THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 127 



comfort which has risen greatly within their experience, 

 and is much higher than ever before existed. If 

 the British Eaj has diminished in many cases the 

 splendour and suinptuousness of the native palaces 

 and courts, it has brought increased abundance of means 

 into the houses of the people. The greater ease of 

 living is shown in the improved quality of their 

 clothing, of their domestic furnishings, and of every 

 necessary article of daily use. 



If under the shelter of the pax Britannica the 

 population of India has doubled in the course of a 

 century, its wealth has increased not less than three- 

 fold. The people of India are from our point of view 

 very poor, and will always be very poor as long as 

 the land maintains so large a population deriving its 

 sustenance from the culture of the soil. But this 

 does not in the slightest degree lend support to the 

 Malthusian concept that population tends to grow 

 faster than the means of subsistence ; for all numerical 

 increase in India has always been accompanied with a 

 more than proportional increase of its food resources. 

 We should bear in mind that poverty is a comparative 

 term, and is defined by the relation of the individual 

 to the actual necessaries of life. Thus, the necessary 

 expenditure upon food and clothing of a labouring 

 man in the colder climate of England is much greater 

 than that of a labouring man in India, whose family 

 are clothed for far fewer pence in a year than the 

 shillings required to clothe the meanest family in 

 England ; while a native will support himself, his wife, 



