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Malthus on Population and Resources
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21936 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
1,070 Words |
| Author
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Thomas Malthus
The following is an excerpt from Thomas Malthus' Essay on the
Principle of Population (1803 edition). First published in
1798, his pessimistic essay was the original and most famous
tocsin regarding the apparent threat of unchecked population
growth to human quality of life. |
According to a table of Euler, calculated on a mortality of 1 in 36, if the births be to the deaths in the proportion of 3 to 1, the period of doubling will be only 12 4/5 years. And these proportions are not only possible suppositions, but have actually occurred for short periods in more countries than one.
Sir William Petty suppose a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years.
But to be perfectly sure that we are far within the truth, we will take the slowest of these rates of increase; a rate, in which all concurring testimonies agree, and which has been repeatedly ascertained to be from procreation only.
It may safely be pronounced therefore, that population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increase in a geometrical ratio.
The rate according to which the productions of the earth may be supposed to increase, it will not be so easy to determine. Of this, however, we may be perfectly certain, that the ratio of their increase must be of a totally different nature from the ratio of the increase of population. A thousand millions are just as easily doubled every twenty-five years by the power of population as a thousand. But the food to support the increase from the greater number will by no means be obtained with the same facility. Man is necessarily confined in room. When acre has been added to acre till all the fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food must depend upon the amelioration of the land already in possession. This is a stream which, from the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be gradually diminishing. But population, could it be supplied with food, would go on with unexhausted vigour; and the increase of one period would furnish the power of a greater increase the next, and this without any limit.
From the accounts we have of China and Japan, it may be fairly doubted whether the best-directed efforts of human industry could double the produce of these countries even once any number of years….
In Europe [however] there is the fairest chance that human industry may receive its best direction. The science of agriculture has been much studied in England and Scotland; and there is still a great portion of uncultivated land in these countries. Let us consider at what rate the produce of this island might be supposed to increase under circumstances the most favorable to
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