upon the land, whose misapplied industry is as unproductive as if it were devoted to the grinding of a treadmill or the lifting of shot; but though contributing nothing to the producing power of the class with which they are incorporated, they have to be supported out of its profits, of which they diminish by so much the share to the remainder. To deny this is to assert—that you can make a vessel sail faster by doubling the complement of her crew, and that the supernumerary hands will have made no impression on the ship's rations by the end of the voyage.[1]
- ↑ "In all countries which have passed beyond a rather early stage in the progress of agriculture, every increase in the demand for food occasioned by increased population will always, unless there is a simultaneous improvement in production, diminish the share which on a fair division would fall to each individual." Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Vol. I. p. 237.
"If the growth of human power over nature is suspended or slackened, and population does not slacken its increase; if with only the existing command over natural agencies those agencies arc called upon for an increased produce, this greater increase will not be afforded to the increased population, without either demanding on the average a greater effort from each, or on the average reducing each to smaller ration out of the aggregate produce."—Ibid. Vol. I. p. 240.
"From this results the important corollary, that the necessity of restraining population is not peculiar to a condition of great inequality of property. A greater number of people cannot, in any given state of civilization, be collectively so well provided for as a smaller. The niggardliness of nature, not the injustice of society, is the cause of the penalty attached to over-population. It is in vain to say, that all mouths which the increase of mankind calls into existence, bring with them hands. The new
