Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/5



following Lectures are published, in obedience to that clause of the Statute establishing this Professorship, which directs, that the Professor, in each year, shall print and publish one Lecture, at the least. They are not, therefore, offered to the public as an entire treatise: and the circumstance of their having formed the conclusion of a course will account (satisfactorily, it is hoped) for the abruptness of the beginning. With respect to the previous Lectures, it may be sufficient to mention, that, the most material of the propositions contained in them, related to the great rapidity with which an unchecked population (proceeding naturally in geometrical progression) would multiply; while the capacity of the soil, besides being absolutely confined within comparatively narrow limits, can be called forth into the