Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight
acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first
power in comparison of the second.

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the
life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept
equal.

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on
population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty
must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a
large portion of mankind.

Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has
scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and
liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room and
the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence
contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room
to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a
few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law
of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race
of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great
restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of
reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are
waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind,
misery and vice. The former, misery, is an absolutely necessary
consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable consequence, and we
therefore see it abundantly prevail, but it ought not, perhaps,