THE LAW OF POPULATION 159 



The limitation thus placed upon the power of 

 forming marriages prevents the growth of what is called 

 a surplus population : for where the demand for 

 labour is not increasing, but remains in statu quo 

 ante, inasmuch as no new posts of employment are 

 being created, the population is found to remain 

 without either material increase or decrease. 



But in such a community there may arise an 

 abnormal demand for labourers to occupy posts that 

 have been vacated by death. A desolating pestilence 

 may sweep away its thousands or hundreds of thousands, 

 and empty in a single month a multitude of posts that 

 but for its havoc would not have been emptied for 

 many years. But the abnormal demand for labour 

 thus created will without difficulty be supplied. There 

 is always a sufficient reserve of young men to fill up 

 the vacant posts. These young men are, earlier than 

 they anticipated, called on to occupy them, and so 

 placed in positions that enable them to marry sooner 

 than they would otherwise have been. The fruit of 

 the marriages thus formed will in a very few years 

 raise the population to its former level ; for the 

 ravages of pestilence never act as more than the 

 merest temporary check upon population. 



Within living memory, the cholera, slaying its 

 millions, swept away one-third of the inhabitants of 

 Mysore in India, and within fifteen years the popula- 

 tion of Mysore was, by the natural increase of its 

 people, greater than it had been on the eve of the 

 visitation of the terrible scourge. 



