192 ROOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



unparalleled share of luxurious wealtli, while the masses are- 

 struggling for the barest subsistence. 



All other things being equal, it follows that in the country 

 where Nature's gratuitous stores of wealth, as regards food 

 and other essential products, far exceeds the power of it& 

 inhabitants to utilise, yet, notwithstanding the comparative 

 insignificance of its accumulated wealth in exchange, its 

 inhabitants on the average are individually happier, and enjoy 

 a much larger share of material comforts, than the inhabitants 

 of countries, however great the aggregate wealth, but whose 

 natural resources as regards food products are far below the 

 local requirement of its teeming inhabitants. 



Two nations standing in this relation to each other would 

 correspond to the relation of two individuals where one is the 

 privileged capitalist or buyer, and the other the unprivileged, 

 seller of labour service. In other words, the latter would be 

 in the position of the needy Esau in being foi'ced to sell his 

 whole birthright to preserve his life ; the former would occupy 

 the favourable position of Jacob, who had merely to part with, 

 a portion of his surplus of primary wants (red pottage) to 

 secure a large augmentation to his wealth of pleonexia. 



This, unfortunately for many old centres of civilisation, is 

 no overdrawn statement — the creation of enthusiastic declama- 

 tion or sentimentality — for if we take one of the most vigorous 

 countries of Europe (England), with its untold wealth in the 

 aggregate, and compare it with the young colony of Victoria,., 

 we may readily demonstrate the verity of what has been 

 alleged. 



Population Difficulties, or the Struggle for 

 Existence. 



Darwin (page 52, Origin of Species) has observed " that 

 in a state of nature almost every full-grown plant annually 

 produces seed, and amongst animals there are few which do 

 not annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert that all 

 plants and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical 

 ratio — that all would rapidly stock every station in which 

 they could anyhow exist. And this geometrical tendency to- 

 increase must be checked by destruction at some period of 

 life," and, as an inevitable consequence, he goes on to add 

 " that each individual lives by a struggle at some period of 

 its life, that heavy destruction falls either on the young or 

 old during each generation, or at recurrent intervals. Lighten 

 any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the 

 number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to 

 any amount." 



These considerations, when fully appreciated, form the- 

 foundation of the problem of Malthus.* 



* An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus. (2 vols, London, 1826.) 



