Of Population

Book 3, Chapter 04 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population Continued
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. INQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION BOOK III OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH THE AMOUNT OF THE NUMBERS Of MANKIND IS REDUCED OR RESTRAINED. CHAPTER IV ATTEMPT TOWABDS A RATIONAL THEOKY OP THE CHECKS ON POPULATION CONTINUED. THUS far I have been considering those checks on population, which operate with an outstretched power, and have in various instances turned great cities and flourishing countries into a desert. I proceed now to consider those regions, such as England, Germany and France, which for centuries past have not been subject to such violent convulsions. What we appear to have most reason to believe under this latter head, is, that these countries, like Sweden, have from time to time gone on for a certain period increasing their population in a steady and mod... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Book 3, Chapter 03 : Attempt towards a Rational Theory of the Checks on Population
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. INQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION BOOK III OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH THE AMOUNT OF THE NUMBERS Of MANKIND IS REDUCED OR RESTRAINED. CHAPTER III ATTEMPT TOWARDS A RATIONAL THEORY OP THE CHECKS ON POPULATION. SCARCELY any thing can be imagined more likely to supply us with just views respecting the past history of population, and of consequence to suggest to us sound anticipations as to its future progress, than the comparing some tract of country and period of time in which its increase appears to have gone on with highest vigor and health on the one hand, with all that is known, as to its general aspect over the face of the earth, on the other. Mr. Malthus has had recourse to certain wild conjectures and gratuitous assertions respecting the United States of Nort... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Book 3, Chapter 02 : Of Deaths and the Rate of Human Mortality
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. INQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION BOOK III OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH THE AMOUNT OF THE NUMBERS Of MANKIND IS REDUCED OR RESTRAINED. CHAPTER II Of deaths and the rate of human mortality. It is the glory of modern philosophy to have banished the doctrine of occult causes. Superstition and a blind deference to great names taught men that there were questions upon which we must not allow ourselves to enter with a free spirit of research. In science, as well as religion, we were told there was a sanctuary into which it would be profaneness for ordinary and unpriveleged men to intrude. The avroc eøn of the master, was the authority upon which we were directed to repose ourselves: and occult causes were assigned, a sort of sacred names that could not be defined, the ope... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Book 3, Chapter 01 : Futility of Mr. Malthus's Doctrine Respecting the Checks on Population
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. INQUIRY CONCERNING POPULATION BOOK III OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH THE AMOUNT OF THE NUMBERS Of MANKIND IS REDUCED OR RESTRAINED. CHAPTER I FUTILITY OF MR MALTHUS'S DOCTRINE RESPECTING THE CHECKS ON POPULATION. IN the preceding Book I have taken for the subject of my inquiry the possible progress of mankind under peculiarly favorable circumstances as to the increase of their numbers I have produced the example of Sweden as the most advantageous specimen of the kind that is contained in the records of history I have not contented myself with this but have proceeded in the endeavor to establish certain principles on the subject. From the example of Sweden, corroborated by views drawn from all other countries of Europe, in which any progress has been made in collecting Ta... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Book 2, Appendix : Tables Of The American Census
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. TABLES OF THE AMERICAN CENSUS That the reader may be fully possessed of all the documents which should enable him to form correct notions on the subject, I have thought proper to insert here the Three Tables of the American Census, as they appear in Pitkin's Statistical View of the United States. I should have been glad to have printed from the Tables published by the authority of the American government; but I have been able to procure only those for 1810. W. G. (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Miscellaneous Observations
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. CHAPTER XII. Miscellaneous Observations SUCH was the policy. and such the experience of the most celebrated nations of antiquity on the subject of population. But Mr. Malthus has brought forward certain maxims of a very different tenor from Plato and Aristotle, writing of an imaginary republic: and upon them he remarks, " From these passages it is evident that Plato fully saw the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence.' And, again, "If he could propose to destroy certain children, and to regulate the number of marriages, his experience and his reasonings must have strongly pointed out to him the great power of the... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. CHAPTER V. Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times Les hommes ne multiplient pas aussi aisément qu'oun le pense. Voltaire, Histoire Générale, CHAP. I. It is not a little singular, and is proper to be commemorated here, that a controversy existed in the early part of the last century, as to the comparative populousness of ancient nations, or the contrary. One of the leaders in this debate was the celebrated Montesquieu; and what he says on the subject is so much to the purpose, that I shall translate the passage. "To amuse in some part," says one of the correspondents in the Persian Letters to another, "the time of... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

General View of the Arguments Against the Increase of Mankind
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. CHAPTER XI. General View of the Arguments against the Increase of Mankind Mr. Malthus's theory is certainly of a peculiar structure, and it is somewhat difficult to account for the success it has met with. The subject is population. It has been agreed among the best philosophers in Europe, especially from the time of Lord Bacon to the present day, that the proper basis of all our knowledge respecting man and nature, respecting what has been in times that are past, and what may be expected in time to come, is experiment. This standard is peculiarly applicable to the subject of population. Mr. Malthus seems in one respect fully to concur in th... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Principles Respecting the Increase or Decrease of the Numbers of Mankind
Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. CHAPTER III. PRINCIPLES RESPECTING THE INCREASE OR DECREASE OF THE NUMBERS OF MANKIND. HAVING thus entered into an impartial review of Mr. Malthus's theory and the authorities upon which it is founded, I proceed to that which is most properly the object of my volume. The Essay on Population has left for me a clear stage in this respect: it has touched upon none of those topics from which a real knowledge of the subject is to be acquired. Its author from a very slight and unsatisfactory evidence has drawn the most absurd and extravagant consequences; and having done this, he closes the account, fully convinced that he has shewn in "the laws o... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

Godwin, William. Of Population. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1820. PREFACE. It happens to men sometimes, where they had it in their thoughts to set forward and advance some mighty benefit to their fellow creatures, not merely to fail in giving substance and efficacy to the sentiment that animated them, but also to realize and bring on some injury to the party they purposed to serve. Such is my case, if the speculations that have now been current for nearly twenty years, and which had scarcely been heard of before, are to be henceforth admitted, as forming an essential branch of the science of politics. When I wrote my Inquiry concerning Political Justice, I flattered myself that there was no mean probabilit... (From : Anarchy Archives.)