Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/150

 provision for physical or mental progress in the changing environment of his time. The supremely important issue of population comes up here. For it is here that the relation between the quantitative and the qualitative nature of wealth demands the closest consideration. For if we take Ruskin’s statement “There is no wealth but life” in its most immediate meaning, all economics, politics, and ethics centre in the population question.

When Malthus opened out the issue, it appeared as a purely quantitative economic one. Population tended to outrun the means of subsistence in all countries where pestilences, famines, and wars had been got under. When after the middle of the nineteenth century restriction of the birth-rate began to cause a considerable decline in the growth of population in most Western nations, it was generally greeted with approval, although it was the expression not of a public but of a private family economy. It was held, I believe, that some real harmony existed between the family and the national policy. Parents refused to have more children than they could bring up properly and for whom they could find secure and reasonably paid employment. This natural harmony has recently been called in serious question. The peril of excessive population, as expounded by Malthus, no longer exists. The science of agriculture has to a large extent been applied so as to meet the requirements of expanding populations in most countries. The applica-