An Essay on the Principle of Population | Page 8

and adopted a more easy and civilized
mode of life, that one woman has reared five, or six, or more children;
though in the savage state it rarely happens that above one or two in a
family grow up to maturity. The same observation has been made with
regard to the Hottentots near the Cape. These facts prove the superior
power of population to the means of subsistence in nations of hunters,
and that this power always shews itself the moment it is left to act with
freedom.
It remains to inquire whether this power can be checked, and its effects

kept equal to the means of subsistence, without vice or misery.
The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be
called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and, indeed,
of most other savage nations, the women are represented as much more
completely in a state of slavery to the men than the poor are to the rich
in civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as Helots to the
other half, and the misery that checks population falls chiefly, as it
always must do, upon that part whose condition is lowest in the scale of
society. The infancy of man in the simplest state requires considerable
attention, but this necessary attention the women cannot give,
condemned as they are to the inconveniences and hardships of frequent
change of place and to the constant and unremitting drudgery of
preparing every thing for the reception of their tyrannic lords. These
exertions, sometimes during pregnancy or with children at their backs,
must occasion frequent miscarriages, and prevent any but the most
robust infants from growing to maturity. Add to these hardships of the
women the constant war that prevails among savages, and the necessity
which they frequently labour under of exposing their aged and helpless
parents, and of thus violating the first feelings of nature, and the picture
will not appear very free from the blot of misery. In estimating the
happiness of a savage nation, we must not fix our eyes only on the
warrior in the prime of life: he is one of a hundred: he is the gentleman,
the man of fortune, the chances have been in his favour and many
efforts have failed ere this fortunate being was produced, whose
guardian genius should preserve him through the numberless dangers
with which he would be surrounded from infancy to manhood. The true
points of comparison between two nations seem to be the ranks in each
which appear nearest to answer to each other. And in this view, I
should compare the warriors in the prime of life with the gentlemen,
and the women, children, and aged, with the lower classes of the
community in civilized states.
May we not then fairly infer from this short review, or rather, from the
accounts that may be referred to of nations of hunters, that their
population is thin from the scarcity of food, that it would immediately
increase if food was in greater plenty, and that, putting vice out of the

question among savages, misery is the check that represses the superior
power of population and keeps its effects equal to the means of
subsistence. Actual observation and experience tell us that this check,
with a few local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting now
upon all savage nations, and the theory indicates that it probably acted
with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not be
much greater a thousand years hence.
Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the
next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage
state. But that these nations could not escape the general lot of misery
arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and all the fairest
countries in the world, bear ample testimony. Want was the goad that
drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so many
famished wolves in search of prey. Set in motion by this all powerful
cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points of the
northern hemisphere. Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they rolled
on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of Italy and sunk
the whole world in universal night. These tremendous effects, so long
and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the earth, may be
traced to the simple cause of the superior power of population to the
means of subsistence.
It is well known that a country in pasture cannot support so many
inhabitants as a country in tillage, but what renders nations of
shepherds so formidable is the power which they possess of moving all
together and the necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power in
search