Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/21

15 a scarcity of the means of subsistence, which by their combined action produce this difference, must also be given. In other words, their sum, must remain the same, whatever variation may take place among their parts. Where therefore those independent of a scarcity of food are great, those dependent on such scarcity are small. Now, in proportion to the amount of, or rather to the range for, the checks dependent on a scarcity of the means of subsistence, is the necessity for moral restraint, or the preventive check. Consequently, as in unhealthy countries there is little, so in the healthy there is great necessity for moral restraint.

In ancient times war was the great depopulator. And it stood so far, at least, unconnected with the want of food, that the prevalence of the preventive check in any particular nation would not have operated to diminish its ravages, as it would to diminish those sufferings which result immediately from scarcity. We may therefore look on the wars of ancient times in the same light as an