An Essay on the Principle of Population

The mass of happiness among the common people cannot but be diminished when one of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus removed,…

It should be remembered always that there is an essential difference between food and those wrought commodities, the raw materials of which are in…

To remove the wants of the lower classes of society is indeed an arduous task. The truth is that the pressure of distress on this part of a community…

Secondly, premiums might be given for turning up fresh land, and it possible encouragements held out to agriculture above manufactures, and to…

Lastly, for cases of extreme distress, county workhouses might be established, supported by rates upon the whole kingdom, and free for persons of all…

Notwithstanding, then, the institution of the poor laws in England, I think it will be allowed that considering the state of the lower classes…

To these two great checks to population, in all long occupied countries, which I have called the preventive and the positive checks, may be added…

New colonies--Reasons for their rapid increase--North American Colonies--Extraordinary instance of increase in the back settlements--Rapidity with…

In the Portuguese colony of Brazil, governed with almost equal tyranny, there were supposed to be, thirty years since, six hundred thousand…

The Dutch and French colonies, though under the government of exclusive companies of merchants, which, as Dr Adam Smith says very justly, is the…

But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the…

The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all the northern…

These facts seem to shew that population increases exactly in the proportion that the two great checks to it, misery and vice, are removed, and…

By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among the…

"N.B. In 1709 and 1710, a pestilence carried off 247,733 of the inhabitants of this country, and in 1736 and 1737, epidemics prevailed, which again…

"In this instance the inhabitants appear to have been almost doubled in fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics having once interrupted the increase,…

Is it not probable that in this case the number of inhabitants had increased faster than the food and the accommodations necessary to preserve them…

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England, taking…

I entirely acquit Mr Pitt of any sinister intention in that clause of his Poor Bill which allows a shilling a week to every labourer for each child…

I have mentioned some cases where population may permanently increase without a proportional increase in the means of subsistence. But it is…

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly or fully…

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…

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…

Mr Condorcet's Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain, was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel…

This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work, which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily, therefore, wants that…

But independent of this great objection to these establishments, and supposing for a moment that they would give no check to productive industry,…

But in this process of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and in consequence, by the physical…

There is no person who does not see how very distant such a period is from us, but shall we ever arrive at it? It is equally impossible to…

Mr Condorcet's picture of what may be expected to happen when the number of men shall surpass the means of their subsistence is justly drawn. The…

Mr Condorcet, however, goes on to say that should the period, which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates for…

Mr Condorcet's conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man, and the indefinite prolongation of human life--Fallacy of the argument, which…

The last question which Mr Condorcet proposes for examination is the organic perfectibility of man. He observes that if the proofs which have been…

From the improvement of medicine, from the use of more wholesome food and habitations, from a manner of living which will improve the strength of the…

If this be the case, there is at once an end of all human science. The whole train of reasonings from effects to causes will be destroyed. We may…

The constancy of the laws of nature and of effects and causes is the foundation of all human knowledge, though far be it from me to say that the same…

With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the…

Sound philosophy will not authorize me to alter this opinion of the mortality of man on earth, till it can be clearly proved that the human race…

It will not be necessary, I think, in order more completely to shew the improbability of any approach in man towards immortality on earth, to urge…

Many, I doubt not, will think that the attempting gravely to controvert so absurd a paradox as the immortality of man on earth, or indeed, even the…

Mr Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of the opinions of a celebrated individual, but of many of the literary men in France at…

In reading Mr Godwin's ingenious and able work on political justice, it is impossible not to be struck with the spirit and energy of his style, the…

This principle, which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be found to be…

The great error under which Mr Godwin labours throughout his whole work is the attributing almost all the vices and misery that are seen in civil…

The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established administration of…

The obvious answer to this objection, is, that to reason thus is to foresee difficulties at a great distance. Three fourths of the habitable globe is…

I have already pointed out the error of supposing that no distress and difficulty would arise from an overcharged population before the earth…

Mr Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most perfect…

I cannot conceive a form of society so favourable upon the whole to population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it is at present constituted,…

With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily…

During the next period of doubling, where will the food be found to satisfy the importunate demands of the increasing numbers? Where is the fresh…

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of which Mr Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. (Bk VIII, ch. 3; in the…

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this melancholy picture, let us but look for a moment into the next period of twenty-five…

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty arising from population from that which Mr Godwin gives, when he says, 'Myriads of…

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight millions, or seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, could never have existed. It is a…

It might be urged perhaps by some objectors that, as the fertility of the land increased, and various accidents occurred, the share of some men might…

That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an offence which men commit nearly with impunity, seems to be undoubtedly a breach…

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons. If such societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries would be…

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intellectual, reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the proper…

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which cannot…

It is a truth, which history I am afraid makes too clear, that some men of the highest mental powers have been addicted not only to a moderate, but…