ABSTRACT
Among the inconsistencies and the blunders of modern policy, there is nothing more shocking than the neglect to legislate upon the equilibrium of population, upon the proportion of the number of consumers to the productive forces. In every age, the equilibrium of population has been the stumbling-block, or one of the stumbling-blocks, of civilised policy. Modern politicians confess their discomfiture regarding the problem of population. The wise views of Stewart, Wallace, and Malthus upon the vicious circle of population are stifled by economic jugglers, who shove aside the problem as they do so many others. Stewart, more honest, has treated it very well in his hypothesis of an island, which, being well cultivated, was able to support 1,000 inhabitants of unequal fortune. But, he says, if the population swells to 3,000 and 4,000; to 10,000 and 20,000, how is it to be supported?.
