ABSTRACT
The country had received a shock, it had been disturbed by the emergence of new economic factors, but, by adapting itself to the changes, it swiftly recovered and resumed its progress, and this recovery required only a reasonable time-three or four years perhaps-and demanded, not a revolution, but simply the amount of vitality normal in a healthy economic society. Mr Griffith’s book on Population Problems of the Age of Malthus made an immediate impression, it deserved to, but his estimates have been too readily accepted and his conclusions too hastily grasped as a cudgel with which to belabour a certain school of historians and theorists. Excess in the unproductive ages throws an extra burden on active adults. A higher productivity per head is demanded of them if the standard of life is to be maintained for the whole population. Economic distress in such circumstances may be evidence, not of an excessive aggregate population, but of a relatively diminished working population.
