from overpopulation, there is no evidence whatsoever to prove that the
population is pressing on the soil. On the contrary, we find ample physical
resources sufficient to support the entire population, and we also find
evidence of human injustice, incapacity, and corruption sufficient to
account for the poverty and misery that exist in these countries. This was
especially so in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century.
[17] Moreover, so far from high birth-rates being the cause of poverty, we
shall find that poverty is one of the causes of a high birth-rate (p. 69).

(b) _Severance of the Inhabitants from the Soil_

It was not a high birth-rate that established organised poverty in England.
In the sixteenth century the greater part of the land, including common
land belonging to the poor, was seized by the rich. They began by robbing
the Catholic Church, and they ended by robbing the people. [18] Once
machinery was introduced in the eighteenth century, the total wealth of
England was enormously increased; but the vast majority of the people
had little share in this increase of wealth that accrued from machinery,
because only a small portion of the people possessed capital. More children
came, but they came to conditions of poverty and of child-labour in the
mills. In countries where more natural and stable social conditions exist,
and where there are many small owners of land, large families, so far from
being a cause of poverty, are of the greatest assistance to their parents
and to themselves. There are means whereby poverty could be reduced, but
artificial birth control would only increase the total poverty of the
State, and therefore of the individual.

From early down to Tudor times, the majority of the inhabitants of England
lived on small holdings. For example, in the fifteenth century there were
twenty-one small holdings on a particular area measuring 160 acres. During