Note 216 — Chapter IV

So Sir James Stewart, whose light was extinguished by Adam Smith, begins his Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy (1767) by discussing the question of population, and compares the 'generative faculty' to a spring loaded with a weight, and exerting itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance (Works, 1805, i. 22). He compares population to 'rabbits in a warren.' Joseph Townsend, in his Journey Through Spain (1792), to whom Malthus refers, had discussed the supposed decay of the Spanish population, and illustrates his principles by a geometric progression: see ii. 213-56, 386-91. Eden, in his book on the poor (i. 214), quotes a tract attributed to Sir Matthew Hale for the statement that the poor increase on 'geometrical progression.'