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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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s # a 4 fc § 4 ike ** me , or a &tprter power # f prepigBtipg its tpttfie * tfcpp a b * m , iiH it fa * s ove * sproa 4 ft * w )» a ) $ * a * t ]| , tHl there is n # kiMr n ^ room for it to grow rc tpwreag fitttfar * A busbel of when * will * cm m ytdwito t fiej ^ i tfee produce ef thai fietf . will saw twenty fields , and p ^ tjhic * twenty birye ^ ts . Till there are no longer fields ta saw , thatis , till ^ country q ? the earth i $ exhausted , the means of subsistence will go on increasing in more than a geometrical ratio ; will more than double itself
ill every generation q * season , and will more than keep pace with tfa * progress of population ; for this is supposed only to double itself where it is uneheek ^ d , every twenty years . Tharefote it is not true , as an ab ~ stra ^ proposition , tha * , of iUetf , or in the nature of the growth pt ihe prodiu ^ of the earth , fi > od can only increase in the snailrpace progress #£ an arithmetical ratio » whiW population goes on at a swinging gemratrieai rate ; for the food keeps pace , or more than keeps pace , with the ptomJai tion , ychile there is rootp , to grow it jn ^ and after that room is fifieq . } ip , it does not go on , even in that arithmetical ratio-r— \ t does noj ipucr ^ as e at ail , or very little . That is , the ratio , instead of being always true , 'is never true at all . "—Political Essays * p . 402 .
It must be admitted , however , that Hazlitt has only dealt with the argupaent as for as relates to granular suppU $ s and has not discussed tbe question as to animal food . $ * eithfet does he recommend mankind to adopt a vegetable diet . We must therefore suppose that he did not consider it necessary to speafc of animal fopd , because the growth and increase of beast aiM
bird depends entirely on the produce of the earth . Then , as to fish , there seems hardly any bounds to their prolific capacities , and we Jiave only to recollect how immense a portion of fpod the Chinese obtain by their fishing arrangements , to be convinced that the sea is at present " quite uncultivated , " the finny tribe having never yet been " put upon their mettle . "
" All that is true of Mr Malthua ' doctrine , then , is this—that the tendency qf population to increase remains , after the power of the earth to produce uxQre food is gone ; that the one is limited , the other unli mited . * This is enough for the morality of the question ; his matheq ** tics are altogether spurious ... JEntirely groundless as they are , they have still been of the greatest use to Mr Malthus , in alarming the imaginations and confounding the understandings of his readers . For , if the case had been represented as it stands , the increase of population would have
seemed , till the limits of the earth were full , a great moral good ; sad ' alter they > were passed , a physical impossibility , the state of society remaining the same . But , by means of the arithmetical and geometrical aeries , ever present ta the mental eye , and overlaying the whole question , whether applicable to it or not , it seems , first , as if this inordinate ftad unequal pressure of population , on the means of subsistence , was at all ri
timps , and i > i aj ^ l rcujnstapces , equally to be dreaded and paiially inevitable ; and agajn . as if , the mpre that population advanced , tfie greater the evil became , the actual excess as well as the tendency to excess . 'F o * ? Mmttmt and life , and the sanies and imagipAfion , are thus iota to be in ( be « mm 4 l 4 ftitejr M 09 tutyert to a ml lor law .
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Jp *** + t qfa . JMd ** c * in Norway | g
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1836, page 663, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2663/page/11/
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