In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the worki… - Thomas Robert Malthus

THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.

When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.

The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other vist the human race.