ome of these
states an absolute famine has never been known.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The
power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce
subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other
visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able
ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of
destruction; and often 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.

Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the
histories of mankind, that in every age and in every state in which man
has existed, or does now exist.

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of
subsistence.

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence
increase. And that the superior power of population it repressed, and
the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery
and vice?

CHAPTER 8

Mr Wallace--Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from
population is at a great distance--Mr Condorcet's sketch of the
progress of the human mind--Period when the oscillation, mentioned by
Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.

To a person who draws the preceding obvious inferences, from a view of
the past and present state of mankind, it cannot but be a matter of
astonishment that all the writers on the perfectibility of man and of
society who have noticed the argument of an overcharged population,
treat it always very slightly and invariably represent the difficulties
arising from it as at a great and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr
Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to
destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any
difficulty would occur from this cause till the whole earth had been
cultivated like a garden and was incapable of any further increase of
produce. Were this really the case, and were a beautiful system of
equality in other respects practicable, I cannot think that our ardour
in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped by the cont