Mr. Malthus established as a principle that the popula tion of every country is limited by the quantity of subsist ence which that country can furnish. This proposition is true only when applied to the whole terrestrial globe, or to a country which has no possibility of trade; in all other cases, foreign trade modifies it ; and, farther, which is more important, this proposition is but abstractly true,— true in a manner inapplicable to political economy. Po pulation has never reached the limit of subsistence, and probably it never will. Long before the population can be arrested by the inability of the country to produce more food, it is arrested by the inability of the population to purchase that food, or to labour in producing it.
The whole population of a state, says Mr. Malthus, may be doubled every twenty-five years; it would thus follow a geometrical progression : but the labour employ ed to meliorate a soil, already in culture, can acid to its produce nothing but quantities continually decreasing. Admitting that, during the first twenty-five years, the pro duce of land has been doubled, during the second we shall scarcely succeed in compelling it to produce a half more, then a third more, then a fourth. Thus the progress of subsistence will not follow the geometrical, but the arith metical progression ; and, in the course of two centuries, whilst the population increases, as the numbers, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, subsistence will increase not faster than the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
This reasoning, which serves as a basis to the system of Mr. Malthus, and to which he incessantly appeals, through the whole course of his book, is completely sophistical. It opposes the possible increase of the human population, considered abstractly, and without regarding circum stances, to the positive increase of animals and vegetables in a confined place, under circumstances more and more unfavourable. They ought not thus to be compared, Abstractly, the multiplication of food follows a geometri cal progression, no less than the multiplication of men. It follows it only in a much more rapid manlier. In a given space and time, this progression is not followed any more by the one species than the other. Population is arrested first, and arrests subsistence in its turn ; when the obstacle is removed, both begin again to increase, till they reach a new limit, equally common to both; and the history of the universe has never yet presented the ex ample of a country in which the multiplication of food could not be mdre rapid than that of the co-existent po pulation.
In a state absolutely savage, men live on the produce of bunting and fishing. The fish and the game are multiplied like man, in a geometrical progression, but much more rapid than the one he follows. Alan, it is true, hinders their reproduction by destroying them ; but, on the other band, they arrest his ; for it is not certainly among nations of hunters that the population is doubled every twenty five years; and whenever this destruction is suspended, the reproduction of game will be much more rapid than that of men.
The progress of civilization substitutes the pastoral life for a life of hunting; and the natural .produce of the ground, better managed, is sufficient for a much more nu merous population oilmen and of animals. The deserts, which scarcely support five hundred Cherokee hunters, would be sufficient for ten thousand Tartar shepherds, with all their flocks ; the multiplication of the latter is always much more rapid than that of men ; whilst the pro duction of a man requires twenty-five years, that of an ox requires but five, of a sheep but two, of a hog but one. The number of oxen may be douhled in six years, that of sheep in three, that of hogs may be rendered ten times as great in two years. Whenever a shepherd gains posses sion of a country formerly abandoned to hunting, the mul tiplication of his flocks will greatly precede that of his family ; when, afterwards, one of the two is arrested, the other will be so too.
But when civilization makes a new step, pastoral na tions abandon their flocks for agriculture ; and, instead of trusting to the natural productions of the vegetable king dom, they produce and multiply them by their labours. It is calculated that thirty families may live on the corn pro duced by a piece of ground, which would have supported only a single family by its produce in cattle. At the time, therefore,when a nation passes from the pastoral to the agri cultural state, it in some sense acquires a country thirty times as large as the one it formerly occupied. If the whole of this country is not cultivated, if-even it the most civilized kingdoms, there remains a vast extent of fertile land still employed in unprofitable pasturage, it is an evident plot& that other causes than of subsistence prevent the development of population.