Download the full version of the ebook at

https://ebookgate.com

Transcendental Dynamics and Complex Analysis

1st Edition Philip J. Rippon

https://ebookgate.com/product/transcendental-
dynamics-and-complex-analysis-1st-edition-philip-
j-rippon/

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookgate.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Gender and Our Brains 1st Edition Gina Rippon

https://ebookgate.com/product/gender-and-our-brains-1st-edition-gina-
rippon/

ebookgate.com

Portable X ray Fluorescence Spectrometry Capabilities for

In Situ Analysis 1st Edition Philip J. Potts

https://ebookgate.com/product/portable-x-ray-fluorescence-
spectrometry-capabilities-for-in-situ-analysis-1st-edition-philip-j-
potts/
ebookgate.com

Dynamics and symmetry Michael J. Field

https://ebookgate.com/product/dynamics-and-symmetry-michael-j-field/

ebookgate.com

Complex adaptive innovation systems relatedness and

transversality in the evolving region 1st Edition Philip
Cooke
https://ebookgate.com/product/complex-adaptive-innovation-systems-
relatedness-and-transversality-in-the-evolving-region-1st-edition-
philip-cooke/
ebookgate.com
Collective Dynamics in Complex Networks of Noisy Phase
Oscillators Towards Models of Neuronal Network Dynamics
1st Edition Bernard Sonnenschein
https://ebookgate.com/product/collective-dynamics-in-complex-networks-
of-noisy-phase-oscillators-towards-models-of-neuronal-network-
dynamics-1st-edition-bernard-sonnenschein/
ebookgate.com

Lecture Notes on Complex Analysis Ivan Francis Wilde

https://ebookgate.com/product/lecture-notes-on-complex-analysis-ivan-
francis-wilde/

ebookgate.com

Advanced Methods for Complex Network Analysis 1st Edition

Natarajan Meghanathan (Editor)

https://ebookgate.com/product/advanced-methods-for-complex-network-
analysis-1st-edition-natarajan-meghanathan-editor/

ebookgate.com

Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of Complex

Systems First Edition Hiroki Sayama

https://ebookgate.com/product/introduction-to-the-modeling-and-
analysis-of-complex-systems-first-edition-hiroki-sayama/

ebookgate.com

Making Mondragón The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker

Cooperative Complex Second Edition William Foote Whyte

https://ebookgate.com/product/making-mondragon-the-growth-and-
dynamics-of-the-worker-cooperative-complex-second-edition-william-
foote-whyte/
ebookgate.com
LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY LECTURE NOTE SERIES
Managing Editor: Professor N. J. Hitchin, Mathematical Institute,
University of Oxford, 24–29 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LB, United Kingdom

The titles below are available from booksellers, or from Cambridge University Press
at www.cambridge.org/mathematics

159 Groups St Andrews 1989 volume 1, C.M. CAMPBELL & E.F. ROBERTSON (eds)
160 Groups St Andrews 1989 volume 2, C.M. CAMPBELL & E.F. ROBERTSON (eds)
161 Lectures on block theory, B. KÜLSHAMMER
163 Topics in varieties of group representations, S.M. VOVSI
164 Quasi-symmetric designs, M.S. SHRIKANDE & S.S. SANE
166 Surveys in combinatorics, 1991, A.D. KEEDWELL (ed)
168 Representations of algebras, H. TACHIKAWA & S. BRENNER (eds)
169 Boolean function complexity, M.S. PATERSON (ed)
170 Manifolds with singularities and the Adams-Novikov spectral sequence, B. BOTVINNIK
171 Squares, A.R. RAJWADE
172 Algebraic varieties, G.R. KEMPF
173 Discrete groups and geometry, W.J. HARVEY & C. MACLACHLAN (eds)
174 Lectures on mechanics, J.E. MARSDEN
175 Adams memorial symposium on algebraic topology 1, N. RAY & G. WALKER (eds)
176 Adams memorial symposium on algebraic topology 2, N. RAY & G. WALKER (eds)
177 Applications of categories in computer science, M. FOURMAN, P. JOHNSTONE & A. PITTS (eds)
178 Lower K- and L-theory, A. RANICKI
179 Complex projective geometry, G. ELLINGSRUD et al
180 Lectures on ergodic theory and Pesin theory on compact manifolds, M. POLLICOTT
181 Geometric group theory I, G.A. NIBLO & M.A. ROLLER (eds)
182 Geometric group theory II, G.A. NIBLO & M.A. ROLLER (eds)
183 Shintani zeta functions, A. YUKIE
184 Arithmetical functions, W. SCHWARZ & J. SPILKER
185 Representations of solvable groups, O. MANZ & T.R. WOLF
186 Complexity: knots, colourings and counting, D.J.A. WELSH
187 Surveys in combinatorics, 1993, K. WALKER (ed)
188 Local analysis for the odd order theorem, H. BENDER & G. GLAUBERMAN
189 Locally presentable and accessible categories, J. ADAMEK & J. ROSICKY
190 Polynomial invariants of finite groups, D.J. BENSON
191 Finite geometry and combinatorics, F. DE CLERCK et al
192 Symplectic geometry, D. SALAMON (ed)
194 Independent random variables and rearrangement invariant spaces, M. BRAVERMAN
195 Arithmetic of blowup algebras, W. VASCONCELOS
196 Microlocal analysis for differential operators, A. GRIGIS & J. SJÖSTRAND
197 Two-dimensional homotopy and combinatorial group theory, C. HOG-ANGELONI et al
198 The algebraic characterization of geometric 4-manifolds, J.A. HILLMAN
199 Invariant potential theory in the unit ball of C n , M. STOLL
200 The Grothendieck theory of Dessins d’Enfants, L. SCHNEPS (ed)
201 Singularities, J.-P. BRASSELET (ed)
202 The technique of pseudodifferential operators, H.O. CORDES
203 Hochschild cohomology of von Neumann algebras, A. SINCLAIR & R. SMITH
204 Combinatorial and geometric group theory, A.J. DUNCAN, N.D. GILBERT & J. HOWIE (eds)
205 Ergodic theory and its connections with harmonic analysis, K. PETERSEN & I. SALAMA (eds)
207 Groups of Lie type and their geometries, W.M. KANTOR & L. DI MARTINO (eds)
208 Vector bundles in algebraic geometry, N.J. HITCHIN, P. NEWSTEAD & W.M. OXBURY (eds)
209 Arithmetic of diagonal hypersurfaces over infite fields, F.Q. GOUVÉA & N. YUI
210 Hilbert C∗ -modules, E.C. LANCE
211 Groups 93 Galway / St Andrews I, C.M. CAMPBELL et al (eds)
212 Groups 93 Galway / St Andrews II, C.M. CAMPBELL et al (eds)
214 Generalised Euler-Jacobi inversion formula and asymptotics beyond all orders, V. KOWALENKO et al
215 Number theory 1992–93, S. DAVID (ed)
216 Stochastic partial differential equations, A. ETHERIDGE (ed)
217 Quadratic forms with applications to algebraic geometry and topology, A. PFISTER
218 Surveys in combinatorics, 1995, P. ROWLINSON (ed)
220 Algebraic set theory, A. JOYAL & I. MOERDIJK
221 Harmonic approximation, S.J. GARDINER
222 Advances in linear logic, J.-Y. GIRARD, Y. LAFONT & L. REGNIER (eds)
223 Analytic semigroups and semilinear initial boundary value problems, K. TAIRA
224 Computability, enumerability, unsolvability, S.B. COOPER, T.A. SLAMAN & S.S. WAINER (eds)
225 A mathematical introduction to string theory, S. ALBEVERIO et al
226 Novikov conjectures, index theorems and rigidity I, S. FERRY, A. RANICKI & J. ROSENBERG (eds)
227 Novikov conjectures, index theorems and rigidity II, S. FERRY, A. RANICKI & J. ROSENBERG (eds)
228 Ergodic theory of Z d actions, M. POLLICOTT & K. SCHMIDT (eds)
229 Ergodicity for infinite dimensional systems, G. DA PRATO & J. ZABCZYK
230 Prolegomena to a middlebrow arithmetic of curves of genus 2, J.W.S. CASSELS & E.V. FLYNN
231 Semigroup theory and its applications, K.H. HOFMANN & M.W. MISLOVE (eds)
232 The descriptive set theory of Polish group actions, H. BECKER & A.S. KECHRIS
233 Finite fields and applications, S. COHEN & H. NIEDERREITER (eds)
234 Introduction to subfactors, V. JONES & V.S. SUNDER
235 Number theory 1993–94, S. DAVID (ed)
236 The James forest, H. FETTER & B. G. DE BUEN
237 Sieve methods, exponential sums, and their applications in number theory, G.R.H. GREAVES et al
238 Representation theory and algebraic geometry, A. MARTSINKOVSKY & G. TODOROV (eds)
240 Stable groups, F. O. WAGNER
241 Surveys in combinatorics, 1997, R.A. BAILEY (ed)
242 Geometric Galois actions I, L. SCHNEPS & P. LOCHAK (eds)
243 Geometric Galois actions II, L. SCHNEPS & P. LOCHAK (eds)
244 Model theory of groups and automorphism groups, D. EVANS (ed)
245 Geometry, combinatorial designs and related structures, J.W.P. HIRSCHFELD et al
246 p-Automorphisms of finite p-groups, E.I. KHUKHRO
247 Analytic number theory, Y. MOTOHASHI (ed)
248 Tame topology and o-minimal structures, L. VAN DEN DRIES
249 The atlas of finite groups: ten years on, R. CURTIS & R. WILSON (eds)
250 Characters and blocks of finite groups, G. NAVARRO
251 Gröbner bases and applications, B. BUCHBERGER & F. WINKLER (eds)
252 Geometry and cohomology in group theory, P. KROPHOLLER, G. NIBLO, R. STÖHR (eds)
253 The q-Schur algebra, S. DONKIN
254 Galois representations in arithmetic algebraic geometry, A.J. SCHOLL & R.L. TAYLOR (eds)
255 Symmetries and integrability of difference equations, P.A. CLARKSON & F.W. NIJHOFF (eds)
256 Aspects of Galois theory, H. VÖLKLEIN et al
257 An introduction to noncommutative differential geometry and its physical applications 2ed, J. MADORE
258 Sets and proofs, S.B. COOPER & J. TRUSS (eds)
259 Models and computability, S.B. COOPER & J. TRUSS (eds)
260 Groups St Andrews 1997 in Bath, I, C.M. CAMPBELL et al
261 Groups St Andrews 1997 in Bath, II, C.M. CAMPBELL et al
262 Analysis and logic, C.W. HENSON, J. IOVINO, A.S. KECHRIS & E. ODELL
263 Singularity theory, B. BRUCE & D. MOND (eds)
264 New trends in algebraic geometry, K. HULEK, F. CATANESE, C. PETERS & M. REID (eds)
265 Elliptic curves in cryptography, I. BLAKE, G. SEROUSSI & N. SMART
267 Surveys in combinatorics, 1999, J.D. LAMB & D.A. PREECE (eds)
268 Spectral asymptotics in the semi-classical limit, M. DIMASSI & J. SJÖSTRAND
269 Ergodic theory and topological dynamics, M.B. BEKKA & M. MAYER
270 Analysis on Lie Groups, N.T. VAROPOULOS & S. MUSTAPHA
271 Singular perturbations of differential operators, S. ALBEVERIO & P. KURASOV
272 Character theory for the odd order function, T. PETERFALVI
273 Spectral theory and geometry, E.B. DAVIES & Y. SAFAROV (eds)
274 The Mandelbrot set, theme and variations, T. LEI (ed)
275 Descriptive set theory and dynamical systems, M. FOREMAN et al
276 Singularities of plane curves, E. CASAS-ALVERO
277 Computational and geometric aspects of modern algebra, M.D. ATKINSON et al
278 Global attractors in abstract parabolic problems, J.W. CHOLEWA & T. DLOTKO
279 Topics in symbolic dynamics and applications, F. BLANCHARD, A. MAASS & A. NOGUEIRA (eds)
280 Characters and automorphism groups of compact riemann surfaces, T. BREUER
281 Explicit birational geometry of 3-folds, A. CORTI & M. REID (eds)
282 Auslander-Buchweitz approximations of equivariant modules, M. HASHIMOTO
283 Nonlinear elasticity, Y. FU & R.W. OGDEN (eds)
284 Foundations of computational mathematics, R. DEVORE, A. ISERLES & E. SÜLI (eds)
285 Rational points on curves over finite fields, H. NIEDERREITER & C. XING
286 Clifford algebras and spinors 2ed, P. LOUNESTO
287 Topics on Riemann surfaces and Fuchsian groups, E. BUJALANCE et al
288 Surveys in combinatorics, 2001, J. HIRSCHFELD (ed)
289 Aspects of Sobolev-type inequalities, L. SALOFF-COSTE
290 Quantum groups and Lie theory, A. PRESSLEY (ed)
291 Tits buildings and the model theory of groups, K. TENT (ed)
292 A quantum groups primer, S. MAJID
293 Second order partial differential equations in Hilbert spaces, G. DA PRATO & J. ZABCZYK
294 Introduction to the theory of operator spaces, G. PISIER
295 Geometry and integrability, L. MASON & Y. NUTKU (eds)
296 Lectures on invariant theory, I. DOLGACHEV
297 The homotopy category of simply connected 4-manifolds, H.-J. BAUES
298 Higher operads, higher categories, T. LEINSTER
299 Kleinian groups and hyperbolic 3-manifolds, Y. KOMORI, V. MARKOVIC & C. SERIES (eds)
300 Introduction to Möbius differential geometry, U. HERTRICH-JEROMIN
301 Stable modules and the D(2)-problem, F.E.A. JOHNSON
302 Discrete and continuous nonlinear Schrödinger systems, M.J. ABLORWITZ, B. PRINARI &
A.D. TRUBATCH
303 Number theory and algebraic geometry, M. REID & A. SKOROBOGATOV (eds)
304 Groups St Andrews 2001 in Oxford Vol. 1, C.M. CAMPBELL, E.F. ROBERTSON & G.C. SMITH (eds)
305 Groups St Andrews 2001 in Oxford Vol. 2, C.M. CAMPBELL, E.F. ROBERTSON & G.C. SMITH (eds)
306 Peyresq lectures on geometric mechanics and symmetry, J. MONTALDI & T. RATIU (eds)
307 Surveys in combinatorics 2003, C.D. WENSLEY (ed)
308 Topology, geometry and quantum field theory, U.L. TILLMANN (ed)
309 Corings and comdules, T. BRZEZINSKI & R. WISBAUER
310 Topics in dynamics and ergodic theory, S. BEZUGLYI & S. KOLYADA (eds)
311 Groups: topological, combinatorial and arithmetic aspects, T.W. MÜLLER (ed)
312 Foundations of computational mathematics, Minneapolis 2002, F. CUCKER et al (eds)
313 Transcendantal aspects of algebraic cycles, S. MÜLLER-STACH & C. PETERS (eds)
314 Spectral generalizations of line graphs, D. CVETKOVIC, P. ROWLINSON & S. SIMIC
315 Structured ring spectra, A. BAKER & B. RICHTER (eds)
316 Linear logic in computer science, T. EHRHARD et al (eds)
317 Advances in elliptic curve cryptography, I.F. BLAKE, G. SEROUSSI, N. SMART
318 Perturbation of the boundary in boundary-value problems of partial differential equations, D. HENRY
319 Double affine Hecke algebras, I. CHEREDNIK
320 L-functions and Galois representations, D. BURNS, K. BUZZARD & J. NEKOVÁŘ (eds)
321 Surveys in modern mathematics, V. PRASOLOV & Y. ILYASHENKO (eds)
322 Recent perspectives in random matrix theory and number theory, F. MEZZADRI & N.C. SNAITH (eds)
323 Poisson geometry, deformation quantisation and group representations, S. GUTT et al (eds)
324 Singularities and computer algebra, C. LOSSEN & G. PFISTER (eds)
325 Lectures on the Ricci flow, P. TOPPING
326 Modular representations of finite groups of Lie type, J.E. HUMPHREYS
328 Fundamentals of hyperbolic manifolds, R.D. CANARY, A. MARDEN, & D.B.A. EPSTEIN (eds)
329 Spaces of Kleinian groups, Y. MINSKY, M. SAKUMA & C. SERIES (eds)
330 Noncommutative localization in algebra and topology, A. RANICKI (ed)
331 Foundations of computational mathematics, Santander 2005, L. PARDO, A. PINKUS, E. SULI &
M. TODD (eds)
332 Handbooks of tilting theory, L. ANGELERI HÜGEL, D. HAPPEL & H. KRAUSE (eds)
333 Synthetic differential geometry 2ed, A. KOCK
334 The Navier-Stokes equations, P.G. DRAZIN & N. RILEY
335 Lectures on the combinatorics of free probability, A. NICA & R. SPEICHER
336 Integral closure of ideals, rings, and modules, I. SWANSON & C. HUNEKE
337 Methods in Banach space theory, J.M.F. CASTILLO & W.B. JOHNSON (eds)
338 Surveys in geometry and number theory, N. YOUNG (ed)
339 Groups St Andrews 2005 Vol. 1, C.M. CAMPBELL, M.R. QUICK, E.F. ROBERTSON &
G.C. SMITH (eds)
340 Groups St Andrews 2005 Vol. 2, C.M. CAMPBELL, M.R. QUICK, E.F. ROBERTSON &
G.C. SMITH (eds)
341 Ranks of elliptic curves and random matrix theory, J.B. CONREY, D.W. FARMER, F. MEZZADRI &
N.C. SNAITH (eds)
342 Elliptic cohomology, H.R. MILLER & D.C. RAVENEL (eds)
343 Algebraic cycles and motives Vol. 1, J. NAGEL & C. PETERS (eds)
344 Algebraic cycles and motives Vol. 2, J. NAGEL & C. PETERS (eds)
345 Algebraic and analytic geometry, A. NEEMAN
346 Surveys in combinatorics, 2007, A. HILTON & J. TALBOT (eds)
347 Surveys in contemporary mathematics, N. YOUNG & Y. CHOI (eds)
London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series: 348

Transcendental Dynamics
and Complex Analysis
A Tribute to Noel Baker

Edited by

PHILIP J. RIPPON
The Open University
GWYNETH M. STALLARD
The Open University
 cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi

Cambridge University Press

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521683722


C Cambridge University Press 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2008

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Transcendental dynamics and complex analysis / edited by Philip J. Rippon,
Gwyneth M. Stallard.
p. cm. – (London Mathematical Society lecture note series; 348)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-68372-2 (pbk.)
1. Functions of complex variables. 2. Differentiable dynamical systems.
3. Mathematical analysis. I. Rippon, P. J. II. Stallard, Gwyneth M.
QA331.7.T73 2008
515 .9–dc22 2007050517

ISBN 978-0-521-68372-2 (paperback)

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee
that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction ix
1 Iteration of inner functions and boundaries of components of the Fatou set 1
D. Bargmann
2 Conformal automorphisms of finitely connected regions 37
A. F. Beardon and D. Minda
3 Meromorphic functions with two completely invariant domains 74
W. Bergweiler and A. Eremenko
4 A family of matings between transcendental entire functions and a
Fuchsian group 90
S. Bullett and M. Freiberger
5 Singular perturbations of zn 111
R. L. Devaney, M. Holzer, D. M. Look, M. Moreno Rocha and D. Uminsky
6 Residual Julia sets of rational and transcendental functions 138
P. Domı́nguez and N. Fagella
7 Bank-Laine functions via quasiconformal surgery 165
D. Drasin and J. K. Langley
8 Generalisations of uniformly normal families 179
W. K. Hayman and A. Hinkkanen
9 Entire functions with bounded Fatou components 187
A. Hinkkanen
10 On multiply connected wandering domains of entire functions 217
M. Kisaka and M. Shishikura
11 Fractal measures and ergodic theory of transcendental
meromorphic functions 251
J. Kotus and M. Urbański
12 Combinatorics of bifurcations in exponential parameter space 317
L. Rempe and D. Schleicher
13 Baker domains 371
P. J. Rippon
14 Escaping points of the cosine family 396
G. Rottenfusser and D. Schleicher
15 Dimensions of Julia sets of transcendental meromorphic functions 425
G. M. Stallard
16 Abel’s functional equation and its role in the problem of
croissance régulière 447
G. Szekeres

v
Professor Noel Baker (1932–2001)

vi
 PREFACE

This book was written in honour of Noel Baker following his sudden death
in 2001. It comprises a collection of articles written by friends, colleagues
and former students of Noel. In particular, we are delighted that Noel’s MSc
supervisor and long-time friend, George Szekeres, was able to contribute a
paper to this volume — he sadly died before the book was published.
All of these articles deal with topics that interested Noel and, in most cases,
they are in areas where Noel’s own work has been very influential. Several of
the papers are survey articles that we hope will be a valuable addition to the
literature. There are also new results that Noel would have been delighted
to have seen. Most of the papers deal with the iteration of transcendental
meromorphic functions — the field in which Noel was pre-eminent and in
which he carried out much of the pioneering work — and there are also
some papers in closely related topics that he would have enjoyed. As this
volume shows, much of the recent work in complex dynamics (as the subject
of iteration theory is now called) builds on ideas and techniques that Noel
introduced and that will continue to be used by all those who work in this
field. We hope that this book will be a fitting memorial to a man who inspired
so many of us.

Phil Rippon and Gwyneth Stallard

Department of Mathematics and Statistics
The Open University
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA

vii
 INTRODUCTION

In this introduction, we summarise the mathematical career of Noel Baker

and indicate how the papers in this volume relate to his work. Much of
the material is taken from the obituary of Noel Baker that appeared in the
Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society [17].
Noel Baker was born on 10 August 1932 and died, of a heart attack, on 20
May 2001. He grew up in Australia and was first introduced to the theory
of iteration by his MSc supervisor, George Szekeres, who suggested that he
work on the functional equation
f (f (z)) = F (z),
where f and F are analytic functions. In his first mathematical paper (1),
Noel used the theory of iteration of analytic functions, which had been devel-
oped principally by Fatou and Julia and which was not well known at that
time. He used this theory to show, amongst other things, that if F belongs
to a certain class of entire functions, which includes the exponential function,
then the above equation has no entire solution. This first paper also contains
examples that were constructed using Wiman-Valiron theory. Throughout his
career Noel was to find ever more techniques from classical complex analysis
that can usefully be applied to iteration theory.
In 1955 Noel won a German government scholarship to the University of
Tübingen, where he worked under Hellmuth Kneser. Noel’s doctoral thesis,
published in (2), continued his study of functional equations. From 1957 to
1959, Noel taught mathematics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton,
Canada. In 1959 he moved to Imperial College London, where he remained
until retirement in 1997.
In his research, Noel worked on many problems in complex analysis and had
a wide range of collaborators, but iteration theory, his great love, was for
many years a lone interest. However, when the subject was reborn around
1980, partly as a result of the advent of accessible computer graphics, it
became clear to the new adherents that Noel had for many years been quietly
and carefully completing the foundations begun earlier in the century by the
French mathematicians Pierre Fatou and Gaston Julia. He had also pointed
the way towards many future developments, both by proving new results and
by posing challenging problems. In the explosion of research on iteration
theory that took place in the subsequent years, many of the papers published
on iteration made reference to Noel’s work and he received many invitations
to speak at international conferences on iteration. At these he would often
appear reserved, much preferring to let others speak about the latest work,
ix
x INTRODUCTION

even though he was the acknowledged authority on many matters, and the
person whose judgement about the validity of a new proof was always sought.
Noel continued his research after his retirement and one of his last papers was
dedicated to George Szekeres on the occasion of the latter’s 90th birthday.
Noel’s early work on functional equations led him to consider problems about
periodic points, which play a very important role in complex dynamics. It
was already known that for an entire function there must be infinitely many
periodic points of period p, for all p ≥ 2, but Noel considered the unsolved
problem of the existence of periodic points of a given exact period. He showed
in (6) that for all non-linear entire functions there exist periodic points of
exact period p, for all p with at most one exception; for example, f (z) = z +ez
has no fixed points. In a later paper (13) Noel showed that for a polynomial
the only possible exceptional value in this result is p = 2, the corresponding
exceptional functions being f (z) = z 2 − z and other quadratics ‘similar’ to
this one. He also conjectured that for a transcendental entire function the
only possible exceptional value is p = 1, and this was proved by Bergweiler [2].
We now describe the origins of complex dynamics. Let f be a rational function
of degree at least 2 or a transcendental entire function. The set of points near
which the sequence of iterates f n forms a normal family is called the Fatou set
F (f ) and its complement is called the Julia set J(f ). Roughly speaking, the
dynamics are stable on the Fatou set and chaotic on the Julia set. Also, the
Julia set often exhibits great topological complexity as well as ‘self-similarity’;
for example, the paper in this volume by Devaney et al discusses a family of
rational functions whose Julia sets in some cases contain Cantor sets of curves
and in other cases contain Sierpinski curves.
The fundamental properties of the sets F (f ) and J(f ) were first established
for rational functions in [13] and [8], and for transcendental entire functions
in [9]. In the last paper, Fatou studied the iteration of transcendental entire
functions in some detail, giving examples that pointed to significant differ-
ences to the theory that had been developed for rational functions. He asked
the following fundamental questions about a transcendental entire function f :
1. Are the repelling periodic points of f dense in J(f )?
2. Are there examples where J(f ) = C? In particular, is this true for
f (z) = ez ?
3. Can J(f ) be totally disconnected?
4. Must J(f ) contain infinitely many unbounded analytic curves, at each
point of which f n → ∞?
Question 1 is of great theoretical importance, and it had been answered ‘yes’
for rational functions by both Fatou and Julia. Fatou had also given an
example of a rational function f for which J(f ) is totally disconnected, and
Lattès [14] an example for which J(f ) = C. Most of Fatou’s questions were
solved by Noel during the decade 1965–1975, as we now indicate.
 INTRODUCTION xi

The first question was answered in the affirmative in the paper (22), which is
of fundamental importance in complex dynamics and appropriately dedicated
to Hellmuth Kneser. Here, Noel called on a deep covering theorem due to
Ahlfors (see [11, page 148]) to show that arbitrarily close to each point of J(f )
there is a repelling periodic point of f . From this, he deduced the general
result that if f is any non-linear entire function, then the set of entire functions
that commute with f is countable. Many authors have tried to simplify the
proof in (22) that the repelling periodic points are dense in J(f ), in order to
avoid the deep theorem of Ahlfors. Eventually, more elementary proofs based
on a renormalisation technique were given by Schwick [18], Bargmann [1],
and Berteloot and Duval [4].
Two years later, in (25), Noel answered the first part of Fatou’s second ques-
tion by showing that there is a function of the form f (z) = kzez , where k > 0,
such that J(f ) = C. A proof that if f (z) = ez , then we have J(f ) = C was
given ten years later by Misiurewicz [15].
Noel answered Fatou’s third question in the negative in (32). If J(f ) is totally
disconnected, then F (f ) must have a single unbounded multiply connected
component. Noel had already constructed in (9) an example of a transcen-
dental entire function for which F (f ) has at least one multiply connected
component. This function was of the form
Y∞  
2 z
f (z) = Cz 1+ ,
n=1
rn

in which the positive constants r1 < r2 < . . . have the property that
1/2
f (An ) ⊂ An+1 , where An = {z : rn2 < |z| < rn+1 }.
However, Noel did not determine in (9) whether F (f ) has a single unbounded
multiply connected component or a sequence of bounded multiply connected
components. In (33) he used Schottky’s theorem [11, page 169], yet another
result from classical complex analysis, to show that the latter must be the
case. This solved another important problem in complex dynamics, open
since the work of Fatou and Julia, by showing that the above function has
a sequence of wandering domains, that is, distinct components Un of F (f )
such that f (Un ) ⊂ Un+1 , for n = 1, 2, . . . . In contrast, Sullivan [16] showed
that rational functions do not have wandering domains. The paper (32),
written later than but published earlier than (33), used Schottky’s theorem
once again to show that a transcendental entire function cannot have an
unbounded multiply connected component of F (f ), thus proving that J(f )
can never be totally disconnected.
The results in (32) and (33) led to much further work. In (53), Noel showed
that wandering domains for transcendental entire functions may be infinitely
connected. For many years it was not known whether such wandering domains
xii INTRODUCTION

could be finitely connected. In this volume, Kisaka and Shishikura show that
they can in fact have any given finite connectivity.
The result in (32) shows that if f is a transcendental entire function, then
J(f ) must contain a continuum, so its Hausdorff dimension dimH J(f ) is at
least 1. It remains an open question whether dimH J(f ) = 1 is possible. In
this volume, there is a survey article on dimensions of Julia sets by Stallard,
complemented by a survey article on fractal measures and ergodic theory by
Kotus and Urbański.
Noel’s wandering domains example mentioned earlier shows that the answer
to Fatou’s fourth question (as stated here) is ‘no’. However, the structure of
the ‘escaping set’, where f n → ∞, continues to stimulate much work, includ-
ing the paper by Rottenfusser and Schleicher that appears in this volume.
Sullivan’s remarkable result [16] that rational functions do not have wan-
dering domains was proved using new techniques based on quasiconformal
conjugacy. Noel quickly saw that these new techniques would also apply to
various families of transcendental entire functions, and a proof that exponen-
tial functions have no wandering domains appeared in (49). This was one of a
number of papers at that time that established many of the basic dynamical
properties of the exponential family and began the description of the corre-
sponding parameter space, the ‘exponential Mandelbrot set’, which has since
been the subject of much study — see, for example, the paper by Rempe and
Schleicher in this volume.
In (41), Noel initiated another major development by showing that if a tran-
scendental entire function f has order of growth at most 1/2, minimal type,
then F (f ) has no unbounded invariant components, and he also gave a more
restrictive condition on the maximum modulus of f that forces every compo-
nent of F (f ) to be bounded. The question of whether the latter conclusion
follows from order at most 1/2, minimal type, remains open, though many
authors have obtained partial results in this direction; this volume contains
a survey article on this problem by Hinkkanen.
A key step in Noel’s proof in (41) is to exclude unbounded invariant com-
ponents of F (f ) in which f n → ∞. He did this by establishing estimates
for the growth of iterates in such components, which he later refined in (57).
In recognition of his work on Fatou components of this type, Eremenko and
Lyubich introduced the name Baker domain for such components in [7]. In
this fundamental paper, Eremenko and Lyubich showed that if the set S(f ) of
inverse function singularities of a transcendental entire function f is bounded,
then f has no Baker domains and if S(f ) is finite, then f has no wandering
domains; see also [10]. A survey article on Baker domains by Rippon appears
in this volume.
Yet another fundamental contribution to the iteration of transcendental entire
functions came in the papers (65), (73) and (74). Once again an unbounded
 INTRODUCTION xiii

invariant component U of F (f ) was considered, but now the aim was to

describe the nature of the boundary of U . Some special cases had been
investigated by other authors, following the appearance of computer pictures
of Julia sets, but Noel and his students Weinreich and Domı́nguez attacked
the general case. In (65), it was shown that

• if U is not a Baker domain (that is, U is an attracting basin, a para-

bolic basin, or a Siegel disc), then ∂U is sufficiently complicated that
∞ belongs to the impression of every prime end of U ;
• if ∂U is a Jordan curve in the extended complex plane Ĉ (and such
U do exist), then not only must U be a Baker domain, but f must be
univalent in U .

The key tool introduced in this work arises from the fact that if Ψ is a
conformal map from the unit disc D onto U , then Ψ−1 ◦ f ◦ Ψ is an inner
function, that is, an analytic self-map of D whose angular limits have modulus
1 almost everywhere on ∂D. The paper (65) initiated a version of Fatou-Julia
theory for inner functions, a topic now of interest in its own right, and this
theory was taken further in (73). Further results on this theory are given in
the paper by Bargmann in this volume.
Many of Noel’s final papers are joint papers with his last student, Domı́nguez,
and concern the connectedness properties of the Julia set. Many of these
results are described and extended in the paper by Domı́nguez and Fagella
in this volume.
Fatou-Julia theory of the iteration of general transcendental meromorphic
functions was established in the fundamental papers (62), (63), (64) and (66)
by Baker, Kotus and Lü. The Fatou set F (f ) is here taken to be the set
of points near which the iterates f n are defined and form a normal family,
and then J(f ) = Ĉ \ F (f ). Many of the basic results turn out to be similar
to those for rational and entire functions, but there are some striking differ-
ences. For example, in (62) the authors showed that J(f ) is once again the
closure of the repelling periodic points of f , and this fact is used to give a
complete classification of those transcendental meromorphic functions, such
as f (z) = tan z, for which J(f ) is a subset of the real line; there are no tran-
scendental entire functions for which the Julia set is contained in the real line.
Then, in (63), they used techniques from approximation theory, pioneered by
Eremenko and Lyubich [6], to construct transcendental meromorphic func-
tions with wandering domains of all possible connectivities.
The question of periodic components was taken up in (64), where the authors
showed that precisely five possible types can arise for a transcendental mero-
morphic function, namely, attracting basins, parabolic basins, Siegel discs,
Herman rings and Baker domains. Moreover, any invariant components of
F (f ) must be simply connected, doubly connected, or infinitely connected.
xiv INTRODUCTION

But perhaps the most striking result here was the construction of a tran-
scendental meromorphic function f with a preperiodic component of F (f )
of any given finite connectivity. This construction used the powerful tech-
nique of quasiconformal surgery, introduced by Shishikura [19], which also
appears in many of the papers in this volume — namely, those by Drasin
and Langley, Domı́nguez and Fagella, and Kisaka and Shishikura. Finally,
in (66), Sullivan’s method of quasiconformal conjugacy was adapted to show
that a transcendental meromorphic function of finite type has no wandering
domains. These four papers opened a new and fruitful area of research, made
even more accessible by the excellent survey article [3], which appeared soon
after.
One of the differences between the iteration of entire functions and mero-
morphic functions is the number of completely invariant components of the
Fatou set that can occur. In (24) Noel proved that a transcendental entire
function can have at most one completely invariant component of the Fatou
set. In (64) Baker, Kotus and Lü proved that a transcendental meromorphic
function of finite type can have at most two completely invariant Fatou com-
ponents, and in this volume it is shown by Bergweiler and Eremenko that,
in these circumstances, the Julia set must be a Jordan curve. (An example
of a function with these properties is f (z) = tan z.) It is an open question
whether a general transcendental meromorphic function can have at most two
completely invariant Fatou components.
Fatou-Julia theory can be developed in many further directions. For a tran-
scendental meromorphic function f , the iterates f n need not be meromorphic.
It is desirable, however, to have a closed system of iterates, so that we can
consider, for example, the Fatou set of f n , for n ≥ 2. To obtain such a
system, Noel’s student Herring [12], and independently Bolsch [5], developed
Fatou-Julia theory for functions, such as f (z) = etan z , which are meromor-
phic outside certain compact totally disconnected subsets of Ĉ. Much of
this theory, and its subsequent developments, is expounded in Noel’s last
papers (75), (77), (78) and (79).
This volume also contains papers that, while not explicitly about complex
dynamics, are on closely related topics. The paper by Hayman and Hinkka-
nen is concerned with the growth of meromorphic functions that belong to
certain normal families, the paper by Beardon and Minda classifies conformal
automorphisms of finitely connected regions of the plane, and the paper by
Szekeres is on possible connections between ‘regular growth’ and Abel’s func-
tional equation, a topic in which Noel had a great interest. Finally, the paper
by Bullett and Freiburger is on the theory of holomorphic correspondences, a
generalisation of complex dynamics. Here they investigate, for the first time,
holomorphic correspondences that involve transcendental entire functions.
 INTRODUCTION xv

Publications of I. N. Baker
(1) The iteration of entire transcendental functions and the solution of the
functional equation f (f (z)) = F (z), Math. Ann. 129 (1955) 174–180.
(2) Zusammensetzungen ganzer Funktionen, Math. Z. 69 (1958) 121–163.
(3) Fixpoints and iterates of entire functions, Math. Z. 71 (1959) 146–
153.
(4) Solutions of the functional equation (f (x))2 − f (x2 ) = h(x), Canad.
Math. Bull. 3 (1960) 113–120.
(5) Some entire functions with fixpoints of every order, J. Austral. Math.
Soc. 1 (1959/61) 203–209.
(6) The existence of fixpoints of entire functions, Math. Z. 73 (1960)
280–284.
(7) Permutable entire functions, Math. Z. 79 (1962) 243–249.
(8) Permutable power series and regular iteration, J. Austral. Math. Soc.
2 (1961/62) 265–294.
(9) Multiply-connected domains of normality in iteration theory, Math.
Z. 81 (1963) 206–214.
(10) Length of a graph, Solution in Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964) 217–
218.
(11) Partition of a domain, Solution in Amer. Math. Monthly 71 (1964)
219–220.
(12) Fractional iteration near a fixpoint of multiplier 1, J. Austral. Math.
Soc. 4 (1964) 143–148.
(13) Fixpoints of polynomials and rational functions, J. London Math. Soc.
39 (1964) 615–622.
(14) Entire functions with linearly distributed values, Math. Z. 86 (1964)
263–267.
(15) Sets of non-normality in iteration theory, J. London Math. Soc. 40
(1965) 499–502.
(16) The distribution of fixpoints of entire functions, Proc. London Math.
Soc. 16 (1966) 493–506.
(17) On a class of meromorphic functions, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 17
(1966) 819–822.
(18) On some results of A. Rényi and C. Rényi concerning periodic entire
functions, Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 27 (1966) 197–200.
(19) A series associated with the logarithmic function, J. London Math.
Soc. 42 (1967) 336–338.
(20) Non-embeddable functions with a fixpoint of multiplier 1, Math. Z.
99 (1967) 377–384.
(21) (with F. GROSS) On factorizing entire functions, Proc. London Math.
Soc. 18 (1968) 69–76.
(22) Repulsive fixpoints of entire functions, Math. Z. 104 (1968) 252–256.
xvi INTRODUCTION

(23) (with F. GROSS) Further results on factorization of entire functions,

Entire Functions and Related Parts of Analysis (Proc. Symp. Pure
Math. La Jolla, Calif., 1996) (Amer. Math. Soc., 1968) 30–35.
(24) Completely invariant domains of entire functions, Mathematical Es-
says Dedicated to A. J. Macintyre (ed. H. Shankar, Ohio Univ. Press.
1970) 33–35.
(25) Limit functions and sets of non-normality in iteration theory, Ann.
Acad. Sci. Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 467 (1970) 11 pp.
(26) The value distribution of composite entire functions, Acta. Sci. Math.
(Szeged) 32 (1971) 87–90.
(27) (with L. S. O. LIVERPOOL) Picard sets for entire functions, Math.
Z. 126 (1972) 230–238.
(28) (with L. S. O. LIVERPOOL) Further results on Picard sets of entire
functions, Proc. London Math. Soc. 26 (1973) 82–98.
(29) Linear Picard sets for entire functions, Math. Nachr. 64 (1974) 263–
276.
(30) (with J. A. DEDDENS and J. L. ULLMAN) A theorem on entire
functions with applications to Toeplitz operators, Duke Math. J. 41
(1974) 739–745.
(31) (with E. MUES) Zur Faktorisierung endlicher Blaschkeproductke, Arch.
Math. (Basel) 26 (1975) 388–390.
(32) The domains of normality of an entire function, Ann. Acad. Sci.
Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 1 (1975) 277–283.
(33) An entire function which has wandering domains, J. Austral. Math.
Soc. Ser. A 22 (1976) 173–176.
(34) Analytic mappings between two ultrahyperelliptic surfaces, Aequa-
tiones Math. 14 (1976) 461–472.
(35) (with C. C. YANG) An infinite order periodic entire function which is
prime, Complex Analysis, Lecture Notes in Math. Vol 599 (Springer,
1977) 7–10.
(36) (with L. S. O. LIVERPOOL) Sylvester series and normal families,
Solution in Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978) 290–291.
(37) (with L. S. O. LIVERPOOL) The value distribution of entire functions
of order at most one, Acta Sci. Math. (Szeged) 41 (1979) 3–14.
(38) (with Ch. POMMERENKE) On the iteration of analytic functions in
a halfplane II, J. London Math. Soc. 20 (1979) 255–258.
(39) Condition for a composite of polynomials, Solution in Amer. Math.
Monthly 87 (1980) 228.
(40) Entire functions with two linearly distributed values, Ann. Acad. Sci.
Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 5 (1980) 381–386.
(41) The iteration of polynomials and transcendental entire functions, J.
Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. A 30 (1980/81) 483–495.
 INTRODUCTION xvii

(42) (with J. M. ANDERSON and J. G. CLUNIE) The distribution of

values of certain entire and meromorphic functions, Math. Z. 178
(1981) 509–525.
(43) Entire functions whose a-points lie on systems of lines, Factorization
theory of meromorphic functions, Lecture Notes in Pure and Appl.
Math. 78 (ed. C. C. Yang, Marcel Dekker, 1982) 1–18.
(44) Complex function theory: a sequence of entire functions converging
pointwise, James Cook Math. Notes, Townsville, Qld, Australia, Issue
29, Vol. 3 (August 1982) 3112–3114.
(45) (with Z. RUBINSTEIN) Simultaneous iteration by entire or rational
functions and their inverses, J. Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. A 34 (1983)
364–367.
(46) (with P. J. RIPPON) Convergence of infinite exponentials, Ann. Acad.
Sci. Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 8 (1983) 179–186.
(47) (with L. S. O. LIVERPOOL) The entire solutions of a polynomial
difference equation, Aequationes Math. 27 (1984) 97–113.
(48) Composition of polynomials, Solution in Amer. Math. Monthly 91
(1984) 317.
(49) (with P. J. RIPPON) Iteration of exponential functions, Ann. Acad.
Sci. Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 9 (1984) 49–77.
(50) Wandering domains in the iteration of entire functions, Proc. London
Math. Soc. 49 (1984) 563–576.
(51) (with P. J. RIPPON) A note on infinite exponentials, Fibonacci Quart.
23 (1985) 106–112.
(52) (with P. J. RIPPON) A note on complex iteration, Amer. Math.
Monthly 92 (1985) 501–504.
(53) Some entire functions with multiply-connected wandering domains,
Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 5 (1985) 163–169.
(54) Wandering domains for maps of the punctured plane, Ann. Acad. Sci.
Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 12 (1987) 191–198.
(55) (with A. EREMENKO), A problem on Julia sets, Ann. Acad. Sci.
Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 12 (1987) 229–236.
(56) Iteration of entire functions: an introductory survey, Proceeding of
the Symposium on Complex Analysis, 21–22 May 1987, Xian, China,
Lectures on Complex Analysis (World Sci. Publishing, 1988) 1–17.
(57) Infinite limits in the iteration of entire functions, Ergodic Theory Dy-
nam. Systems 8 (1988) 503–507.
(58) (with P. BHATTACHARRYA) On a class of non-embeddable entire
functions, J. Ramanujan Math. Soc. 3 (1988) 151–159.
(59) (with P. J. RIPPON) Iterating exponential functions with cyclic ex-
ponents, Math. Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc. 105 (1989) 357–375.
xviii INTRODUCTION

(60) (with P. J. RIPPON) Towers of exponents and other composite maps,

Complex Variables Theory Appl. , Volume in honour of Albert Edrei
and Wolfgang Fuchs, 12 (1989) 181–200.
(61) (with P. J. RIPPON) On compositions of analytic self-mappings of a
convex domain, Arch. Math. (Basel) 55 (1990) 380–386.
(62) (with J. KOTUS and LÜ YINIAN) Iterates of meromorphic functions
II: Examples of wandering domains, J. London Math. Soc. 42 (1990)
267–278.
(63) (with J. KOTUS and LÜ YINIAN) Iterates of meromorphic functions
I, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 11 (1991) 241–248.
(64) (with J. KOTUS and LÜ YINIAN) Iterates of meromorphic functions
III: Preperiodic domains, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 11 (1991)
603–618.
(65) (with J. WEINREICH) Boundaries which arise in the dynamics of
entire functions, Analyse complexe (Bucharest, 1989), Rev. Roumaine
Math. Pures Appl. 36 (1991) 413–420.
(66) (with J. KOTUS and LÜ YINIAN) Iterates of meromorphic functions
IV: Critically finite functions, Results Math. 22 (1992) 651–656.
(67) (with R. N. MAALOUF) Convergence of a modified iteration process,
Computational Methods and Function Theory, 1994 (Penang) (ed. S.
Ruscheweyh, World Sci. Publishing, 1995) 49–55.
(68) (with A. P. SINGH) Wandering domains in the iteration of composi-
tions of entire functions, Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Ser. A I Math. 20
(1995) 149–153.
(69) (with A. P. SINGH ) A note on differential polynomials, Bull. Calcutta
Math. Soc. 87 (1995) 63–66.
(70) (with G. M. STALLARD) Error estimates in a calculation of Ruelle,
Complex Variables Theory Appl. 29 (1996) 141–159.
(71) On factorizing meromorphic functions, Aequationes Math. 54 (1997)
87–101.
(72) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ) Analytic self-maps of the punctured plane,
Complex Variables Theory Appl. 37 (1998) 67–91.
(73) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ) Boundaries of unbounded Fatou components
of entire functions, Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 24 (1999) 437–464.
(74) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ) Some connectedness properties of Julia sets,
Complex Variables Theory Appl. 41 (2000) 371–389.
(75) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ) Residual Julia sets, J. Anal. 8 (2000) 121–
137.
(76) Dynamics of slowly growing entire functions, Bull. Austral. Math.
Soc. 63 (2001) 367–377.
(77) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ and M. HERRING) Dynamics of functions
meromorphic outside a small set, Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems
21 (2001) 647–672.
 INTRODUCTION xix

(78) Limit functions in wandering domains of meromorphic functions, Ann.

Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 27 (2002) 499–505.
(79) (with P. DOMÍNGUEZ and M. HERRING) Functions meromorphic
outside a small set: completely invariant domains, Complex Variables
Theory Appl. 49 (2004) 95–100.

References
[1] D. Bargmann, Simple proofs of some fundamental properties of the Julia set, Ergodic
Theory Dynam. Systems 19 (1999) 553–558.
[2] W. Bergweiler, Periodic points of entire functions: proof of a conjecture of Baker,
Complex Variables Theory Appl. 17 (1991) 57–72.
[3] W. Bergweiler, Iteration of meromorphic functions, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 29 (1993)
151–188.
[4] F. Berteloot and J. Duval, Une démonstration directe de la densité de cycles répulsif
dans l’ensemble de Julia, Complex analysis and geometry (Paris 1997) , Progr. Math.
188 (Birkhäuser, Basel, 2000) 221–222.
[5] A. Bolsch, Repulsive periodic points of meromorphic functions, Complex Variables
Theory Appl. 31 (1996) 75–79.
[6] A. E. Eremenko and M. Yu. Lyubich, Examples of entire functions with pathological
dynamics, J. London Math. Soc. 36 (1987) 458–468.
[7] A. E. Eremenko and M. Yu. Lyubich, Dynamical properties of some classes of entire
functions, Ann. Inst. Fourier (Grenoble) 42 (1992) 989–1020.
[8] P. Fatou, Sur les équations fonctionelles, Bull. Soc. Math. France 47 (1919) 161–271;
48 (1920) 33–94, 208–314.
[9] P. Fatou, Sur l’itération des fonctions transcendantes entières, Acta Math. 47 (1926)
337–370.
[10] L. Goldberg and L. Keen, A finiteness theorem for a dynamical class of entire functions,
Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 6 (1986) 183–192.
[11] W. K. Hayman, Meromorphic functions (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964).
[12] M. Herring, An extension of the Julia–Fatou theory of iteration, Ph.D. thesis, Univer-
sity of London (1994).
[13] G. Julia, Mémoire sur l’itération des fonctions rationelles, J. Math. Pure Appl. 1
(1918) 47–245.
[14] S. Lattès, Sur l’itération des substitutions rationelles et les fonctions de Poincaré, C.R.
Acad. Sci. Paris Sér. I Math. 166 (1918) 26–28 (Errata: p. 88).
[15] M. Misiurewicz, On iterates of ez , Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 1 (1981) 103–106.
[16] D. Sullivan, Quasiconformal homeomorphisms and dynamics I, Ann. Math. 122 (2)
(1985) 401–418.
[17] P. J. Rippon, Obituary: Irvine Noel Baker 1932–2001, Bull. London Math. Soc. 37
(2005) 301–315.
[18] W. Schwick, Repelling periodic points in the Julia set, Bull. London Math. Soc. 29
(1997) 314–316.
[19] M. Shishikura, On the quasiconformal surgery of rational functions, Ann. Scient. Ec.
Norm. Sup. (4) 20 (1987) 1–29.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
that no given census has any units to sweep into its net that through
their fear or an official’s carelessness escaped its predecessor, still we
cannot take the rate of increase from one census to another as a sure
indication of the future. With some qualifications the words of
Malthus apply to us in 1881 quite as accurately as to our fathers in
1811: “This is a rate of increase which in the nature of things cannot
be permanent. It has been occasioned by the stimulus of a greatly
increased demand for labour, combined with a greatly increased
power of production, both in agriculture and manufactures. These
are the two elements which form the most effective encouragement
to a rapid increase of population. What has taken place is a striking
illustration of the principle of population, and a proof that, in spite of
great towns, manufacturing occupations, and the gradually acquired
habits of an opulent and luxuriant people, if the resources of a
country will admit of a rapid increase, and if these resources are so
advantageously distributed as to occasion a constantly increasing
demand for labour, the population will not fail to keep pace with
them.”[406] It was a rate of increase which he saw would double the
population in less than fifty-five years; and this doubling has really
happened. The numbers for England in 1801 were 8,892,536; and in
1851 they were 17,927,609. Malthus had not anticipated any greater
changes in manufacture and trade than those of his own day; and he
clearly expected that the rate of increase would not continue and the
numbers would not be doubled. The one thing certain was the
impossibility of safe prediction on the strength of any existing rate. A
writer at the beginning of this century prophesied the extinction of
the Turkish people in one hundred years; Sir William Petty at the
end of the seventeenth century predicted that in 1800 London would
have 5,359,000 inhabitants. But the Turks are not yet extinct;
London in 1800 had less than a million of people, and has taken
eighty years more to raise them to the number in the prophecy.[407]
If prediction was difficult in the case of England, it was not less so
in the case of the other parts of the United Kingdom. The conditions
of society and industry were quite different in the three countries;
and to judge of the actual or probable growth of population in
Scotland or Ireland, we must first, as with England, clearly
understand these conditions. In the early part of this century even
more than now, Scotland[408] stood to England as the country
districts of England now stand to its great towns. Continual
migration from country to town may be said to have been its normal
state; and the largest towns were in England. The change from a
militant and feudal to an industrial society was nowhere so marked
as in Scotland after the Union, and especially after the rebellion of
1745. The hereditary judgeships of highland chiefs were swept away;
the relation between chief and clansmen became the unromantic
relation of landlord and tenant. The displacement of household work
by the factory system, and of hand labour by machinery, crowded the
great towns of Scotland at the expense of the country districts; and
crowded the great towns and manufacturing districts of England at
the expense of Scotland. The flood of North Britons into England was
not of Bute’s making; and it was greatest after and not before the
Peace of Paris, although under that peace and a stable government
the farming, the manufacturing, the banking, and the foreign trading
of Scotland itself had grown great enough (it might have seemed) to
employ the whole population at home. Cotton manufacture, which
on the whole is the typical industry of these latter days, was
peculiarly English.[409] Sheep-farming at home and cotton-spinning
in England combined to depopulate the Scotch highlands and much
of the lowlands. The highlands, with their strongly-marked physical
features and strictly limited industrial possibilities, were somewhat
in the position of Norway. In the highlands proper there were no
mineral riches; there were moorlands, mountains, streams, lochs,
heather, bracken, peat, and bog; the patches of cultivable soil would
bear a scanty crop of oats, and perhaps clover, barley, or potatoes.[410]
This description applied to a large half of entire Scotland; and we
must bear it in mind to understand the saying of Malthus in 1803:
“Scotland is certainly over-peopled, but not so much as it was a
century or half a century ago, when it contained fewer
inhabitants.”[411] The highlands are over their whole extent what the
lowlands are as regards their hills, fit only for sheep. Sutherland has
about thirteen inhabitants to the square mile now, and Midlothian
seven hundred and forty-six; but Sutherland and not Midlothian may
be over-peopled. Sutherland as compared with her former self, when
she had thirty or forty to the square mile, may be more or she may be
less over-peopled than she once was; we cannot tell till we know
what her wealth was and how it was distributed.
Under the patriarchal government[412] of early times the wealth of
the country consisted literally in its men. If a chief were asked the
rent of his estate, he would answer that it raised five hundred men;
the tenant paid him in military service. Adam Smith remembers that
in the Jacobite Rebellion, which disturbed his country at the time he
was studying at Oxford, “Mr. Cameron of Lochiel, a gentleman of
Lochaber in [the west highlands of] Scotland, whose rent never
exceeded £500 [English] a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred of
his own people into the rebellion with him.”[413] Subdivision of land
meant more retainers and greater honour; and so the highlands were
peopled not to the full extent of the work to be done, but actually to
the full extent of the bare food got from the soil.[414] On the
establishment of a strong government and the abolition of their
hereditary judicial privileges,[415] the chiefs soon became willing to
convert the value in men into a value in money, exchanging dignity
for profit. They no longer encouraged their tenants to have large
families; and yet they made no efforts to remove the habits, which
the tenants had formed, of having them.[416] It was this change that
gave Sir Walter Scott the materials for his most powerful pictures in
Waverley and other novels. But it is the distress of the chiefs that is
tragic to him, rather than the misery of the clansmen. The clansmen
for their part had under feudalism been brought up to be farmers or
cattle-dealers and nothing else; there was as little variety of
occupation in the highlands then as in Ireland now. Undoubtedly too
they had that customary right of long possession, which law so often
construed into a legal title in the case of more influential men. It was
true also that, if the native highlanders would not cultivate that poor
soil, no strangers would, and, if it was politically desirable that the
country should remain peopled, the only way to secure this was to
prevent the native exodus.[417] No such attempt was made; but, on the
contrary, the highland landlords followed the way that led to the
highest rents; they consolidated their farms; they exchanged
agriculture for pasture; they substituted deer for sheep. Almost every
highland district has sooner or later passed through all these three
stages, and with the same result, the employment of fewer and fewer
men.[418] The discarded men had two courses before them, migration
to the lowlands[419] or emigration to the colonies. The farm labourer
would migrate, the farmer emigrate. The landlords incurred and
often deserved odium for the manner of their evictions; but they
treated the evicted better than the average British capitalist treats his
dismissed hands. They usually provided passages and often procured
settlements abroad for them. Lord Selkirk, one of the few writers on
this subject that preserves a judicial calmness, advised his
countrymen to acquiesce in the “depopulation” of the highlands, but
to draw the stream of emigration to our own colonies. He himself
drew it, so far as he could, to the Red River settlement and Prince
Edward Island.
From the middle of last century to the beginning of this,
emigration went on except when war made it impossible. The
dangerous qualities of the highlanders made them very valuable in
the three great wars that prevented them from leaving the country
with their families. It may be that this very military consideration
induced the English Government to connive at the clearances at first;
and interference at any later stage was very difficult. As it is, in the
end even the Sutherland evictions[420] seem simply to have shifted
the population and not removed it. In spite of emigration Sutherland
had as many inhabitants at the last census of 1881, as at the first in
1801, namely, above 23,000. Fishing, an industry new to a great part
of the highlands, made this phenomenon possible. Fishing villages
have grown at the expense of inland farms. But this is not the whole
truth. Till the time when free trade began to distend Glasgow and
other great towns of Scotland, the highland counties taken altogether
had actually increased in population, as compared with what they
were in 1801. The subsequent fall is due not to any great clearances
or emigrations, but to another cause that had been acting though not
conspicuously for some time before. This was migration to the
industrial centres of the lowlands. In the days of the Tudors there
were complaints in England of the decay of towns, because a strong
government had at last made the protection of walled towns
superfluous, and industry had spread itself in peace, where it was
wanted. But two centuries later there was decay not of the towns but
of the country districts, because industry was taking forms that made
concentration necessary. At first, both in England and Scotland,
there was a real diminution in the rural population; there had been
for the time a real diminution of the work to be done in the country,
and a transference of it to the towns. The hand-loom weaver had
been supplanted by the power-loom. The little villages, where the
workman lived idyllically, half in his farm and half in his workshop,
now either sent their whole families to the towns, thus stopping their
contributions to the parish registers in the country and swelling
those of the town, or, still keeping the parents, sent three-fourths of
the children there, thus making the country registers a very
untrustworthy reflection of the real state of the population in the
country districts. That country villages in every part of Scotland, but
especially near the large cities, are “breeding grounds” of this latter
description[421] is perfectly well known; and the same is true, in a less
degree, of England. This is one reason why even the purely rural
districts of Scotland have greatly increased in apparent population
since 1801, and most of them are increasing still; the readiness of the
Scotch to emigrate has caused the large families quite as much as the
large families the emigration. Another reason is, that even in the
country districts there is now more work to be done and it is done
better. Orthodox economists may count this an example of the self-
healing effects of an economical change that causes much suffering
at first. It is fair to say that this eventual cure is neither more nor less
complete than the cure of the analogous hardships of the newly-
introduced factory system, and the temporary inconveniences of
sudden free trade. What keen commercial ambition can do it has
done, and its success is at least sufficiently complete to justify us in
saying of Scotland to-day what Malthus said of it eighty years ago: it
was most over-populated when it had fewest inhabitants. Modern
improvements, however short of perfection, have at least both in
England and in Scotland absolutely put an end to periodical famines.
Even the scarcities of 1799 and 1800, though they caused great
distress in both countries, were not famines in either of them; and,
since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, even such general distress
as was caused in Scotland by the potato blight cannot occur again.
That distress itself was as nothing compared with the terrible dearths
from which Scotland used to suffer five or six times a century, and
which England experienced as late as the seventeenth.[422] The dismal
picture[423] which Malthus draws of the condition of the Scottish
peasantry reminds us that it is not much more than a century since
Scotland took her first steps in civilization and turned her energies
from war to commerce. Her population at the ’45 was about one and
a quarter millions, in 1801 about one and a half; but in 1861 more
than three, and in 1881 three and three-quarters. Population
therefore has more than doubled within the century. But even now
there are only a hundred and twenty-one inhabitants to the square
mile, as compared with four hundred and forty-five in England. The
wealth of the country has increased immensely faster than the
population; it has multiplied fivefold since the middle of this century,
and tenfold since the beginning of it.[424]
The history of population in Ireland would have furnished Malthus
with still more striking illustrations of his principles, if his life had
lasted a few years longer. He contents himself (till the 6th edition of
the Essay[425]) with a single paragraph: “The details of the population
of Ireland are but little known. I shall only observe, therefore, that
the extended use of potatoes has allowed of a very rapid increase of it
during the last century. But the cheapness of this nourishing root,
and the small piece of ground which, under this kind of cultivation,
will in average years produce the food for a family, joined to the
ignorance and depressed state[426] of the people, which have
prompted them to follow their inclinations with no other prospect
than an immediate bare subsistence, have encouraged marriage to
such a degree, that the population is pushed much beyond the
industry and present resources of the country; and the consequence
naturally is, that the lower classes of people are in the most
impoverished[427] and miserable state. The checks to the population
are of course chiefly of the positive kind, and arise from the diseases
occasioned by squalid poverty, by damp and wretched cabins, by bad
and insufficient clothing,[428] and occasional want. To these positive
checks have of late years been added the vice and misery of intestine
commotion, of civil war, and of martial law.”[429]
In his review of Newenham’s Statistical and Historical Enquiry
into the Population of Ireland in 1808,[430] and in his evidence before
the Emigration Committee in 1827, Malthus uses even stronger
language. We may quote from the latter document as the less known
of the two. In 1817 he had spent a college vacation in visiting
Westmeath and the lakes of Killarney,[431] and was able to speak from
personal knowledge of the country. He was asked:—
Qu. 3306. “With reference to Ireland, what is your opinion as to
the habits of the people, as tending to promote a rapid increase of
population?”—“Their habits are very unfavourable in regard to their
own condition, because they are inclined to be satisfied with the very
lowest degree of comfort, and to marry with little other prospect than
that of being able to get potatoes for themselves and their
children.”[432]
 3307. “What are the circumstances which contribute to introduce
such habits in a country?”—“The degraded condition of the people,
oppression, and ignorance.”
3311. “You have mentioned that oppression contributes to produce
those habits to which you have alluded; in what way do you imagine
in Ireland there is oppression?”—“I think that the government of
Ireland has, upon the whole, been very unfavourable to habits of that
kind; it has tended to degrade the general mass of the people, and
consequently to prevent them from looking forward and acquiring
habits of prudence.”
3312. “Is it your opinion that the minds of the people may be so
influenced by the circumstances under which they live, in regard to
civil society, that it may contribute very much to counteract that
particular habit which leads to the rapid increase of population?”—“I
think so.”
3313. “What circumstances in your opinion contribute to produce
a taste for comfort and cleanliness among a people?”—“Civil and
political liberty and education.”[433]
Then the subject of one acre holdings is introduced, and Malthus is
asked:—
3317. “What effect would any change of the moral or religious state
of the government of that country produce upon persons occupying
such possessions?”—“It could not produce any immediate effect if
that system were continued; with that system of occupancy there
must always be an excessive redundancy of people, because, from the
nature of tolerably good land, it will always produce more than can
be employed upon it, and the consequence must be that there will be
a great number of people not employed.”
3318. “Is, therefore, not the first step towards improvement in
Ireland necessarily to be accomplished by an alteration of the present
state of the occupancy of the land?” This was a leading question, but
Malthus would not be led. He replied, “I think that such an alteration
is of the greatest possible importance, but that the other (the change
in the government) should accompany it; it would not have the same
force without.” In his answers to later questions he gave his view at
greater length on the causes of the difference between English and
Irish character.
 Answ. to qu. 3411. “At the time of the introduction of the potato
into Ireland the Irish people were in a very low and degraded state,
and the increased quantity of food was only applied to increase the
population. But when our [English] wages of labour in wheat were
high in the early part of the last century, it did not appear that they
were employed merely in the maintenance of more families, but in
improving the condition of the people in their general mode of
living.”[434]
3413. “You attribute the difference of the character of the people to
the difference of food?”—“In a great measure.”
3414. “What circumstance determines the difference of food in the
two countries?”—“The circumstances are partly physical and partly
moral.[435] It will depend in a certain degree upon the soil and climate
whether the people live on maize, wheat, oats, potatoes, or meat.”[436]
3415. “Is not the selection in some degree dependent on the
general state of society?”—“Very much on moral causes, on their
being in so respectable a situation that they are in the habit of
looking forward, and exercising a certain degree of prudence; and
there is no doubt that in different countries this kind of prudence is
exercised in very different degrees.”
3416. “Does it depend at all on the government under which they
live?”—“Very much on the government, on the strict and equal
administration of justice, on the perfect security of property, on civil,
religious, and political liberty; for people respect themselves more
under favourable circumstances of this kind, and are less inclined to
marry, with[out] the prospect of more physical sustenance for their
children.”
3417. “On the degree of respect with which they are treated by
their superiors?”—“Yes; one of the greatest faults in Ireland is that
the labouring classes there are not treated with proper respect by
their superiors; they are treated as if they were a degraded people.”
Thereupon he is again asked a leading question of a somewhat
cynical character, but he is again cautious in his answer.
3418. “Does not that treatment mainly arise from their existing in
such redundancy as to be no object to their superiors?”—“In part it
does perhaps; but it appeared to take place before that [redundancy]
was the case, to the same degree.”
 The questioner, however, begs the question and asks:
3419. “The number being the cause of their treatment, will not
their treatment tend to the increase of that number?” and the answer
is: “Yes, they act and react on each other.”
Accordingly his opinion in 1827 is, as it was in 1803, that
emigration conjoined with other agencies will be good for Ireland,
but by itself will leave matters no better than they were.
Alongside of his weighty words in the essay and in the evidence it
is worth while to place the words written by Adam Smith half a
century earlier:—
“By the union with England, the middling and inferior ranks of
people in Scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of
an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them. By a union
with Great Britain, the greater part of the people of all ranks in
Ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance from a much
more oppressive aristocracy, an aristocracy not founded, like that of
Scotland, in the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and
fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, those of religious
and political prejudices; distinctions which, more than any other,
animate both the insolence of the oppressors and the hatred and
indignation of the oppressed, and which commonly render the
inhabitants of the same country more hostile to one another than
those of different countries ever are.”[437]
With such passages before us, we cannot consider the two
economists to have been behind their age in their Irish policy. In
regard to accurate figures, the later economist was little better off
than the earlier. Ireland was not included in the first two censuses of
1801 and 1811. In 1695 its population was estimated by Captain
South as little more than one million;[438] in 1731, by inquiry of Irish
House of Lords, at two millions; in 1792 by Dr. Beaufort at a little
above four millions;[439] in 1805 by Newenham at five and a half
millions; in 1812 an imperfect census gave it as nearly six millions; in
the census of 1821 it was 6,800,000. It was clear that the population
of Ireland was increasing even then faster than that of England.[440]
But between these dates and our own times comes an episode
striking enough to provide all economical histories with a purpureus
pannus.
 For about two generations England had perpetrated in Ireland her
crowning feats of commercial jealousy, a jealousy not more foolish or
wicked against Ireland than it was against the American colonies, or,
till 1707, against Scotland, but more easily victorious. Ireland had
not begun to be in any sense an industrial country till the reigns of
Elizabeth and James I.; and the wars of the succeeding reigns
hampered her early efforts. She had fair corn and meadow lands, and
perhaps the best pastures in the world for sheep and cattle. The
English farming interest became impatient of Irish competition, and
a law was passed to forbid the importation of Irish sheep and cattle
and dairy produce into England (1665, 1680). By reason of the later
Navigation Acts, Ireland could not make amends for this by trading
with America, for all such trading must be by way of England and in
English ships, nor by trading with France for the same reason.
England in her jealousy would have surrounded her with a cordon
quite as close as Berkeley’s wall of brass.[441] As soon as a
considerable woollen manufacture grew up, England stopped it by
legislation, which (in 1699) forbade the exportation of Irish woollens
not only to England but to any other country whatever. English
interference, if it had done no more, added immensely to the
uncertainties[442] and fluctuations of Irish trade. The growth of
industries like the woollen manufacture had set on foot a growth of
population which did not stop with the arrest of the industries. As
often happens,[443] the effects of an impulse to marriage lasted far
beyond the industrial progress that gave the impulse. But this means
hunger and suffering, if not death. In the case of Ireland, the ruin of
all industries but farming over more than three-fourths of the land
led to an absolute dependence of the people on the harvest of their
own country; and, where it failed them, they were brought face to
face with dearth or famine. It led also to the peopling of the country
districts at the expense of the towns,[444] instead of (as usual) the
towns at the expense of the country. If Goldsmith’s Deserted Village
is not English, it is not Irish. By the year 1780, when Lord North
from fear of rebellion granted free trade to Ireland with Great
Britain, the mischief had been made almost incurable. The great
increase in the Irish population, like the great increase in the
English, may be said to begin in a free trade movement. In the worst
days of legal persecution it might have been said of the Irish Catholic
population, the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied
and grew. Lavergne[445] thinks their greater increase was due first to
the physiological law, that in the case of all animals the means of
reproduction are multiplied in proportion to the chances of
destruction[?], and second to the instinctively sound tactics of a
people otherwise defenceless. The probability is, too, that they
remained quiet under their multitudinous industrial, political, and
religious disqualifications so long, because they were reduced to that
depth of misery that kills the very power of resistance; and poverty at
its extreme point is a positive but not a preventive check on
population. Where things are so bad, marriage, it is thought, cannot
make them worse, and marriage would go on at the expense of a high
mortality, general pauperism, or continuous emigration. The
pureness of marriage relations in Ireland, though in itself a much
greater good than its consequences were evil, acted as it would have
done in Godwin’s Utopia;[446] apart from wisdom, virtue itself had its
evils. Potatoes by-and-by came into general use; and the bad
harvests, which taught even the Scotch and English poor[447] to make
frequent use of this substitute for corn, converted it in Ireland from a
substitute into a staple. Economists viewed this change with almost
unanimous disapproval. In the view of Malthus it was the cheapness
of this food that made it dangerous for the labourers; his theory of
wages led him to object to cheap corn on the same grounds.[448] On
the principle that it needs difficulties to generate energy, the Irish are
made indolent by their cheap food, and make no use of it except to
increase by it. Living on the cheapest food procurable, they could not
in scarcity fall back on anything else. Every man who wished to
marry might obtain a cabin and potatoes.[449] At the lowest
calculation, an acre of land planted with potatoes will support twice
as much as one of the same quality sown with wheat.[450] There are
other objections to a potato diet. It is a simple (as opposed to a
composite) diet, and it involves a low standard of comfort. The
second is not the same as the first, for a people that had no variety in
their food might conceivably have a great variety in their other
comforts. As a matter of fact, however, it was none of these three
supposed disadvantages of the potato that proved the bane of the
Irish population, but a fourth one, its liability to blight.[451]
The figures of the census tell their own tale. In 1821 the Irish
people numbered 6,801,827; in 1831, 7,767,401; in 1841, 8,199,853;
but in 1851, 6,514,473. In each previous decade the increase
approached a million; in the last there was not only no increase, but
a decrease of more than a million and a half. There had been a
disastrous famine followed by great emigrations. What happened on
Lord Lansdowne’s estate in Kerry is an example of what took place
over Ireland generally.[452] That estate comprehended about 100,000
acres, on which before the famine there was a population of 16,000
souls. When the famine came a fourth part of them perished and
another fourth emigrated. In course of time, thanks to money sent by
relatives from America and advances made by Lord Lansdowne, the
emigration continued with such rapidity that only 2000 souls were
left on the estate. The famine taught the people how to emigrate, and
gave them some idea of the meaning of over-population. The rural
districts of Ireland are probably over-peopled now; but there seems
reason to believe that a body of tenants, who are little short of
peasant proprietors in security of tenure, and who have been forced
into a knowledge of the world outside Ireland, will not retain the
habits of the old occupiers.[453] Without a change of habits, peasant
proprietorships would have done little for France, and will do little
for Ireland.
This would certainly have been the judgment of Malthus on things
as they are now in Ireland, after Catholic Emancipation,
Disestablishment, and the Land Act. In his own time he was wise
enough to see that the first could not be delayed without injustice
and danger. The rapid increase of the Catholic population would
soon, he foresaw in 1808,[454] bring the question of Emancipation
within the range of “practical politics,” and if the measure had been
passed, as he urged, in 1808, instead of twenty years later, the labour
of conciliating Ireland might have proved easier, and the political
change might have helped to produce that change in the habits of the
people which Malthus deemed essential to its permanent prosperity.
 BOOK II. ECONOMICS.

CHAPTER I.
THE LANDLORDS.
Need of an Economical Digression—The Hegemony of Adam
Smith’s School—Cardinal Doctrines of the Malthusian Economy
—Scope, Method, Details—Malthus doing Injustice to his
Economics—Human Character of his Doctrines—Agricultural
Situation in 1794—History of Corn Laws—Malthus on Rent in
1803 and afterwards—Observations on the Corn Laws—Grounds
of an Opinion—Nature and Progress of Rent—Ricardo’s
Criticisms—Agricultural Improvements—Malthusian Ideal of
Commercial Policy—The Wall of Brass—Limits to Commercial
Progress.

The Essay on Population deals with the past, the present, and the
future. We have tried to follow its account of past and present, and
must now consider the author’s view of future prospects and of the
various schemes (including his own) for making the future better
than the present.
To do justice to this half of the essay, we must take further liberties
with its arrangement. For the sake of explaining the historical
genesis of the essay, we have already taken first[455] that criticism of
Godwin and Condorcet which in the later essay comes in the centre
of the work,[456] on the heels of the account of population in the
United Kingdom, the point where we have now arrived; and the
chapter on emigration has been used before its time. There remain,
out of the fourteen chapters of the third book of the essay, eleven still
untouched; and in all but one[457] a knowledge of the general
economical doctrine of Malthus is indispensable to a clear and just
understanding of him. No apology is needed then for a somewhat
long digression, in which the chief economical writings of our author
are briefly analyzed. It is not wholly a digression, as the substance of
seven[458] out of ten chapters will be found incorporated with it, and
their logical connection with the author’s economical theories (so far
as it exists) will be shown.
As a thoroughly practical man, Malthus knew that philanthropy
can do little without sound doctrine; and his economical theories
belong to the substance of his work. They were developed, unlike the
Essay on Population, in quiet controversy among friends; Ricardo,
James Mill, and Jean Baptiste Say, who were critics of the Political
Economy, had been converts of the Essay. These were, however, the
very men who came nearest to identify orthodox economics with
rigorous abstraction. Malthus himself, labouring to build up the
neglected pathology of economic science, was not chargeable with
this fault. His first work had happily fixed into an intellectual
principle his natural inclination to look at speculative questions in
their relations to practice, and to look at “things as they are”[459]
rather than as they might be. Ricardo’s first work, bearing wholly on
finance,[460] had unhappily fixed for him his inclination to treat every
social question as a problem in arithmetic. In both cases the
excitement of controversy would make the impression deeper.
The two economists both start from Adam Smith,[461] as
theologians from the Bible. It was becoming clear that these
Scriptures were of doubtful interpretation. Men were to choose
between the Calvinism of Ricardo and the Arminianism of Malthus;
and, when the two writers turned from their debates with the public
to debates with each other, no less a prize was in question than the
hegemony of the school.
This was won by Ricardo, whose Principles of Political Economy
and Taxation (1817) were accepted by James Mill, MacCulloch,
Nassau Senior, to say nothing of others, as the Institutes of their
creed. MacCulloch thought it not worth his while to print what
Ricardo had thought it worth his while to write, in vindication of his
positions against Malthus.[462] The strongest ally of Malthus was
Sismondi. It was not till Ricardo had reigned for thirty years that
there was serious sign of defection, when the son of James Mill broke
with his father’s traditions;[463] and, though in the hands of
Thornton, Cliffe Leslie, Walker, and others, the reaction has been
carried to the utmost, the eclipse of Ricardo has done nothing to
rescue Malthus from obscurity. The very success of the Essay on
Population may have deepened the oblivion of the other writings in
virtue of the popular fallacy that a man cannot be equally great in
general theory and in the advocacy of one particular reform.
The Political Economy of Malthus has its faults; but it contains in
outline the main truths which writers of our own time think they
have established against Ricardo. First and foremost, he maintains
with them that the proper study of the science is not Wealth, but
Man, or more definitely, Wealth in relation to Man. The qualities of
man and the earth he cultivates are according to Malthus so many
and variable in relation to each other that a study of their relations
cannot be an exact science like mathematics; it may contain “great
general principles” to which there are few exceptions, and
“prominent landmarks” that will be safe guides to us in legislation or
in life; but “even these when examined will be found to resemble the
most general rules in morals and politics founded upon the known
passions and propensities of human nature.”[464] Human conduct is
characterized by such variation and aberration that we must always
be prepared for exceptions to our principles, and for qualifications
which spoil the charm of uniformity, but are faithful to facts,[465] like
George Eliot’s “analyses in small and subtle characters,” which
stimulate no enthusiasm but alone tell the whole truth. In the second
place, we are told that the nature of the subject makes a peculiarly
cautious Method necessary. Our first business being to account for
things as they are,[466] till we are sure that our theories do so we
cannot act on them.[467] A good economical definition must conform
to the ordinary usage of words. We must take if possible a meaning
which would agree with the ordinary use of words “in the
conversation of educated persons.”[468] If this does not give sufficient
distinctness, we must fall back on the authority of the most
celebrated writers on the science, particularly of the founder or
founders of it; “in this case, whether the term be a new one born with
the science, or an old one used in a new sense, it will not be strange
to the generality of readers, or liable to be misunderstood.”[469] If any
word must have a different meaning from that adopted by either of
these authorities, the new sense must not only be free from the faults
of the old, but must have a clear and recognizable positive
usefulness. The new definitions should be consistent with the old;
and the same terms should be used in the same sense, except where
inveterate custom insists on an exception. When all is done, it is still
impossible in a social science like political economy to find a
definition entirely beyond cavil.[470]
“Wealth” must include all the “material objects that are necessary,
useful, or agreeable to mankind;”[471] “productive labour” must be the
labour which realizes itself either in such material objects or the
increased value of them; or else we wander from common language,
and our discussions travel off into indefiniteness. Economical
reasoning must be a deduction from observed facts of nature and of
human nature verified by general experience. Malthus professes to
have used this cautious method throughout, and the theory of
population was only the particular instance where circumstances
enabled him to make his verification most complete. “I should never
have had that steady and unshaken confidence in the theory of
population which I have invariably felt, if it had not appeared to me
to be confirmed, in the most remarkable manner, by the state of
society as it actually exists in every country with which we are
acquainted.”[472] On the other hand, Ricardo, legislating for Saturn,
gives us little or no verification by experience. It is true that he
admits qualifications and exceptions to his own statements; and he
would have winced a little at his own biographer’s assertion that “Mr.
Ricardo paid comparatively little attention to the practical
application of general principles; his is not a practical work.”[473] But
he makes no use of the admissions; his illustrations as a rule are not
historical, but imaginary cases and the verification is wanting. In a
letter to Malthus (written on the 24th November, 1820) he says:
“Our differences may in some respects, I think, be ascribed to your
considering my book as more practical than I intended it to be. My
object was to elucidate principles, and to do this I imagined strong
cases, that I might show the operation of these principles.”[474] In
Malthus and Adam Smith, imaginary cases are rare exceptions,
actual examples from life or history are the rule. Malthus goes so far
in this direction that (to use his own phraseology) he is tempted to
subordinate science to “utility.” Even Adam Smith, though he had
abundance of good-will to his kind, did not write to do good but to
expound truth. To Malthus the discovery of truth was less important
than the improvement of society. When an economical truth could
not be made the means of improvement, he seems to have lost
interest in it. His pointed warning to others against this error[475] may
be regarded as a confession of his own liability to it; and, if he obeyed
his own warning at all, his position was at the best like that of the
latter-day utilitarians, who try to reach happiness by making believe
not to think of it. If his science had been less biassed by utility, it
might have been more thorough; and we might not have had in our
own time a Ricardian socialism, appearing like the ghost of the
deceased Ricardian orthodoxy sitting crowned upon the grave
thereof. He has the virtue of refusing to join the economical
Pharisees,[476] who would not admit the elasticity of economical laws,
lest they should discredit their science; but he is to blame for not
pushing his quarrel against Ricardo with the same energy as against
Godwin. His forces, in this campaign, were worse drilled and worse
handled. It is justly said by Garnier (Dict. de l’Écon. Pol., art.
‘Malthus’), that in spite of its title, the Political Economy of Malthus
is not the exposition of a system, but simply a collection of
economical papers on various subjects that had been brought
specially under his notice in discussion with his friends, or (we might
add) in his college class. This itself would lead him to present a much
less solid front to the enemy than he did in the Essay.
To come, in the third place, to Details, we find the human
character of the Political Economy of Malthus appearing not only in
his view of population, where all is at last made to depend on the
personal responsibility of the individual man, and legislation is good
or bad according as it strengthens or weakens that responsibility,—
but in his view of the Value of goods, as measured by human labour,
—in his view of demand and supply, as sharing the inconstancy of the
human desires that enter into both of them,—in his view of the Rent
of land, as determined by the effects of human industry and skill as
well as by the natural qualities of the soil,—in his view of the Wages
of labour, as regulated not by an unchangeable but by a progressive
minimum,—in his view of luxury, as being equally with parsimony
necessary to production, and preventive of over-production,—and in
his view of free trade, as a rule to which we must make exceptions if
we would not cause sufferings.
These doctrines had a distinct relation to current events. Political
and social changes were reacting on political economy. As Godwin
and Pitt provoked the essay of 1798, the scarcity of 1799 and 1800
called forth the pamphlet on High Prices (1800). As the latter bears
directly on the Poor Law, it will best be considered when the thread
of the Essay on Population is taken up again;[477] and the same
applies to the letter of Malthus to Whitbread (1807). The distresses
of a time when wheat went so high as £6 the quarter instead of its
normal 40s. or 50s., would naturally make the relief of the poor a
question of the day. The high prices of corn increased the number of
enclosures and Enclosure Bills. More than three millions of acres, or
about a twelfth part of the entire area of England and Wales, are said
to have been taken from waste into cultivation between 1800 and
1820. The average price of wheat, always the staple food of the
people when they could get it, had been 55s. 11d. for the years
preceding, viz. from 1790 to 1799 inclusive; it was 82s. 2d. from 1800
to 1809 inclusive, and 88s. 8d. from 1810 to 1819 inclusive, after
which it fell (for the next decade) to 58s. 5d.[478] In 1883–4 it was 35s.
8d. a quarter, which means a four-pound loaf (of medium quality) at
4½d. or 5d.; but at its lowest during the war (in 1803) it was at 57s.
1d., and the loaf was at 6¾d. or 7d.
Yet agriculture had not been standing still. Arthur Young, whose
eccentric energy benefited every one but himself, and fell little short
of genius, betted his nineteen volumes of Annals of Agriculture
against Sir John Sinclair’s twenty-one volumes of the Statistical
Account of Scotland, that the Government of Pitt would not establish
a Board of Agriculture. But Farmer George did establish one, in 1793;
[479]
Young paid his bet and became Secretary; Sinclair gained his
nineteen volumes and became President of the new Board; and
together they did much to make farmers and landlords aware of the
rotations of crops, disuse of fallows, new manures, road-makings,
that the Secretary had been preaching in vain for thirty years.[480]
When the great scarcities of 1799–1800 took place, the Board was
equal to the occasion. It urged the Government to get supplies of rice
from India; it preached earnestly the cultivation of waste lands and
the temporary conversion of grass lands into cornfields. The last was
done widely enough when the prices of corn were high. The second,
except when it meant enclosure of commons, was hardly done at all;
and there was a strange impression that the efforts of the Board were
at bottom a political movement against ecclesiastical titles and the
Established Church. The importation of rice would have been of
immense immediate service; but by the time the order had reached
India and the rice ships had come back to England,[481] the famine
was over, the people preferred wheat, and £350,000 of bounty were
thrown away.[482] Nothing shows the insularity of English
commercial policy better than the remedies generally proposed in
those days for curing the evils of a bad harvest. The House of
Commons passed self-denying ordinances[483] and brown-bread bills,
and offered a bounty on potatoes.[484]
There was some talk inside the House of enforcing a minimum rate
of wages, and outside of enforcing a maximum price of bread. The
people were told to eat red herrings instead of bread; philanthropic
soup shops were opened; distilleries and starch manufactories were
threatened with prohibition. Relief from the poor rates was, however,
the favourite way of cutting the knot. Better that our people should
depend on each other than on the foreigner. This fear of dependence
was the more pardonable then, as there were times, in the war with
Napoleon, when England was more completely alone against the
world than she is ever likely to be again. It was a much more culpable
folly to pretend[485] that the scarcity was due to “forestalling and
regrating,”[486] and that England could have provided for herself well
enough, even in 1799 and 1800, but for the corn-dealers and the
large farms and the enclosures and the new-fashioned husbandry.
The new learning, however, went on its way.[487] The benefits of it
may have gone to farmer[488] or to landlord,—the question was much
debated,—but they did not go to the labourers. The same is true of
the improvements in cattle-breeding introduced by Bakewell of
Leicester and Chaplin of Lincoln, and encouraged by the Smithfield
Club (1798), which has long outlived the Board of Agriculture. The
life of the country labourers was little changed. They and their wages
could not remain entirely unaffected by the growth of manufacturing
towns. But custom still had the chief power over wages, and had no
little influence on rents. From the reports sent from the Scotch,
English, and Welsh counties to the Board of Agriculture in 1794, it
does not appear that wages were at all, or rent very closely, in
correspondence with the amount of the produce.[489] Rents were far
from being rack rents, and wages were far from varying with the
necessary expenses of the labourer. In truth each country district in
the days before railways and steamboats was nearly in the same
isolation with regard to the rest as all England was with regard to
foreign nations. The price of farm produce was indeed tending to be
equal over England, as now over the world. Wages were displaying
no such tendency. Of all goods a man is the most difficult to move,
[490]
for you must first persuade him; and human inertia by making
men stationary will keep wages low. So it was in 1794. The exertions
of landlord and tenant were directed therefore rather to keep up corn
than to keep down wages. They were beginning to fear for their
monopoly of the corn market. The English Government had done its
best to keep their market for them. A law of Charles II. passed in
1670 virtually prohibited importation of foreign wheat till the price
of home wheat was over 53s. 4d. a quarter, and made it free only
when the home price was 80s. The Revolution of 1688 brought a new
phase of commercial policy. The new rulers, to conciliate the
agricultural classes and atone for the burdens which had been
transferred to them from the industrial classes, granted a bounty of
5s. a quarter on the exportation of wheat so long as the home price
was not over 48s. In this way, after exportation in the days of the
Romans, and alternate exportation and importation according to the
seasons in after times, there was, after the Revolution, exportation
encouraged by a bounty, while importation was still hindered by
duties. The intention was at once to attract capitalists to agriculture
and to reward those already engaged in it. By this means not only
would the farmers be attached to the new dynasty, but England
would provide all her own food.[491]
But the very increase of tillage kept down prices and gave the
landowners little benefit. Whenever a scarcity occurred the laws were
suspended, and the bounty and duties were taken off together.[492]
Exportation, however, was the rule till a little after the middle of the
century, say at the beginning of George III.’s reign, when the tide had
fairly turned. Especially after the Peace of Paris (Nov. 1762),
commerce was extended and population with it. Canals were made,
roads improved, and home trade prospered.[493] We could no longer
raise enough corn for our own wants.[494] In 1766, the year of our
author’s birth, there were scarcities, Corn Riots, and suspensions of