The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can hav… - Thomas Robert Malthus

If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.

Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.

...where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?...