matter of no final concern to any parent
whether he shall have two children, or four; but matter of quite final
concern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to be
hanged. The great difficulty in dealing with the land question at all
arises from the false, though very natural, notion on the part of many
reformers, and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the
land among the said poor would be an immediate and everlasting relief
to them. An _immediate_ relief it would be to the extent of a small
annual sum (you may easily calculate how little, if you choose) to
each of them; on the strength of which accession to their finances,
they would multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence
would sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, exactly as
they are now.

144. Any other form of pillage would benefit them only in like manner;
and, in reality, the difficult part of the question respecting
numbers, is, not where they shall be arrested, but what shall be the
method of their arrest.

An island of a certain size has standing room only for so many people;
feeding ground for a great many fewer than could stand on it. Reach
the limits of your feeding ground, and you must cease to multiply,
must emigrate or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually
brought to bear on the population depend on the justice of your laws;
but the pressure itself must come at last, whatever the distribution
of the land. And arithmeticians seem to me a little slow to remark the
importance of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the
horseshoe--when it is populations that are doubling themselves,
instead of farthings.

145. The essential land question, then, is to be treated quite
separately from that of the methods of restriction of population. The
land question is--At what point will you resolve to stop? It is
separate matter of discussion how you are to stop at it.

And this essential land question--"At what point will you stop?"--is
itself two-fold. You have to consider first, by what methods of land
distribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy persons;
and secondly, whether, if, by any other mode of distribution and
relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while you
diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should be made, and to what
extent? I think it will be better, for clearness' sake, to end this
letter with the putting of these two queries in their de