INCREASE OF THE POPULATION. 289 



has no practical application. Consider, for instance, 

 Malthus's reasoning in favour of late marriages, and 

 the evidence which has been adduced from the expe- 

 rience of different countries where folk marry either 

 exceptionally early or exceptionally late. Has any 

 couple, since Malthus propounded his views, either 

 deferred their marriage because they accepted his 

 reasoning, or hastened their marriage because they 

 rejected his conclusions? Imagine a young lover 

 urging the lady not yet to name the day (or the lady 

 declining to do so, for the population question belongs 

 equally to both sexes), because ' it has been shown by 

 Mr. Malthus, in his Essay on Population, second 

 edition, 1803, that among all the preventive and 

 positive checks upon the rapid increase of population, 

 the prudential restraint from marriage, with conduct 

 strictly moral during the period of such restraint, is 

 the most desirable, and, in fact, the only proper one ! ' 

 The actual rate of increase of population, again, under 

 ordinary conditions, and the relation of this increase 

 to the means of subsistence in countries densely, 

 moderately, and thinly peopled, are matters full of 

 interest in themselves, but not having the least bearing 

 on the conduct of individual members of the community. 

 If the bulk of the population were neither able ,to 

 regulate their own conduct, nor (which is another 

 matter, by the way) in the habit of so doing, if they 

 at every stage of life waited always to hear what the 

 British Association or the Social Science Congress had 

 m. u 



