An essay on the principle of population, or, A view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions / by T.R. Malthus.

  • Malthus, T. R. (Thomas Robert), 1766-1834.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the principle of population, or, A view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions / by T.R. Malthus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/584 (page 6)
    sent average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under cir- cumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio. The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together, will he very striking. Let us call the popu- lation of this island eleven millions; and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years, the popula- tion would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. In the next period the population would be eighty-eight millions, and the means of subsist- ence just equal to the support of half that number. And, at the con- clusion of the first century, the population would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions, leaving a population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for. Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded ; and, supposing the present population equal to 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 population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 0 ; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable. In this supposition 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 subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power. CHAPTER PI. OF TIIE GENERAL CHECKS TO POPULATION, AND THE MODE OF THEIR OPERATION. The ultimate check to population appears then to be a want of food, arising necessarily from the different ratios according to which population and food increase. But this ultimate check is never the immediate check, except in cases of actual famine. The immediate check may be slated to consist in all those customs, and all those diseases, which seem to be generated by a scarcity of