THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 117 



When Malthus wrote, no country, except when its 

 crops failed, imported food from abroad to any large 

 extent, so that each country was in respect of its food 

 supply dependent on its own soil. But matters have 

 greatly changed since his Essay was published. The 

 proportion of food for the support of the inhabitants of 

 Great Britain that is imported from abroad is greatly 

 in excess of what the soil of this island could produce. 

 But so long as this country is from generation to 

 generation multiplying her power of purchasing from 

 abroad by the wealth derived from commercial and 

 industrial enterprise, so long will the relative increases 

 of her population and of the food which her soil can 

 produce be immaterial to her. 



But should a day ever come in the history of man- 

 kind, and such a day is drawing on and must come, 

 when every country will be peopled to the extent in 

 which the soil can support its numbers, then shall the 

 principle of Malthus, if it contain an active germ of 

 truth, work unutterable woe and havoc. 



In my next chapter, devoted to an exposition of the 

 law of population, I shall make it evident that from 

 the nature of man and the necessities of his existence 

 population cannot increase, unless its increase be pre- 

 ceded by, or accompanied with, an equal or greater 

 increase in the amount of sustenance ; and that, 

 therefore, population does not tend, and cannot 

 possibly tend, to increase faster than the means of 

 subsistence. 



Dealing in the present chapter with the Malthusian 



