n. The
position of this class, intellectually and often physically the finest
in the kingdom, is rapidly becoming intolerable, and it is the wastrels
who mainly benefit by their spoliation.

The causes of shrinkage in population are the opposites of those which
we have found to promote its increase. The production of food may be
diminished by the exhaustion of the soil, or by the progressive aridity
caused by cutting down woods. The manufacture of goods to be exchanged
for food may fall off owing to foreign competition, a result which is
likely to follow from a rise in the standard of living, for the labourer
then demands higher wages, and consumes more food per head, which of
itself must check fertility, since the same amount of food will now
support a smaller number. The delusion shared by the whole working class
that they can make work for each other, at wages fixed by themselves, is
ludicrous; a community cannot subsist 'by taking in each other's
washing.' Or the supply of importable food may fail by the peopling up
of the countries which grow it. Any conditions which make it no longer
worth while to invest capital in business, or which destroy credit, have
the same effect. One of the causes of the decay of the Roman Empire was
the drain of specie to the East in exchange for perishable commodities.
When trade is declining a general listlessness comes over the industrial
world, and the output falls still further. There have been alleged
instances of peoples which have dwindled and even disappeared from
_taedium vitae_. This is said to have been the cause of the extinction
of the Guanches of the Canary Islands; but the symptoms described rather
suggest an outbreak of sleeping-sickness.

Paradoxical as it may seem, neither voluntary restriction of births, nor
famine, nor pestilence, nor war, has much effect in reducing numbers.
Birth-control instead of diminishing the population, may only lower the
death-rate. France in 1781, with a birth-rate of 39, had much the same
net increase as in the years before the war with a birth-rate of 20. The
parallel lines of the births and deaths in this country have already
been mentioned. Famine and pestilence are followed at once by an
increased number of births. India and China, though frequently ravaged
by both these scourges, remain super-saturated. Of course, if the famine
is chronic, the population must fall to the point where the food is
sufficient; and a zymotic disease which