APPENDIX. 481 



resource which coukl not be of long duration. It cannot 

 therefore under any circumstances be considered as an ade- 

 quate remedy. The latter position is a matter of opinion, 

 and may rationally be held by any person who sees reason 

 to think it well founded. It appears to me, I confess, that 

 experience most decidedly contradicts it; but to those who 

 think otherwise, there is nothing more to be said than that 

 they are bound in consistency to acquiesce in the necessary 

 consequences of their opinion. These consequences are, 

 that the poverty and wretchedness arising from a redundant 

 population, or, in other words, from very low wages and 

 want of employment, are absolutely irremediable, and must 

 be continually increasing as the population of the earth pro- 

 ceeds ; and that all the efforts of legislative wisdom and 

 private charity, though they may afford a wholesome and 

 beneficial exercise of human virtue, and may occasionally 

 alter the distribution and vary the pressure of human misery, 

 can do absolutely nothing towards diminishing the general 

 amount or checking the increasing weight of this pressure. 



Mr. Weyland's work is of a much more elaborate de- 

 scription than that of Mr. Grahame. It has also a very 

 definite object in view : and although, when he enters into 

 the details of his subject, he is compelled entirely to agree 

 with me respecting the checks which practically keep down 

 population to the level of the means of subsistence, and 

 has not in fact given a single reason for the slow progress of 

 population in the advanced stages of society, that does not 

 clearly and incontrovertibly come under the heads of moral 

 restraint, vice, or misery ; yet it must be allowed that he sets 

 out with a bold and distinct denial of my premises, and 

 finishes, as he ought to do from such a beginning, by draw- 

 ing the most opposite conclusions. 



After stating fairly my main propositions, and adverting 

 to the conclusion which I have drawn from them, Mr. Wey- 

 land says, " Granting the premises, it is indeed obvious that 

 " this conclusion is undeniable."* 



I desire no other concession than this ; and if my pre- 

 mises can be shewn to rest on unsolid foundations, I will 

 most readily give up the inferences I have drawn from them. 



To determine the point here at issue it cannot be neces- 



• Principles of Piipulation and Production, p. 15. 

 vol.. II. 11 



