An Essay on the Principle of Population | Page 7

society with respect to ease and happiness, at
different times during a certain period.
Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner in which the
constant check upon population acts and would probably prove the
existence of the retrograde and progressive movements that have been
mentioned, though the times of their vibrations must necessarily be
rendered irregular from the operation of many interrupting causes, such
as the introduction or failure of certain manufactures, a greater or less
prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or years of
scarcity, wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of processes for
shortening labour without the proportional extension of the market for
the commodity, and, particularly, the difference between the nominal
and real price of labour, a circumstance which has perhaps more than
any other contributed to conceal this oscillation from common view.
It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour universally falls,
but we well know that it frequently remains the same, while the
nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing. This is, in
effect, a real fall in the price of labour, and during this period the
condition of the lower orders of the community must gradually grow

worse and worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich from
the real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable them to
employ a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful, and
the price of labour would consequently rise. But the want of freedom in
the market of labour, which occurs more or less in all communities,
either from parish laws, or the more general cause of the facility of
combination among the rich, and its difficulty among the poor, operates
to prevent the price of labour from rising at the natural period, and
keeps it down some time longer; perhaps till a year of scarcity, when
the clamour is too loud and the necessity too apparent to be resisted.
The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed,
and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to the
poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when plenty returns,
indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints, that the
price does not again fall, when a little rejection would shew them that it
must have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy of their own.
But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute frequently to
prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no possible form of
society could prevent the almost constant action of misery upon a great
part of mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were
equal.
The theory on which the truth of this position depends appears to me so
extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what part of it can be
denied.
That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence is a
proposition so evident that it needs no illustration.
That population does invariably increase where there are the means of
subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will
abundantly prove.
And that the superior power of population cannot be checked without
producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter
ingredients in the cup of human life and the continuance of the physical

causes that seem to have produced them bear too convincing a
testimony.
But, in order more fully to ascertain the validity of these three
propositions, let us examine the different states in which mankind have
been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think, be sufficient
to convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible truths.
CHAPTER 3
The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed--The shepherd state, or the
tribes of barbarians that overran the Roman Empire--The superiority of
the power of population to the means of subsistence--the cause of the
great tide of Northern Emigration.
In the rudest state of mankind, in which hunting is the principal
occupation, and the only mode of acquiring food; the means of
subsistence being scattered over a large extent of territory, the
comparative population must necessarily be thin. It is said that the
passion between the sexes is less ardent among the North American
Indians, than among any other race of men. Yet, notwithstanding this
apathy, the effort towards population, even in this people, seems to be
always greater than the means to support it. This appears, from the
comparatively rapid population that takes place, whenever any of the
tribes happen to settle in some fertile spot, and to draw nourishment
from more fruitful sources than that of hunting; and it has been
frequently remarked that when an Indian family has taken up its abode
near any European settlement,