It is one of the corollaries of the Malthusian theory of population that a steady, regular emigration from a country has no power to check the rate of increase of population in that country. This opinion has been accepted by many leading students of social subjects from Malthus’ day down to the present. In fact, the general idea was expressed as early as 1790 by an anonymous writer in that quaint old magazine, the _American Museum_. He says: “When a country is so much crowded with people that the price of the means of subsistence is beyond the ratio of their industry, marriages are restrained: but when emigration to a certain degree takes place, the balance between the means of subsistence and industry is restored, and population thereby revived. Of the truth of this principle there are many proofs in the old counties of all the American states. Population has constantly been advanced in them by the migration of their inhabitants to new or distant settlements.”[367] John Stuart Mill believed that a steady emigration was powerless to cure the ills of overpopulation.[368] Roscher and Jannasch maintain that not only will emigration not decrease population, but may actually make the increase of population greater than it would otherwise be.[369] Réné Gonnard, the French writer, says that the fact of emigration gives a stimulus to the birth rate, and cites Adam Smith, Malthus, Garnier, Roscher, and De Molinari in support of the view.[370] Robert Hunter also expresses his adherence to this opinion.[371] With the laws of population in mind we can easily understand how this condition may result—in fact, how it must result theoretically. Every society, in the course of its development, reaches a balance between the means of subsistence and the desire for reproduction. This balance is represented by the standard of living. In a society where the desire for reproduction greatly overbalances the desire for comforts and luxuries, the standard of living will be low, and the rate of increase of population high. In a society where the appetite for material welfare is strong, the opposite conditions will prevail. Changing conditions present the possibility of change either in the rate of reproduction or in the standard of living. As we have already observed, the former is the more flexible of the two. Particularly in static societies, such as exist in European countries, where social positions have become thoroughly stratified, any gradual amelioration in circumstances is much more likely to result in an increased rate of population growth than in an improved standard of living.