Malthus, Thomas, Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population ...

38 THOMAS MALTHUS (1798)
DUKEDOM OF MAGDEBURGH
Proportion of
Births to
Marriages
Proportion of
Births to
Burials
<strong>An</strong>nual
Average Births Burials Marriages
5 yrs to 1702 6,431 4,103 1,681 38 to 10 156 to 100
5 yrs to 1717 7,590 5,335 2,076 36 to 10 142 to 100
5 yrs to 1756 8,850 8,069 2,193 40 to 10 109 to 100
‘The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly sickly.’
For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr
Suessmilch’s tables. The extracts that I have made are sufficient to
shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it
seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of
the principal causes that occasioned them.
It appears from the tables that these countries were increasing
rather fast for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that
prevailed. Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages,
consequently, encouraged. For the checks to population appear to have
been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind. When from a
prospect of increasing plenty in any country, the weight that represses
population is in some degree removed, it is highly probable that the
motion will be continued beyond the operation of the cause that first
impelled it. Or, to be more particular, when the increasing produce of a
country, and the increasing demand for labour, so far ameliorate the
condition of the labourer as greatly to encourage marriage, it is
probable that the custom of early marriages will continue till the
population of the country has gone beyond the increased produce, and
sickly seasons appear to be the natural and necessary consequence. I
should expect, therefore, that those countries where subsistence was
increasing sufficiency at times to encourage population but not to
answer all its demands, would be more subject to periodical epidemics
than those where the population could more completely accommodate
itself to the average produce.
<strong>An</strong> observation the converse of this will probably also be found
true. In those countries that are subject to periodical sicknesses, the
increase of population, or the excess of births above the burials, will be
greater in the intervals of these periods than is usual, caeteris paribus,
in the countries not so much subject to such disorders. If Turkey and
Egypt have been nearly stationary in their average population for the
last century, in the intervals of their periodical plagues, the births must
have exceeded the burials in a greater proportion than in such countries
as France and England.
The average proportion of births to burials in any country for a
period of five to ten years, will hence appear to be a very inadequate
criterion by which to judge of its real progress in population. This
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Foundations of Classical Genetics