HISTOEICAL 23 



riches of a country ; we see how impotent Spain is for want of 

 inhabitants with their mines of gold and silver and the best ports 

 and soil in the world ; and we see how powerful their numbers 

 make the United Provinces with bad harbours and the worst 

 climate upon earth. It is perhaps better that a people should 

 want country than that a country should want people. When 

 there are but few inhabitants and a large territory, there is nothing 

 but sloth and poverty ; but when great numbers are confined to a 

 narrow compass of ground, necessity puts upon them invention, 

 frugality, and industry ; which in a nation are always recompensed 

 with power and riches.' ^ The latter refers more than once to the 

 subject. ' Whatever tends to the population of a country tends 

 to the improvement of it.' ^ ' Most nations in the civilized 

 parts of the world are more or less rich or poor proportionable to 

 the poverty or plenty of their people and not to the sterility of 

 their lands.' ^ To these quotations we may add one from Sir 

 Wilham Temple : ' I believe the true and original ground of trade 

 to be a great multitude of people crowded into a small compass 

 of land.' 4 



It would be possible to quote many similar remarks from 

 authors who wrote in the following century. Frederick the Great 

 had very decided opinions. In a letter to Voltaire he says : ' Je 

 regarde les hommes comme une horde de cerfs dans le pare d'un 

 grand seigneur et qui n'ont pas d'autre fonction que de peupler 

 et remplir I'enclos.' ^ Hume speaks of ' the general rule that the 

 happiness of any society and its populousness are necessary 

 attendants '.^ Adam Smith says ' that the most decisive mark 

 of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of 

 its inhabitants '.® Nevertheless that which interests us most in 

 the authors of this period is the growing interest in other aspects 

 of the subject. 



5. Before referring to the more or less close anticipations of 

 the views of Malthus we may note that these optimistic views 

 were not everywhere accepted. In England particularly, towards 

 the end of the sixteenth century, several writers expressed a dread 

 of overpopulation. According to Holinshed there were some 



* Davenant, Political and Commercial Works, vol. i, p. 16. * Child, New 



Discourse upon Trade, ch. x, p. 181. ^ Child, loc. cit., p. 179. * Temple, 



Observations upon the United Provinces, p. 164. * Quoted by Ferdy, Die 



kunstliche Beschrdnkung der Kinderzahl, p. 85. ' Quoted by Cannan, History 



oj the Theories of Production and Distribution, p. 124. 



