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In the year 1798 the Rev. Thomas Malthus published liis " llssay 

 on the Principle of Population," in which he argued with consider- 

 able ability, and as a fact, that it was the tendency of population to 

 increase in a geometrical ratio, while subsistence " to be obtained 

 from land under circumstances the most favourable to human 

 industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an 

 arithmetical ratio" ; which, being interpreted means that in certain 

 periods of time (he put them at 25 years), human beings tend to 

 increase according to the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, &c., ie. doubling their 

 numbers every quarter of a century, while subsistence increases as 

 the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., i.e., adding only an equal quantity 

 during each of those periods. He drew the conclusion that unless 

 something was done, either by man himself, or by the operation of 

 natural laws, to check this rapid increase, the earth would in a 

 comparatively short time be overcrowded. 



The essay made a great stir ; its principle was accepted, 

 apparently without any veiy close scrutiny ; and with an occasional 

 opponent, and with a few modifications has kept its ground, being 

 adopted in the current works on Political Economy, that science of 

 tendencies destined never to be realized, for which it was well 

 adapted. With occasional opposition, I say, still oftener with a 

 demand tor proofs. For after all it is but a tendency ; 



" Only this and nothing more," 

 a tendency which, save at rare intervals, and under exceptional 

 and local circumstances, has never been fulfilled. Malthus, how- 

 ever, argued from it as if it were being constantly fulfilled, and 

 as if it would soon be an accomplished fact for the whole habitable 

 world. But no theory can hold its ground unless facts fit in with 

 it, and there seem to me to be a few which will not accommodate 

 themselves to this one, and notably — that although the earth 

 has been inhabited no one dare say how many thousands of years, 

 and this "tendency" has been at work the whole time, it is not 

 yet fully populated, — it is not half full. How are we then to ex- 

 plain its almost universal acceptance ? Well, like many other 

 things repeated over and over again, and especially if repeated in 

 high sounding terms, it gets passively acquiesced in. " Geometrical 

 ratio," and " arithmetical ratio," have a solid mathematical ring 

 of truth about them, and so people accept without further enquiry 

 the statements in which they are involved ; just as the electors of 

 a certain constituency accepted a candidate unreservedly after being 

 told that he "had succeeded in the exact rectification of a circular 

 arc, and had likewise discovered the equation of the lunar caustic." 

 Malthus's great example was that of the North American Colonies, 

 the population of which doubled itself in twenty-five years ; but 

 this of course was a very exceptional case, and cannot be taken to 



