THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 129 



fertile land was required to maintain a single family. 

 As experience led to the use of better implements and 

 improved methods of culture, the yield of the soil was 

 multiplied. 



But the persistence of the agricultural mind in 

 maintaining the same standard and style of living in 

 which a man has been reared, made the greater yield 

 tend not to the increase of individual wealth, but to 

 its distribution among a greater number of cultivators. 

 Farms became smaller in each generation, until 

 the limit was reached when the farm could not be 

 further diminished. Hence it has come to pass that 

 the vast agricultural populations that swarm on the 

 banks of the Ganges, and fill the Great Plain of China, 

 though they till lands that are unsurpassed in fertility, 

 are miserably poor. 



As an increasing population is ever an indication 

 that man is energising in a greater degree than he 

 did before, the general result is that each generation 

 surpasses its predecessor in the relation of the means 

 of subsistence to the population. Thus we perceive 

 how, while, under the pax Britannica of the last 

 hundred years, the population has grown twofold, and 

 the wealth and resources of India have grown in a 

 much greater degree, yet, judged from our point of 

 view, the people still remain very poor. 



I come now to consider the second cardinal point 

 of the theory of Malthus, his positive checks, which 

 he assumes to be Nature's ordinance for preventing 

 population from growing unduly. 

 9 



