87 
In the year 1798 the Rév. Thomas Malthus published his “‘ Essay 
on the Principle of Population,” in which he argued with consider- 
able ability, and as a fact, that it was the tendency of population to 
increase in a geometrical ratio, while subsistence ‘“ to be obtained 
from land under circumstances the most favourable to human 
industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an 
arithmetical ratio” ; which, being interpreted means that in certain 
periods of time (he put them.at 25 years), human beings tend to 
increase according to the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, &., te. doubling their 
numbers every quarter of a century, while subsistence increases as 
the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, &., i.e., adding only an equal quantity 
during each of those periods. He drew the conclusion that unless 
something was done, either by man himself, or by the operation of 
natural laws, to check this rapid increase, the earth would in a 
comparatively short time be overcrowded. 
‘The essay made a great stir; its principle was accepted, 
apparently without any very close scrutiny ; and with an occasional 
opponent, and with a few modifications has kept its ground, being 
adopted in the current works on Political Economy, that science of 
- tendencies destined never to be realized, for which it was well 
adapted. With occasional opposition, I say, still oftener with a 
demand for proofs. For after all it is but a tendency ; 
“ Only this and nothing more,” 
a tendency which, save at rare intervals, and under exceptional 
and local circumstances, has never been fulfilled. Malthus, how- 
ever, argued from it as if it were being constantly fulfilled, and 
as if it would soon be an accomplished fact for the whole habitable 
world. But no theory can hold its ground: unless facts fit in with 
it, and there seem to me to be a few which will not accommodate 
themselves to this one, and notably—that although the earth 
has been inhabited no one dare say how many thousands of years, 
and this ‘‘ tendency ” has been at work the whole time, it is not 
yet fully populated,—it is not half full. How are we then to ex- 
plain its almost universal acceptance? Well, like many other 
things repeated over and over again, and especially if repeated in 
high sounding terms, it gets passively acquiesced in. ‘‘ Geometrical 
ratio,” and “ arithmetical ratio,” have a solid mathematical ring 
of truth about them, and so people accept without further enquiry 
the statements in which they are involved ; just as the electors of 
a certain constituency accepted a candidate unreservedly after being 
. told that he “had sticceeded in the exact rectification of a circular 
are, and had likewise discovered the equation of the lunar caustic.” 
Malthus’s great example was that of the North American Colonies, 
the population of which doubled itself in twenty-five years; but 
this of coutse was a very exceptional case, and cannot be taken to 
