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"immediate. At every period during the pro

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gress of cultivation, from the present moment "to the time when the whole earth was become "like a garden, the distress for want of food "would be constantly pressing on all mankind, if they were equal. Though the produce of the earth might be increasing every year, popu"lation would be increasing much faster; and the "redundancy must necessarily be repressed by "the periodical or constant action of vice and "misery."

In answer to this statement (allowing however that it is a fair inference from Wallace's reasoning, and from our author's own principle) I would simply ask, whether during this progress of cultivation, the distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind more than it does at present. Let us suppose that men remain just as vicious, as imprudent, as regardless of their own interests and those of others as they are at present, let us suppose them to

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In the second edition, it says, moral restraint, vice or misery. What are we to think of a man who writes a book to prove that vice and misery are the only security for the happiness of the human race, and then writes another to say, that vice and folly are not the ply security, but that our only resource must be either in vice and folly, or in wisdom and virtue? This is like making a white skin part of the definition of a man, and defending it by saying that they are all white, except those who are black or tawny.

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continue just what they are, through all the stages of improved cultivation to the time when the whole earth was become like a garden, would this in the smallest degree detract from the benefit? Would nothing indeed be gained by the earth's being cultivated like a garden, that is, by its producing ten times the quantity of food that it does at present, and being able to maintain ten times the quantity of inhabitants in the same degree of comfort and happiness that it does at present, because forsooth they would not at the same time be ten times better

off than they are now? Is it an argument against adding to the happiness of mankind ten-fold, by increasing their number, their condition remaining the same, that we cannot add to it a hundred-fold, by increasing their number and improving their condition proportionably? Or is it any objection to increasing the means of subsistence by the improved cultivation of the earth, that the population would keep pace with it? It appears to me that there must be a particular perversity, some egregious bias in the mind of any person who can either deny the inference to be drawn from these questions, or evade it as a matter of indifference, by equivocation and subterfuge. We might as well assert that because it is most likely that the inhabitants of the rest of Europe are not better, nor indeed

quite so well off as the people of England, that it would therefore be no matter if the whole continent of Europe were sunk in the sea, as if human life was merely to be considered as a sample of what the thing is, and as if when we have a sample of a certain quality, all the rest might be very well spared, as of no value. As however I conceive that Mr. Malthus is not a man to be moved either by common feelings or familiar illustrations, I shall venture to lay down one dry maxim on the subject, which he will get over as well as he can, namely, that an improved cultivation of the earth, and a consequent increase of food must necessarily lead to one or other of these two consequences, either that a greater number of people will be maintained in the same degree of comfort and happiness, other things being the same, or that means will be afforded for maintaining an equal number in greater ease, plenty, and affluence. It is plain either that existence is upon the whole a blessing and that the means of existence are on that account desirable; that consequently an increased population is doubly a blessing, and an increase in the means of existence doubly desirable: or else life is an evil, and whatever tends to promote it is an evil, and in this case it would be well if all the inhabitants of the earth were to die of some easy death to-morrow!

For my own part, "who am no great clerk," I cannot by any efforts, of which I am capable, separate these two propositions, that it is desirable either that population should have stood still at first, or that it should go on increasing till the earth is absolutely full; or in other words, I see no rational alternative between the principle of extermination (as far as it is in our power) and the principle of the utmost possible degree of po pulousness. It is, I conceive, an incontrovertible axiom, that the proportion between the popula tion and food being given (and Mr. Malthus tells us that it holds nearly the same in all the stages of society) the actual increase of population is to be considered as so much clear gain, as so much got into the purse, as so much addition to the sum of human hapiness. Mr. Malthus says in another place, (second edition p. 357), "The only "point in which I differ from M. Condorcet in "this description" [of the evils arising from increased population,]" is with regard to the pe

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riod, when it may be applied to the human 66 race. M. Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable, but at an æra extreme

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ly distant. If the proportion between the "natural increase of population and food, which "was stated in the beginning of this essay, and "which has received considerable confirmation

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from the poverty that has been found to prevail "in every stage and department of human society, "be in any degree near the truth, it will appear "on the contrary, that the period, when the "number of men surpass their means of sub"sistence, has long since arrived, &c." Mr. Malthus in different parts of his work makes a great rout about the distinction between actual and relative population, and lays it down that an actual increase of population is an advantage, except when it exceeds the means of subsistence yet he here seems to treat the proportion between the increase of population, and food, which he says has always continued pretty much the same, as the only thing to be attended to, and to represent the progressive increase of the actual population, unless we could at the same time banish poverty entirely from the world, as a matter of the most perfect indifference, or rather as the most dangerous experi ment, that could be tried. Is not this being wilfully blind to blind to the consequences of his own reasoning? Oh! but, says Mr. Malthus, you do not state the case fairly. If men were to continue what they are at present; if there were the same proportionable quantity of vice, and misery in the world, what you say would be true. Every thing would then go on as well, or indeed better than before.

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