Since successive portions of capital yield a less and less return, and the human species produce at a constantly accelerated rate, there is a perpetual tendency in population to press upon the means of subsistence. The ultimate checks by which population is kept down to the level of the means of subsistence, are vice and misery. Since the ends of life are virtue and happiness, these checks ought to be superseded by the milder methods which exist within man’s reach. These evils may be delayed by promoting the increase of capital, and superseded by restraining the increase of population. Towards the one object, a part of society may do a little; towards the other, all may do much. By rendering property secure, expenditure frugal, and production easy, society may promote the growth of capital. By bringing no more children into the world than there is a subsistence provided for, society may preserve itself from the miseries of want. In other words, the timely use of the mild preventive check may avert the horrors of any positive check. The preventive check becomes more, and the positive checks less powerful, as society advances. The positive checks, having performed their office in stimulating the human faculties, and originating social institutions, must be wholly superseded by the preventive check before society can attain its ultimate aim,—the greatest happiness of the greatest number. -------------- However the wealth of society may be distributed,—whether among the three classes who, at present, in all civilized countries, divide it, or among the partakers of a common stock, (according to the desire of some who mourn our evils, and look, as others think, in a wrong place for the remedy),—however the wealth of society may be distributed, the above principles are of the highest concern to the whole of society. Some may feel sooner than others the pressure of population against the means of subsistence; but it ultimately concerns all, to the last degree, that there should be subsistence for the race. This consideration is prior to all others which relate only to the modes and degrees in which wealth shall be shared by various classes. There is little wisdom in fixing a scale of enjoyments while society is laid open to vice, disease, and death,— the awful retribution for a careless administration of the common possession.—Yet the policy of rulers,—of rulers by office and by influence,—has, till very lately, been to stimulate population without any regard to the subsistence provided for it. The plea has always been that every man born into the world brings with him the labour which will support more than himself: but each must also bring with him the land on which his labour is to be employed, or he may find it no more possible to live upon labour than to live upon air. There is never any fear that population will not increase fast enough, as its increase is absolutely determined by the existing