goes on to assert that "nothing can permanently increase population except the encouragement and advance of production." These are crude generalisations marked with the stamp of the doctrinaire theorist. The fact is, there are countries, as China, Hindostan, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, whose inhabitants have multiplied to an extent disproportionate, under existing circumstances, to the sum of their production; there are others, for instance Russia, Brazil, that are notoriously capable of maintaining populations larger than those finding subsistence to-day upon their respective soils.
The truth M. Say rather pompously laboured but failed to announce, can be succinctly stated thus: The inhabitants of a State must, in the long run, subsist upon the total sum of products, in every kind, of their labour exercised within its boundaries. Mark, in the long run; because they might for a time, even a long time, borrow from their neighbours to live on credit, or occasionally plunder them in successful war.
Thus the Japanese people (because they must) contrive to live upon the total of Japanese productions in every kind. Every one can understand this; the case looks simple, the staple productions being few as compared with the multifarious items that make up our own sum total, and there being no complication connected with investments by Japanese in foreign securities, no foreign banking operations worth mentioning, no shipping, little foreign trade, and few manufactures, to puzzle an inquirer. The soil of Japan would not yield more than it does now if the emigration of her sons were rigorously prohibited, and immigration of coolies inaugurated on a grand scale. There are limits to productiveness everywhere, and they have probably
