Parallel Chapters from the First and Second Editions of An Essay on the Principle of Population |
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absolutely Adam Smith agriculture appear average produce benevolence cause certainly CHAPTER cheap soups checks to population claim of right classes of society common consequently considered constant degree difficulty diminishing doubt earth effects England essay Europe exist famine give Godwin greater number happiness human institutions improvement increase of population industry inhabitants JESUS COLLEGE land lation law of chastity laws of nature live Long Newnton lower classes mankind marriage marry means of subsistence millions misery and vice mode moral restraint necessarily necessary object observed operation parish passions perhaps period plenty poor laws popu positive checks potatoes poverty power of population powerful instinct present prevail preventive check price of labour price of provisions principle of population probably proportion putrid offals quantity of food reason rich scarcity seems shillings sufficient suppose system of equality tend tendency tion truth twenty-five undoubtedly vice and misery vicious virtue whole
Popular passages
Page 7 - The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, allpervading law of Nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law, and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.
Page 96 - Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks. 3. 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.
Page 45 - ... finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete; gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow, levels the population with the food of the world.
Page 78 - 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.
Page 6 - But towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no progress whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force at present as it did two thousand or four thousand years ago.
Page 11 - ... half that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be...
Page 7 - Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second. 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.
Page 8 - This natural inequality of the two powers of population, and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
Page 12 - ... of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power.
Page 111 - Several writers had said that it is the tendency of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence.