I pray the reader to remark, that this hypothesis implies another—it implies that at the same epoch population will have reached [p270] the extreme limit of the means of subsistence which the earth can afford. This is a new and important element in the question. It is very much as if one should put the question, What will happen when there is no longer enough of oxygen in the atmosphere to supply the lungs of a redundant population? Whatever view we take of the principle of population, it is at least certain that population is capable of ‹increase›, nay, that it has a ‹tendency› to increase, since in point of fact it does increase. All the economic arrangements of society appear to have been organized with the previous knowledge of this tendency, and are in perfect harmony with it. The landed proprietor always endeavours to get paid for the natural agents which he has appropriated, but he is as constantly foiled in this foolish and unjust pretension by the abundance of analogous natural agents which have not been appropriated. The liberality of nature, which is comparatively indefinite, constitutes him a simple custodier. But now you drive me into a corner, by supposing a period at which this liberality reaches its limit. Men have then no longer anything to expect from that quarter. The consequence is inevitable, that the tendency of mankind to increase will be paralyzed, that the progress of population will be arrested. No economic régime can obviate this necessity. According to the hypothesis we have laid down, every increase of population would be repressed by mortality. No philanthropy, no optimism, can make us believe that the increase of human beings can continue its progression when the progressive increase of subsistence has conclusively terminated. Here, then, we have a new order of things and the harmony of the social laws might be called in question, had they not provided for a state of matters the existence of which is possible, although very different from that which now obtains. The difficulty we have to deal with, then, comes to this: When a ship in mid-ocean cannot reach land in less than a month, and has only a fortnight’s provisions on board, what is to be done? Clearly this, reduce the allowance of each sailor. This is not cruelty—it is prudence and justice.