_The Man of Forty Crowns_: I have heard much talk of population. Were we
to take it into our heads to beget double the number of children we now
do; were our country doubly peopled, so that we had forty millions of
inhabitants instead of twenty, what would happen?
_The Geometrician_: Each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns
to live upon; or the land would have to produce the double of what it
now does; or there would be the double of the nation's industry, or of
gain from foreign countries; or one half of the nation sent to America;
or the one half of the nation should eat the other.--_The Man of Forty
Crowns._