Population and Sustenance. 63 



things, there would have been a steady growth of numbers, 

 owing to the operation of unnatural causes, whole continents 

 have been rendered less populous at the close of a century than 

 at its beginning. The number of births may have been two- 

 fold greater in one generation than in the preceding, yet because 

 of devastating wars, or cruel oppressions of the lower classes, or 

 an unjust and unnatural economical system by which the fruits 

 of industry were unequally distributed, resulting in famines, 

 pestilences, and other various sufferings among the masses, 

 there has been a diminution of the population rather than an 

 augmentation. 



Again, nature, as already stated, works here, as everywhere 

 else, not stiffly and inflexibly, but according to the demand 

 made upon her. Just as when a bone is broken, or there is a 

 lesion of muscle or membrane, she concentrates extra forces at 

 the point where repairs are needed, producing in unusual quan- 

 tities what is requisite to supply the need ; so after destruct- 

 ive wars or other seasons of extraordinary mortality, the births 

 are more numerous than before. It is so, also, where from 

 any cause there has been a disproportionate diminution of 

 either sex ; nature hastens to restore the equilbrium. We 

 might doubtless gather from these few simple observations, 

 the general principle that nature, in relation to the increase of 

 the race, would vary according to the means of support she 

 herself would furnish ; and that if any portion of the popula- 

 tion lacked sustenance, it would be not because the increase 

 of population was greater than that of sustenance, nor because 

 of the lack of artificial and unnatural restraints, but because 

 of unnatural and unequal distribution of the natural means of 

 sustenance. 



The rate of the increase of population in the different com- 

 munities of the world is so variable as at first to seem to defy 

 any attempt to infer a general law, and certainly such as to 

 render obvious the impossibility of a law of uniform increase. 

 It is a well known fact that the Aborigines of this continent 



