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    firSt is a calculation of abstract power , the second of power limited by actual circumstance . But for this fundamental sophism , a geometrical ratio might as easily be shewn of the increase of food as of persons tot consume

    it . - In themselves , considered apart from impediments , vegetables have as great a tendency to multiply , or rather much greater , than man . The animals which serve us for food are many of them , by nature , rendered more fruitful . It is true , a point must arrive , when subsistence can increase no

    further , and when the population of the world shall retain its tendency to multiply . But , in the mean time , the boasted ratios , the arithmetical progression of food , and the geometrical progression of consumers , are mere

    chimeras . They are built , in the first instance , on the assumption of an inherent power which can never be brought into action $ and , in the second , on a comparison of this abstraction with a capability within the powers of human enterprise .

    The object of Mr . Maithus is , I apprehend , to establish , that the principle " of population is the main-spring of human evils , and that as this fruitful source of woe is inseparably connected with our nature , all hopes of the material improvement of the world are visionary and baseless . Now ,

    what is the kind of evidence bv which this proposition is supported ? A mass of facts is brought forward tending- to shew that in every known country , and every state of society ,

    there are certain existing evils ; vice , misery , war , crowded cities and unwholesome labours ; which tend to repress the increase of human life , or to limit its duration . Now , the reader

    is . led by a chain of rapid deduction to suppose that between these checks to population and the fatal tendency of man to increase , there is some uoysterious connexion . The argument to be complete , requires that these evils

    should either immediately or remotely arise from the principle itself ; from the superfluity of human life , or at least , its constant tendency to overflow its prescribed bouiadaries . But the fact is directly otherwise . So far from the miseries which have afflicted man .

    arising from the necessity of repressing population , tbat very necessity was never discovered till very recent pe-

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    riods . Mr . Malthas himself repeatedly demonstrates this . He complains that governments have been hitherto actuated by a mistaken policy , and that instead of directing their wisdom to the depression , they have framed

    all their measures to promote the increase of their people . There is , in short , no connexion between war , disease , pestilence and vice , and the supposed difference between the ratio on which the system of Mr . Maithus is founded . He has not shewn that

    the principle of population has , in any age or country , produced one great evil with which man has been visited . Instead of inferring from the evidence which he has adduced , that the tendency of man to unlimited increase has occasioned the miseries of the

    world , it would be much more logical to speak of it as a wise provision of heaven , without which the follies and crimes of luxury and ambition would have extinguished our race , and left the world a barren and voiceless solitude . But the admirers of Mr . Maithus

    will still , perhaps , contend that , supposing the checks to population removed , in consequence of an amelioration of the human character , the principle will supply their place like the serpent of Aaron . They will maintain that if vice is . diminished , if wars cease , if contentions are bushed

    for ever , the influx of human beings into the world will only change without lessening its miseries . Does not all experience , all history , all knowledge , contradict this blasting phantom ? All the improvements which the world has made , every step from

    savage to social life , every gradation from barbarism to refinement , proves that it is utterly destitute of truth . The same objection might have been raised with equal force to the first enclosure , the first town , the first colony . It migfot then have been said , " you are extending the means of

    subsistence , indeed , but population will increase much faster ; by augmenting the facilities of marriage , in holding out a prospect of food you are deluding the poor ; by increased produce ,, you are preparing the way f < i > r starvation . " Melancholy , indeed , would have been the condition of man had such doctrines then been attended with success ! Their unary now would

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    On the System of Malikus . 533

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1817, page 533, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2468/page/21/