THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 459 



natural law are correlative or reciprocal. We produce to consume, 

 and we consume to produce, and the one will not go on independently 

 of the other ; and although there may be, and actually is, and mainly 

 through the influence of bad laws, more or less extensive mal-adjust- 

 ment of these two great agencies, the tendency is, and by methods to 

 be hereafter pointed out, for the two to come closer and closer into 

 correspondence. 



Next in order, it is important to recognize and keep clearly in view 

 in reasoning upon this subject, what of good these same agencies, 

 whose influence in respect to the future is now regarded by so many 

 with alarm or suspicion, have already accomplished. 



A hundred years ago the maintenance of the existing population 

 of Great Britain, of the United States, and of all other highly-civilized 

 countries, could not have been possible under the then imperfect and 

 limited conditions of production and distribution. Malthus, who in 

 1798 was led by his investigations to the conclusion that the popula- 

 tion of the world, and particularly of England, was rapidly pressing 

 upon the limits of subsistence, and could not go on increasing because 

 there would not be food for its support, was entirely right from his 

 standpoint on the then existing economic conditions ; * and no society 

 at the present time, no matter how favorable may be its environments 

 in respect to fertility of land, geniality of climate, and sparseness of 

 population, is making any progress except through methods that in 

 Malthus's day were practically unknown. The Malthusian theory is, 

 moreover, completely exemplifying itself to-day in India, v.'hich is 

 densely populated, destitute in great degree of roads, and of the 

 knowledge and use of machinery. For here the conditions of peace 

 established under British rule are proving so effective in removing the 

 many obstacles to the growth of population that formerly existed, 

 that its increase from year to year is pressing so rapidly on the means 

 of subsistence, that periodical famines, over large areas, and accom- 

 panied with great destruction of life, are regarded as so inevitable 

 that the creation of a national famine fund by the Government has 

 been deemed necessary.f 



* " Malthus made no prediction in tbe strict sense of the word. He had drawn out 

 from experience that the human race tended to increase faster than tlic means of subsist- 

 ence ; its natural increase being in geometrical ratio, and the increase of its means of sub- 

 sistence an arithmetical one ; so that population had been kept down only in past times 

 by war and famine, and by disease as the consequence of famine. He was bound to 

 anticipate that a continuance of the process would expose the race once more to the 

 operation of these natural checks, or to a descent of the masses in the scale of living, or 

 to both of these evils. That the new experience has been different from the former one, 

 and that owing to various causes the means of subsistence have increased faster than the 

 population, even when increasing at a Malthusian rate, is no disproof surely of the teach, 

 ing of Malthus. His statistical inquiries into the past remain as valuable as ever." — 

 " Some General Uses of Statistical Knoivledf/e." Robert Giffen, Royal Statistical Society 

 of England, 18S5. 



\ The present condition of India constitutes one of the most curious and interesting 



