Statement of the subject. Ratios of

wards, the increase of the human species would be evidently much greater than any increase which has been hitherto known.

T

In the northern states of America, where the means of subsistence have been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself, for above a century and a half successively, in less than in each period of twenty-five years.' Yet even during these periods, in some of the towns, the deaths exceeded the births, a circumstance which clearly proves that in those parts of the country which supplied this deficiency, the increase must have been much more rapid than the general average.

2

In the back settlements, where the sole employment is agriculture, and vicious customs and

1 It appears from some recent calculations and estimates, that from the first settlement of America, to the year 1800, the periods of doubling have been but very little above twenty years. See a note on the increase of American population in book ii. chap. xi.

2 Price's Observ. on Revers. Pay. vol. i. p. 274. Edit.

4to.

the increase of population and food.

unwholesome occupations are little known, the population has been found to double itself in fif teen years. Even this extraordinary rate of increase is probably short of the utmost power of population. Very severe labor is requisite to clear a fresh country; such situations are not in general considered as particularly healthy; and the inhabitants are probably, occasionally, subject to the incursions of the Indians, which may destroy some lives, or at any rate diminish the fruits of their industry.

2

According to a table of Euler calculated on a mortality of 1 in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to 1, the period of doubling will be only 12 years. And these proportions are not only possible suppositions, but have actually occurred for short periods in more countries than one.

Sir William Petty supposes a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years. 3

3

But to be perfectly sure that we are far within the truth, we will take the slowest of these rates of increase, a rate, in which all concurring testi

1 Id.

p. 282.

2 See this table at the end of chap. iv. book ii.

3 Polit. Arith. p. 14.

Statement of the subject. Ratios of

monies agree, and which has been repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only.

It may safely be pronounced, therefore, that population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a ge ometrical ratio.

The rate according to which the productions of the earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be so easy to determine. Of this, however, we may be perfectly certain, that the ratio of their increase must be totally of a different nature from the ratio of the increase of population. A thousand millions are just as easily doubled every twenty-five years by the power of population as a thousand. But the food to support the increase from the greater number will by no means be obtained with the same facility. Man is necessarily confined in room. When acre has been added to acre, till all the fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food must depend upon the melioration of the land already in possession. This is a stream, which, from the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be gradually di minishing. But population, could it be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigor; and the increase of one period would furnish the

the increase of population and food.

power of a greater increase the next, and this, without any limit.

it

From the accounts we have of China and Japan,

may be fairly doubted, whether the best directed efforts of human industry could double the produce of these countries even once in any number of years. There are many parts of the globe, indeed hitherto uncultivated, and almost unoccupied; but the right of exterminating, or driving into a corner where they must starve, even the inhabitants of these thinly peopled regions, will be questioned in a moral view. The process of improving their minds and directing their industry would necessarily be slow; and during this time, as population would regularly keep pace with the increasing produce, it would rarely happen that a great degree of knowledge and industry would have to operate at once upon rich unappropriated soil. Even where this might take place, as it does sometimes in new colonies, a geometrical ratio increases with such extraordinary rapidity, that the advantage could not last long. If America continue increasing, which she certainly will do, though not with the same rapidity as formerly, the Indians will be driven further and further back

Statement of the subject. Ratios of

into the country, till the whole race is ultimately exterminated.

These observations are, in a degree, applicable to all the parts of the earth, where the soil is imperfectly cultivated. To exterminate the inhabitants of the greatest part of Asia and Africa, is a thought that could not be admitted for a moment. To civilize and direct the industry of the various tribes of Tartars, and Negroes, would certainly be a work of considerable time, and of variable and uncertain success.

Europe is by no means so fully peopled as it might be. In Europe there is the fairest chance that human industry may receive its best direction. The science of agriculture has been much studied in England and Scotland; and there is still a great portion of uncultivated land in these countries. Let us consider, at what rate the produce of this island might be supposed to increase under circumstances the most favorable to improvement.

If it be allowed, that by the best possible policy, and great encouragements to agriculture, the average produce of the island could be doubled in the first twenty-five years, it will be allowing probably a greater increase than could with reason be expected.