Ch. i. the Increase of Population and Food. 7 



increase in a limited territory must be of a totally 

 different nature from the ratio of the increase of 

 population. A thousand millions are just as 

 easily doubled every twenty-five years by the 

 power of population as a thousand. But the food 

 to support the increase from the greater number 

 will by no means be obtained with the same faci- 

 lity. Man is necessarily confined in room. When 

 acre has been added to acre till all the fertile land 

 is occupied, the yearly increase of food must 

 depend upon the melioration of the land already 

 in possession. This is a fund, which, from the 

 nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be 

 gradually diminishing. But population, could it 

 be supplied with food, would go on with unex- 

 hausted vigour ; and the increase of one period 

 would furnish the power of a greater increase the 

 next, and this without any limit. 



From the accounts we have of China and Japan, 

 it may be fairly doubted, whether the best-di- 

 rected efforts of human industry could double the 

 produce of these countries even once in any num- 

 ber of years. There are many parts of the globe, 

 indeed, hitherto uncultivated, and almost unoc- 

 cupied ; but the right of exterminating, or driving 

 into a corner where they must starve, even the 

 inhabitants of these thinly-peopled regions, will 

 be questioned in a moral view. The process of 

 improving their minds and directing their industry 

 would necessarily be slow ; and during this time, 

 as population would regularly keep pace with the 

 increasing produce, it would rarely happen that 

 a great degree of knowledge and industry would 



