On Monday, Mr. E. G. Ravenstein created some excitement by
a paper reviving the old idea that the world would one day be eaten up by its people, like a cheese by maggots. He maintained that the world could not maintain more than 5,994,000,000 people, and that at the present probable rate of increase-8 per cent. per decade—this number• would be reached in 182 years, or A.D. 2072. He did not suggest any remedy, and, indeed, did not appear to see one, for he sup- posed that the present rate of mortality, which is still fright- fully high, might be reduced, and the rate of increase be thus made even more rapid. That is an alarming prospect for our great-grandchildren, but there is, fortunately, no certainty in it. We know absolutely nothing of the law which governs population, except that all suggested theories are wrong. The notion that the birth-rate increases with the means of sub- sistence is inaccurate, the thickest populations being the poorest, as in China, India, and Ireland before 1840; and so is the notion that health has much to do with the matter. If that were true, the Jews would now be seven hundred millions, and the Spanish-Americans would increase as fast as the Anglo-Saxons. The facts appear to indicate that a race multiplies rapidly for a time, as the Greeks did in Asia Minor, and then stops ; but even that is uncertain, the Hindoos, who should on that theory be exhausted, multiplying with a sudden start under British rule. It is quite possible that the birth-rate may unexpectedly decline, or that a race may produce too many females, as is said to be the case now with Jews ; and quite certain that no country has yet been ruined by over-population.
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