APPENDIX. 485 



conclusion, and one more consonant both to theory and 

 experience, to say that the natural tendency to a range of 

 a certain extent, or the force impressed upon the ball, was 

 always the same, and the actual range, whether long or 

 short, only altered by external resistance; than to conclude 

 that the different distances to which the balls reached must 

 proceed from some mysterious change in the iialuial ten- 

 dency of each bullet at different times, although no observ- 

 able difference could be noticed either in the barrel or the 

 charge. 



I leave Mr. VVeyland to determine which would be the 

 conclusion of the natural philosopher, who was observing 

 the different velocities and ranges of projectiles passing 

 through resisting media of different densities ; and 1 do not 

 see why the moral and political philosopher should proceed 

 upon principles so totally opposite. 



But the only arguments of Mr. Weyland against the ;?«« 

 tnral tendency of the human race to increase faster than the 

 means of subsistence, are a few of these illustrations which 

 he has so unhappily applied, together with the acknowledged 

 fact, that countries under different circumstances and in dif- 

 ferent stages of their progress, do really increase at very 

 different rates. 



Without dwelling therefore longer on such illustrations, 

 it may be observed, with regard to the fact of the different 

 jates of increase in different countries, tliat as long as it is 

 a law of our nature that man cannot live without food, 

 these different rates are as absolutely and strictly necessary 

 as the differences in the power of producing food in coun- 

 tries more or less exhausted : and that to infer from these 

 different rates of increase, as tliey are actually found to take 

 place, that " population has a natural tendency to keep 

 " within the powers of the soil to afford it subsistence iit 

 " every gradation through which so-nety passes," is just as 

 rational as to infer that every man has a natural tcndenci/ to 

 remain in prison who is necessarily confined to it by four 

 strong walls; or that the pine of the crowded Norwegian 

 forest has no natural tendency to shoot out lateral branches, 

 because there is no room for their growth. And yet this is 

 Mr. Weyland's first and grand proposition, on which the 

 whole of his work turns ! 



But though Mr. Weyland has not proved, or approached 

 towards proving, that the natural tendency of population tg 



