26 HISTOKICAL 



said Mirabeau, and the remark could be paralleled many 

 times over.i Frequent references to the vast power of human 

 increase may be found much earlier. In his History of the World 

 Kaleigh had remarked that were it not for wars, famines, pesti- 

 lences, and so on, a teeming population all the world over would 

 have resulted long ago.^ Machiavelli refers more than once to 

 the existence of checks. He attributed the barbarian invasions 

 in the later days of Kome to an unusually rapid increase of the 

 tribes beyond the Ehine and the Danube.^ One of the most 

 interesting references to the subject is to be found in the work of 

 Botero from which we have already quoted. * I say, then, that 

 the augmentation of Cities proceedeth partly out of the virtue 

 generative of men, and partly out of the virtue nutritive of Citties. 

 The virtue generative is without doubt to this day the very same, 

 or at least such as it was three thousand years past. So that if 

 there were no other impediment or let therein, the propagation of 

 mankind would increase without end and the augmentation of 

 Citties would be without terme. And if it do not increase in 

 infinite, I must needs say, it proceedeth out of the defect of 

 nutriment and sustenance sufficient for it.' * Later on he con- 

 tinues : ' although men were as apt to generation in the height 

 and pride of the Eoman Empire, as in the first beginning thereof ; 

 yet, for all that, the people increased not proportionately. For 

 the virtue nutritive of Citties had no power to go further. . . . 

 By the selfe same reason, mankinde growne to a certain complete 

 number, hath growne no further. And it is three thousand years 

 agone and more, that the world was replenished as full with people 

 as it is at present.' ^ 



Wliat are perhaps more remarkable than these references to the 

 relation of numbers to the food-supply, so far as anticipations of 

 Malthus are concerned, are discussions mentioning the ratios which 

 are found from time to time. In the Primitive Origination oj 

 Mankind, Sir Matthew Hale endeavours to show that mankind 

 must have had a beginning and must have an end, and finds 

 support for this thesis in the facts regarding human fecundity. 



' ' There is a principle in human society by which population is perpetually 

 kept down to the level of the means of subsistence,' said Godwin in 1798 (Political 

 Justice, Bk. VIII, p. 518). Many similar remarks are to be found in the writings 

 of the Physiocrats. See, for instance, Turgot, Sur le Comvyerce, section 7, and 

 Quesnay, Analyse du Tableau Economique, chs. xxv and xxvi. 



- Raleigh, History oj the World, in collected Works, vol, ii, p. 25. 



' Machiavelli, History of Florence, Bk. I, p. 5. •» Botero, loc. cit., p. 73. 



^ Botero, loc. cit., p. 75. 



