8 THE LAW OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 



incontrovertible axiom, that though e idleness may be a 

 friend to venery, it is not so to prolificness.' ' (The 

 Law of Population, vol. ii. p. 579.) Seeing that Dr. 

 Short's work was published as far back as 1750, this 

 is sufficiently noteworthy. But Short offered no expla- 

 nation of the mechanism by which these results are 

 brought about. 



Saddler summed up his own views as contrasted with 

 those of Malthus and his followers in the following passage : 

 " They contend that production precedes population ; I, 

 on the contrary, maintain that population precedes, and 

 is, indeed, the cause of production. They teach, that 

 man breeds up to the capital, or in proportion to the 

 abundance of food he possesses ; I assert that he is com- 

 paratively sterile when he is wealthy, and that he breeds 

 in proportion to his poverty : not meaning, however, by 

 that poverty a state of privation approaching to actual 

 starvation, any more than, 1 suppose, they would contend 

 that extreme and culpable excess is the grand patron 

 of population. In a word, they hold that a state of ease 

 and affluence is the great promoter of prolificness ; I 

 maintain that a considerable degree of labour, and even 

 privation, is a more efficient cause of an increased degree 

 of human fecundity." (The Law of Population, vol. ii. 

 p. 570.) Saddler's work was published in 1830, when 

 the birthrate was rising. 



Quoting such evidence as that provided by the failure 

 of the peerage to reproduce itself, Saddler furnished a 

 very effective refutation of many of the conclusions of 

 Malthus ; but he failed to offer any explanation of the 

 mechanism by which the law operates, and he embodied 

 his own conclusions in the assertion that " fertility varies 

 inversely as the density of population." The transparent 

 absurdity of this formula delivered him as an easy prey 



