THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 145 



From the registration of their mortalities, however 

 defective we may suppose them to be, by the different 

 Australasian colonies, one clear outstanding fact 

 emerges, viz. that their populations are not kept 

 down or restrained in their increase by all those 

 causes " which tend prematurely to weaken and 

 destroy the human frame." Even in Europe the 

 checks of Malthus have since his day undergone an 

 elimination, and where not an elimination a loss of 

 energy, that consigns the conception of them as 

 Nature's ordinance for keeping down, and within due 

 limits, the population of the globe, to the limbo of 

 baseless and mistaken theories. In the next chapter 

 I shall state and elucidate the universal law that 

 governs every movement of population, whether of 

 retardation or of progression. 



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