An essay on the principle of population, or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions / By T.R. Malthus ... In two volumes.

  • Thomas Robert Malthus
Date:
1809
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the principle of population, or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions / By T.R. Malthus ... In two volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and the mode of their operation. exposing of children more frequent, and both the probability and fatality of wars and epidemics will be considerably greater; and these causes will probably continue their operation till the popula- tion is sunk below the level of the food; and then the return to comparative plenty will again pro- duce an increase, and, after a certain period, its further progress will again be checked by the same causes. ^ But without attempting to establish these pro- gressive and retrograde movements in different countries, which would evidently require more minute histories than we possess, and which the progress of civilization naturally tends to counter- act, the following propositions are intended to be proved: 1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population invariably increases, where the ^ Sir James Steuart very justly compares the generative faculty to a spring loaded with a variable weight, [Polit. Econ. vol i. b. i. c. 4. p. 20.] which would of course pro- duce exactly that kind of oscillation which has been men-^ tinned. Tn the first book of his Political Economy, he has explained many parts of the subject of population very ably.
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