POPULATION. 
4S3 
increasing, must be gradually diminishing; 
but population, could it be' supplied with 
food, would go on with unexhausted vigour, 
and the increase of one period would furnish 
the power of a greater increase the next, and 
this without any limit. In order to illustrate 
this point, let it be supposed that by the best 
possible policy, and great encouragements 
to agriculture, the annual produce of Great 
Britain could be doubled in the first twenty- 
five years ; in the next twenty-five years, it 
is impossible to suppose, that the produce 
could be quadrupled ; it would be contrary 
to all knowledge of the properties of land. 
Let it then Ire supposed, that the yearly ad- 
ditions which might be made to the former 
average produce, instead of decreasing, 
which they certainly would do, were to re- 
main the same ; and that the produce of 
Great Britain might be increased every twen- 
ty-live years, by a quantity equal to\vhat it 
at present produces. The most enthusi- 
astic speculator cannot suppose a greater 
increase than this ; in a few centuries it would 
make every acre of land in the island like a 
garden. If this supposition is applied to the 
whole earth, it will appear that the means of 
subsistence, under circumstances the most 
favourable to human industry, could not pos- 
sibly be made to increase faster than in an 
arithmetical ratio. 
Mr. Malthus shews the necessary effects 
of these two different rates of increase, and 
observes, that taking the whole earth, by 
which , means emigration is excluded, and 
supposing the present population equal 1o 
a thousand millions, the human species would 
increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 
64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 
5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries, the popu- 
I lation would be to the means of subsistence 
I as 256 to 9; in three centuries, as 4096 to 
13 ; and in two thousand years the difference 
would be almost incalculable. In this sup- 
positioiij no limits whatever are placed to the 
produce of the earth. It may increase for 
ever, and be greater than any assignable 
quantity ; yet still the power of population 
being in every period so much superior, the 
increase of the human species can only be 
kept down to the level of the means of sub- 
sistence, by the constant operation of the 
strong law of necessity, acting as a check 
upon the greater power. 
From these principles, Mr. Malthus de- 
duces the following propositions: 1. Popu- 
lation is necessarily limited by the means of 
subsistence. 2. Population invariably in- 
creases, w here the means of subsistence in- 
crease, unless prevented by some very pow- 
erful and obvious checks. 3. The checks 
which repress the superior power of popu- 
lation, and keep its effects on a level with the 
means of subsistence, are all resolvable into 
moral restraint, vice, and misery. 
Moral restraint, or the determination to 
defer or decline matrimony from a consider- 
ation of the inconveniences or deprivations 
to which a large portion of the community 
would subject themselves by pursuing the 
dictate of nature, Mr. Malthus denominates 
the preventive check ; and whatever con- 
tributes to shorten the natural duration of 
human life (as all unwholesome occupations, 
severe labour, ahd exposure to the seasons; 
extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, 
great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole 
train of common diseases and epidemics, 
wars, pestilence, plague, and famine) are the 
positive checks to population. From a re- 
view' of the former and present state of so- 
ciety in different countries, it appears, that 
in modern Europe, the positive checks to 
population prevail less, and the preventive 
check more, than in past time, and in the 
more uncivilized parts of the world. 
In the actual state of every society, the 
natural progress of population has thus been 
constantly and powerfully restrained; ancl 
as no form of government, however excellent, 
no plans of emigration, no benevolent insti- 
tutions, no degree or direction of national in- 
dustry, can prevent the action of a great 
check to increase in some form or other ; as 
we must submit to it as an inevitable law of 
nature ; it becomes highly desirable to ascer- 
tain how it may take place with the least 
possible prejudice to the virtue and happi- 
ness of human society. Now, as it is clearly 
better that the check to population should 
arise from a foresight of the difficulty of 
rearing a family, ancl the fear of dependant 
poverty, than from the actual presence of 
pain and sickness ; moral restraint is a virtue, 
the practice of which is most earnestly to 
be encouraged. If no man was to marry, 
who had not a fair prospect of providing for 
the presumptive issue of his marriage, popu- 
lation would be kept within bounds by the 
preventive check; men and women would 
marry later in life, but in the full hope of 
their reward ; they would acquire habits of 
industry and frugality, and inculcate the same 
in the minds of their children. Mr. Mal- 
thus does not go so far as to propose, that 
any restraint upon marriage between two 
persons of proper age should be enforced by 
law, but insists, that the contract of mar- 
riages between persons who have no other 
prospect of providing for their offspring than 
by throwing them on a parish, should not 
be, as it is at present, encouraged by law. 
One of the effects of the poor-laws, is to en- 
courage marriage between persons of this 
description ; who well know that, if they can- 
not provide for their own children, the pa- 
rish must take them off their hands. These 
laws thus create mouths, but are perfectly 
incompetent to procure food for them: in- 
stead of raising the real price of labour, by 
increasing the demand for labourers, they 
tend to overstock the market, to reduce the 
demand, and diminish the value. They 
raise the price of provisions by increasing the 
consumption, and by supplying the parochial 
pensioners with the means of obtaining 
them. In consequence of this, the class of 
industrious labourers who are above solicit- 
ing assistance, are oftentimes sunk in the 
scale of misery, much lower than others who 
have thrown off all sense of shame, and all 
the honest feelings of independance. In a 
moral point of view, the effects of these laws 
are equally injurious to the best interests of 
society. Mr. Malthus, however, is aware, 
that the immediate and abrupt abolition of 
the present system, would produce much 
temporary distress; he suggests therefore 'a 
plan for the gradual abolition of these laws, 
by proposing, that no child born from any 
marriage taking place after the expiration of 
a year horn the date of the law, and no ille- 
gitimate child born two years from the same 
date, should be entitled to parish-assistance. 
3 P 2 
This, he remarks, would operate as a fair, 
distinct, and precise notice, which no man 
could mistake; and without pressing hard 
upon any particular individual, would at 
once throw off the rising generation from that 
miserable and helpless dependance upon the 
government and the rich, the moral as well 
as the physical consequences of wffiich, are 
almost incalculable. 
'l'iie progress of the population of the 
world, and its present total amount, cannot 
be ascertained with much precision ; as there 
are no sufficient grounds on which such a 
computation can be formed, till within a very 
late period, and that only in a few countries. 
Sir W. Petty, in 1632, stated the population 
of the world at only 320 millions : it has 
been estimated by some writers at about 
730 millions, by others at upwards of 900 
millions. Mr. Wallace, of Edinburgh, con- 
jectured it might amount to 1000 millions; 
and this number has since been generally 
adopted by those who have noticed the sub- 
ject. It is a point on which accuracy cannot 
be expected, but a nearer approximation to 
the truth appears by no means impracti- 
cable. A strong presumption that the inhabi- 
tants of the earth at present exceed consider- 
ably a thousand millions, arises from the cir- 
cumstance, that, in almost every country 
where the people have been numbered, or 
sufficient data furnished for computing their 
number, it has been found considerably 
greater than it had been previously sup- 
posed. In Great Britain, the most correct 
estimates did not make the population ex- 
ceed seven or eight millions; whereas, by 
the late enumeration, it appears to amount 
to very near eleven millions. France, the 
population of which was estimated by Air. 
Susmilch at sixteen millions, by M. Des- 
landes and by Air. Gibbon at 20 millions, and 
which M. Alessance endeavoured to prove 
amounted to near 24 millions, appeared from 
the returns of births and burials, to contain 
at the commencement of the revolution near 
30 millions of inhabitants. Spain, which with . 
Portugal had been estimated by M. Des- 
landes to contain only six millions of persons, 
and by Mr. Gibbon eight millions, was found 
by the enumeration in 1787, to contain alone 
10,409,879. Russia, about the year 1765, 
was supposed to contain about 15 millions 
of inhabitants; but according to the calcu- 
lation given by Air. Coxe, grounded upon an 
authentic list of the persons paying the poll- 
tax, they amounted to 26,766,360, and in- 
cluding the provinces not subject to the poll- 
tax, the calculation for the year 1796 
amounted to 36,000,000 inhabitants. A great 
part of this vast empire is in Asia ; but there 
appears from these and similar accounts great 
reason to conclude, that the population of 
Europe, which has usually been supposed to 
be about 100 millions, is considerably great- 
er; and the following statement is probably 
not far from the truth : 
Spain 
Portugal - ' - 
France 
Italy and its islands 
Switzerland - 
Germany 
Holland 
Flanders 
Great Britain aird Ireland 
10.500.000 
2.300.000 
25.000. 000 
11 . 000 . 000 
1.800.000 
20,000,000 
2,800,000 
1,800,000 
'15,100,000 
