RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 215 



as its knowledge of these forces increases, will suffice 

 to render the process of a rapidly declining population 

 a kindly and undistressful one. It is not to be imagined 

 that civilised nations, which depend for the sustenance 

 of a great part of their people upon imported food, 

 will not foresee long before it arrives the day when 

 it will be impossible to receive from foreign shores 

 food sufficient to support the existing numbers, and 

 will not make all necessary provision to avert a 

 calamitous issue from the inevitable cessation of the 

 imported food supply. That such a process as I have 

 described, in what may be termed the near future, 

 reckoning by the life of humanity, is inevitable, cannot, 

 I think, be reasonably doubted. Population will 

 continue to increase at a more or less accelerated 

 rate, according as the labour market continues to 

 expand and to provide sustenance for increasing 

 numbers. 



That sustenance will not suddenly fail ; but when 

 the difficulty of procuring food supplies from abroad 

 begins to be felt, the law of population will begin 

 with unerring action to adjust the relation between 

 the population and the food supply, until the former 

 has fallen to a level at which it can be maintained 

 on the produce of the soil which it occupies. 



So much may be predicated with absolute certainty, 

 but what must for the present remain in the region 

 of the theoretical are the conditions and the phases 

 of change through which civilised life will pass during 

 the present transition era. 



