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 |
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Common terms and phrases
according Adam Smith agriculture appear arising average births to deaths births to marriages calculated Captain Cook causes Charlevoix checks to population China circumstances classes of society consequence considerable considered corn Corn Laws cultivation degree diminished distress effect emigration encourage England epidemics Europe evil excess famine foundling hospitals France greater number habits human improvement increase of population industry infanticide inhabitants land laws Lettres Edif lower classes Malthus manufactures means of subsistence misery mortality nature nearly necessarily necessary Norway number of births number of children number of marriages observed occasioned parish particularly perhaps period polygamy poor poor-laws poverty present prevail preventive check price of labour principal principle of population probably produce prolifickness proportion of births proportion of marriages quantity reason registers Russia Russian Empire says scarcity Scotland shew Siberia sufficient supply suppose Sussmilch Sweden tion towns tribes Vaud whole population
Popular passages
Page 2 - The race of plants, and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it.
Page 7 - Taking the whole earth, instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded; and, supposing the present population equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13 and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable.
Page 617 - HAYDN'S DICTIONARY; OF DATES, relating to all Ages and Nations. For Universal Reference. Edited by BENJAMIN VINCENT, Assistant Secretary and Keeper of the. Library of the Royal Institution of Great Britain ; and Revised for the Use of American Readers.
Page 52 - Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.
Page 2 - Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as for instance with fennel : and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as for instance with Englishmen.1 This is incontrovertibly true.
Page 5 - 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 fund, which, from the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be gradually diminishing. But population, could it be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour; and the increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase the next, and this without any limit.
Page xxvi - I happened to read for amusement ' Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances • favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work...
Page 501 - The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes...
Page xxvi - I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery to me.
Page 3 - By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.