power, "quasi alteram naturam
efficere," which Cicero describes; and those events which are due
to the agency of free, and intelligent, and responsible human
beings, although liable to the influence of a greater number of
disturbing forces, and therefore requiring careful investigation,
are still subject to laws, which are imposed on the constitution
of the human race, and which may be ascertained by observations
belonging to the department of statistical science.

"That the natural tendency of the human race is to increase on any
given portion, or on the whole of the earth's surface, in a much
more rapid ratio than the means of subsistence can be made to
increase, I apprehend to be an undeniable fact. I am aware of
various objections which have been stated to this principle, but
shall not enter on these objections farther than to state, that
two considerations appear to me to have been overlooked by those
who have advanced them. _First_, That the term 'means of
subsistence,' is not to be restricted to the raising from the land
of articles of food, but applies to the extraction from the
earth's surface, and the preparation for the use of man, of all
productions of Nature, which are either necessary to human
existence or adapted for human comfort, and which have, therefore,
an exchangeable value;--_secondly_, that the question regarding
these, which concerns us in this inquiry, is not how much a given
number of men may raise, but how much a given portion of the
earth's surface can supply; and what relation this quantity bears
to the power of reproduction granted to the human race. When these
considerations are kept in view, it does not appear to me that the
objections to the general principle laid down by Malthus are of
any weight; and the truth of the principle appears to be strongly
illustrated by the care taken by Nature to have a certain number
of carnivorous genera, in every order of animals, and among the
animated inhabitants of every portion of the earth's surface,
whereby the tendency to excess in every class of animals is
continually checked and repressed. And although it is certain that
the causes of human suffering of all sorts, as of human diseases,
are very generally complex, yet we may certainly assert, that this
principle is essentially concerned, as a great and p