466 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



What is the area which really supports a given population. ? 

 If people on a given spot are able to carry on industries which 

 enable them to buy from the rest of the world what they want, are 

 they supported by that area, or are they not 1 In a sense 

 they are supported, for they live by the industries which they carry 

 on there. In another sense they are not, because they are not 

 self-contained. Foreign trade is the breath of their life. But 

 this description is applicable not merely to countries like the 

 United Kingdom, which manufacture largely, and carry goods 

 largely for all the world. It is equally applicable to a country 

 like the United States, which exports food, raw cotton, and 

 other raw materials, wherewith to buy the things of which it 

 stands in need ; or to countries like Australasia, which export 

 "wool, the precious metals and other metals, to an extent 

 ■without example in history. 



All these considerations are so obvious that I have to 

 apologise for introducing them. No one, it will be urged, can 

 make the blunder of overlooking them. But in point of fact, 

 and this is my justification, the grossest blunders are constantly 

 made. We know for instance, in regard to the question of the 

 population which a given area will support, that nothing is so 

 common in books of travel or geographies, with reference to 

 unoccupied or partially occupied areas, than statements that a 

 given area will support so many million inhabitants. Nothing is 

 said as to what kind of inhabitants. But clearly the sort of in- 

 habitants will make all the difierence. The idea of boundlessness 

 of area so common in new countries, and which is to some 

 extent an illusion, if I may venture the remark, is also due to 

 neglect of the fact of quality of population. The area of a 

 given country in a sense may be practically boundless, but it 

 may be equally true that the full occupation of the country 

 would imply a continual re-adaptation of the people to new 

 economic conditions — that there is by no means boundless room 

 for the same sort of people carrying on the same sort of 

 industries. To the same effect, the idea of narrowness, of area 

 so common in old countries, where there is constant wonder as 

 to what is to be done with the growing population, is based 

 largely on the ^ague assumption that there must be some 

 proportion between area and population, whereas, as we have 

 seen, and as experience proves, populations of indefinite magni- 

 tude may be supported on narrow territory. Every city is an 

 illustration in disproof of the supposed connection between 

 population and area in the sense stated. Area is no doubt 

 necessary to a wholly self-contained people, if such a people can 

 be conceived of, short of one which occupies the whole habitable 

 territory of the globe ; but as no nation is self-contained there 

 is equally no means of settling a priori the maximum limit 

 of inhabitants per square mile which a community may occupy ; 

 and that a nation reaches a high maximum is no proof of its 

 being in an unfavourable economic condition, or the reverse.^ 



Other illustx'ations may be given of an underlying confusion 

 of thought in these matters, which occasionally comes to the 

 surface. I have seen, for instance, at home an attempt made 

 to show that the English Empire is more aggressive than that 



