To say with Weyland, in the terms of his first cardinal proposition,[883] that “population has a natural tendency to keep within the powers of the soil to afford it subsistence in every gradation through which society passes,” is to say “that every man has a natural tendency to remain in prison who is necessarily confined to it by four strong walls.” One might as well infer that the pine of the crowded Norwegian forest has no tendency to have lateral branches, because as a matter of fact there is no room for it to have any.[884] Weyland thinks that, without any moral restraint, population will keep within limits of the food, in proportion as it reaches a high state of morality, religion, and political liberty.[885] Malthus, on the contrary, would say that, without moral restraint, even morality, religion, and political liberty will not save a people from wretchedness;[886] and, for his part, the design always uppermost in his mind when writing has been “to improve the condition and increase the happiness of the lower classes of society.”[887] One argument of Weyland’s[888] has some weight in it. With a rich soil, high farming, and abundant food, the bulk of the people of a country might by the natural division of labour be employed in manufacture, and their unhealthy manner of life in towns might so check population that it might be far from keeping up to the level of the food. Malthus replies that this case is rare, for our town populations have increased rapidly,—but, such as it is, he has allowed for it in the second clause of his second proposition: “Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, _unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks_.”[889]