An Essay on the Principle of Population | Page 6

afterwards by want of room and nourishment, which is common to
animals and plants, and among animals by becoming the prey of others.
The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the
increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts
his career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world
for whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence. In a state of
equality, this would be the simple question. In the present state of
society, other considerations occur. Will he not lower his rank in life?
Will he not subject himself to greater difficulties than he at present
feels? Will he not be obliged to labour harder? and if he has a large
family, will his utmost exertions enable him to support them? May he
not see his offspring in rags and misery, and clamouring for bread that
he cannot give them? And may he not be reduced to the grating
necessity of forfeiting his independence, and of being obliged to the
sparing hand of charity for support?
These considerations are calculated to prevent, and certainly do prevent,
a very great number in all civilized nations from pursuing the dictate of
nature in an early attachment to one woman. And this restraint almost
necessarily, though not absolutely so, produces vice. Yet in all societies,

even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment
is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of
population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower
classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent
amelioration of their condition.
The way in which, these effects are produced seems to be this. We will
suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population,
which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the
number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The
food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be
divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor
consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to
severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the
proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend
toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time
tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same
as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to
marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that
population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the
plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst
them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to
turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is
already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the
same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set
out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably
comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened,
and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to
happiness are repeated.
This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial observers,
and it may be difficult even for the most penetrating mind to calculate
its periods. Yet that in all old states some such vibration does exist,
though from various transverse causes, in a much less marked, and in a
much more irregular manner than I have described it, no reflecting man
who considers the subject deeply can well doubt.

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less obvious, and less
decidedly confirmed by experience, than might naturally be expected.
One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we possess
are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few accounts that
can be depended upon of the manners and customs of that part of
mankind where these retrograde and progressive movements chiefly
take place. A satisfactory history of this kind, on one people, and of one
period, would require the constant and minute attention of an observing
mind during a long life. Some of the objects of inquiry would be, in
what proportion to the number of adults was the number of marriages,
to what extent vicious customs prevailed in consequence of the
restraints upon matrimony, what was the comparative mortality among
the children of the most distressed part of the community and those
who lived rather more at their ease, what were the variations in the real
price of labour, and what were the observable differences in the state of
the lower classes of