POPULATION, the proportion of in habitants which a country or district con tains. The increase or diminution of the members of a state has at all periods been thought an object deserving the atten tion of governments ; but very different opinions have been entertained on the subject.
Some ancient nations adopted regula tions to prevent any augmentation of the number of citizens ; but in modern times it has generally been thought proper to encourage population as essential to the strength and prosperity of a state. Posi tive regulations against the increase of population are superfluous and nugatory; it is limited in every country by the means of subsistence, and if it ever actu ally passes this barrier, it must in a very short time, be restored to its former le vel. So long as there is a facility of sub sistence, men will be encouraged to ear ly marriages, and to a careful rearing of their children. In the American states, the inhabitants, particularly such as are engaged in agriculture, congratulate themselves upon the increase of their fa milies, as upon a new accession of wealth ; for the labour of their children, even in an early stage, soon redeems, and even repays with interest, the expence and trouble of rearing them. In such coun tries the wages of the labourer are high, fbr the number of labourers bears no pro, portion to the demand and to the gene ral spirit of enterprise. In many Euro pean countries, on the other hand, a large family has become a proverbial expres sion for an uncommon degree of poverty and wretchedness.
The obvious principle, that population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, has been stated, and conch/. sions drawn from it, by many different writers ; but it has lately been discussed at great length in an " Essay on the Prin. ciple of Population," by Mr. T. R. Mal thus, who has endeavoured to prove that population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, unless pre vented by some very powerful 'and obvi ous checks ; and that these checks, and the checks which repress the superior power of population, and keep its effects on a level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery. Under whatever de nomination the causes which adjust popu lation to the circumstances of the coun try may be classed, it is certain that they exist in every civilized country, and while the nature of man remains the same, they must continue to exist, although operat ing in a greater or less degree, according to the progress the country has made in cultivation, commerce, and political pow er. In the' northern states of America,
where the means of subsistence are more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and the impediments to early mar riages fewer than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population was found to double itself for some successive periods every twenty-five years, while in Great Britain, where commerce and ma nufactures have created large towns, where an almost constant supply is want ing to recruit a formidable army and na vy, and where many other causes exist which prevent any considerable increase, the population has not doubled itself in more than one hundred and fifty years.
If a powerful check to increase must exist in some form or other, Mr. Manlius observes, that it is clearly better it should arise from a ,foresight of the difficulty of rearing a family, and the fear of de pendant poverty, than from the actual presence of pain and sickness ; moral re straint, or the determination to defer or decline matrimony from a consideration of the inconveniences or deprivations to which a large portion of the community would subject themselves by pursuing the dictate of nature, is therefore a virtue, the practice of which is most earnestly to be encouraged. If no man were tomar ry, who had not a fair prospect of provid ing for the presumptive issue of his mar riage, population would be kept within proper bounds ; 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. Malthus does not actually propose that any restraint upon marriage between two persons of proper age should be enforc ed by law, but insists that the contract of marriages, between persons who have no other prospect of providing for their off spring than by throwing them on a pa rish, should not be, as it is at present, encouraged by last-. With this view he suggests a plan for the gradual abolition of the poor laws ; but, until the poor are more enlightened, and better instructed in moral duties, it is much to be feared that the total abolition of these laws would produce much more vice and misery than at present exists among them.