Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/199

Rh and you must cease to multiply, must emigrate or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually brought to bear on the population depend on the justice of your laws; but the pressure itself must come at last, whatever the distribution of the land. And arithmeticians seem to me a little slow to remark the importance of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the horseshoe—when it is populations that are doubling themselves, instead of farthings.

145. The essential land question, then, is to be treated quite separately from that of the methods of restriction of population. The land question is—At what point will you resolve to stop? It is separate matter of discussion how you are to stop at it.

And this essential land question—"At what point will you stop?"—is itself two-fold. You have to consider first, by what methods of land distribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy persons; and secondly, whether, if, by any other mode of distribution and relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while you diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should be made, and