The Online Library of Liberty

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• Advertisement to the Second Edition.
• Memoir of Robert Malthus.
• Principles of Political Economy.
• Introduction.
• Book I
• Chapter I.: Of the Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour.
• Section I.—: On the Definitions of Wealth.
• Section II.—: On Productive Labour.
• Chapter II.: On the Nature, Causes, and Measures of Value.
• Section I.—: On the Different Sorts of Value.
• Section II.—: Of Demand and Supply As They Affect Exchangeable Value.
• Section III.—: Of the Cost of Production As Affected By the Demand and Supply, and On the Mode of Representing Demand.
• Section IV.—: Of the Labour Which Has Been Employed On a Commodity Considered As a Measure of Its Exchangeable Value.
• Section V.—: Of the Labour Which a Commodity Will Command, Considered As a Measure of Value In Exchange.
• Section VI.—: On the Practical Application of the Measure of Value, and Its General Use and Advantages.
• Section VII.—: On the Variations In the Value of Money In the Same, and Different Countries.
• Chapter III.: Of the Rent of Land.
• Section I.—: Of the Nature and Causes of Rent.
• Section II.—: On the Necessary Separation of the Rent of Land From the Profits of the Cultivator and the Wages of the Labourer.
• Section III.—: Of the Causes Which Tend to Raise Rents In the Ordinary Progress of Civilized and Improved Societies.
• Section IV.—: Of the Causes Which Tend to Lower Rents.
• Section V.—: On the Dependance of the Actual Quantity of Produce Obtained From the Land, Upon the Existing Prices of Produce, and Existing Rents, Under the Same Agricultural Skill and the Same Value of Money.
• Section VI.—: Of the Connexion Between Great Comparative Wealth, and a High Comparative Price of Raw Produce.
• Section VII.—: On the Causes Which May Mislead the Landlord In Letting His Lands, to the Injury Both of Himself and the Country.
• Section VIII.—: On the Strict and Necessary Connection of the Interests of the Landlord and of the State.
• Section IX.—: General Remarks On the Surplus Produce of the Land.
• Chapter IV.: Of the Wages of Labour.
• Section I.—: On the Definition of the Wages of Labour, and Their Dependance Upon Supply and Demand.
• Section II.—: Of the Causes Which Principally Affect the Habits of the Labouring Classes.
• Section III.—: Of the Causes Which Principally Influence the Demand For Labour, and the Increase of the Population.
• Section IV.—: A Review of the Corn Wages of Labour From the Reign of Edward III.
• Section V.—: On the Conclusions to Be Drawn From the Preceding Review of the Prices of Corn and Labour During the Five Last Centuries.
• Chapter V.: Of the Profits of Capital.
• Section I.—: Of the Nature of Profits, and the Mode In Which They Are Estimated.
• Section II.—: Of the Limiting Principle of Profits.
• Section III.—: Of the Regulating Principle of Profits.
• Section IV.—: Of Profits As Affected By the Causes Practically In Operation.
• Section V. —: Remarks On Mr. Ricardo’s Theory of Profits.
• Chapter VI.: Of the Distinction Between Wealth and Value.
• Book II.
• Chapter I.: On the Progress of Wealth.
• Section I.—: Statement of the Particular Object of Inquiry.
• Section II.—: Of the Increase of Population Considered As a Stimulus to the Continued Increase of Wealth.
• Section III.—: Of Accumulation, Or the Saving From Revenue to Add to Capital, Considered As a Stimulus to the Increase of Wealth.
• Section IV.—: Of the Fertility of the Soil, Considered As a Stimulus to the Continued Increase of Wealth.
• Section V.—: Of Inventions to Save Labour, Considered As a Stimulus to the Continued Increase of Wealth.
• Section VI.—: Of the Necessity of a Union of the Powers of Production With the Means of Distribution, In Order to Ensure a Continued Increase of Wealth.
• Section VII.—: Of the Distribution Occasioned By the Division of Landed Property Considered As the Means of Increasing the Exchangeable Value of the Whole Produce.
• Section VIII.—: Of the Distribution Occasioned By Commerce, Internal and External, Considered As the Means of Increasing the Exchangeable Value of Produce.
• Section IX.—: Of the Distribution Occasioned By Personal Services and Unproductive Consumers, Considered As the Means of Increasing the Exchangeable Value of the Whole Produce.
• Section X.—: Application of Some of the Preceding Principles to the Distresses of the Labouring Classes Since 1815, With General Observations.

Section II.—

Of the Increase of Population considered as a Stimulus to the continued Increase of Wealth.

Many writers have been of opinion that an increase of population is the sole stimulus necessary to the increase of wealth, because population, being the great source of consumption, must in their opinion necessarily keep up the demand for an increase of produce, which will naturally be followed by a continued increase of supply.

That a continued increase of population is a powerful and necessary element of increasing demand, will be most readily allowed; but that the increase of population alone, or, more properly speaking, the pressure of the population hard against the limits of subsistence, does not furnish an effective stimulus to the continued increase of wealth, is not only evident in theory, but is confirmed by universal experience. If want alone, or the desire of the labouring classes to possess the necessaries and conveniences of life, were a sufficient stimulus to production, there is no state in Europe, or in the world, which would have found any other practical limit to its wealth than its power to produce; and the earth would probably before this period have contained, at the very least, ten times as many inhabitants as are supported on its surface at present.

But those who are acquainted with the nature of effectual demand, will be fully aware that, where the right of private property is established, and the wants of society are supplied by industry and barter, the desire of any individual to possess the necessaries, conveniences and luxuries of life, however intense, will avail nothing towards their production, if there be no where a reciprocal demand for something which he possesses. A man whose only possession is his labour has, or has not, an effective demand for produce according as his labour is, or is not, in demand by those who have the disposal of produce. And no productive labour can ever be in demand with a view to profit unless the produce when obtained is of greater value than the labour which obtained it. No fresh hands can be employed in any sort of industry merely in consequence of the demand for its produce occasioned by the persons employed. No farmer will take the trouble of superintending the labour of ten additional men merely because his whole produce will then sell in the market at an advanced price just equal to what he had paid his additional labourers. There must be something in the previous state of the demand and supply of the commodity in question, or in its price, antecedent to and independent of the demand occasioned by the new labourers, in order to warrant the employment of an additional number of people in its production.

It will be said perhaps that the increase of population will lower wages, and, by thus diminishing the costs of production, will increase the profits of the capitalists and the encouragement to produce. Some temporary effect of this kind may no doubt take place, but it is evidently very strictly limited. The fall of real wages cannot go on beyond a certain point without not only stopping the progress of the population but making it even retrograde; and before this point is reached, the increase of produce occasioned by the labour of the additional number of persons will have so lowered its value, and reduced profits, as to determine the capitalist to employ less labour. Though the producers of necessaries might certainly be able in this case to obtain the funds required for the support of a greater number of labourers; yet if the effectual demand for necessaries were fully supplied, and an adequate taste for unproductive consumption, or personal services had not been established, no motive of interest could induce the producers to make an effectual demand for this greater number of labourers.

It is obvious then in theory that an increase of population, when an additional quantity of labour is not required, will soon be checked by want of employment and the scanty support of those employed, and will not furnish the required stimulus to an increase of wealth proportioned to the power of production.

But, if any doubts should remain with respect to the theory on the subject, they will surely be dissipated by a reference to experience. It is scarcely possible to cast our eyes on any nation of the world without seeing a striking confirmation of what has been advanced. Almost universally, the actual wealth of all the states with which we are acquainted is very far short of their powers of production; and among those states, the slowest progress in wealth is often made where the stimulus arising from population alone is the greatest, that is, where the population presses the hardest against the actual limits of subsistence. It is quite evident that the only fair way, indeed the only way, by which we can judge of the practical effect of population alone as a stimulus to wealth, is to refer to those countries where, from the excess of population above the funds applied to the maintenance of labour, the stimulus of want is the greatest. And if in these countries, which still have great powers of production, the progress of wealth is very slow, we have certainly all the evidence which experience can possibly give us, that population alone cannot create an effective demand for wealth.

To suppose a great and continued increase of population is to beg the question. We may as well suppose at once an increase of wealth; because such an increase of population cannot take place without a proportionate or nearly proportionate increase of wealth. The question really is, whether encouragements to population, or even the natural tendency of population to increase beyond the funds destined for its maintenance, will, or will not, alone furnish an adequate stimulus to the increase of wealth. And this question, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and many other countries in Europe, together with nearly the whole of Asia and Africa, and the greatest part of America, distinctly answer in the negative.