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THE UTILITY OF COMMON STATISTICS 25
Australia, and the United States to this 15 millions,
less a deduction for the population in these countries
a century ago, there remains a total of about 70 millions
1
, of European population, or about one-fifth of the
population now living in Europe, which is supported
by the produce of newly opened regions. The history
of Europe we may well say would have been entirely
different from what it has been during the last century
but for the new countries. It is difficult indeed to over-
estim:te the extent to which the existence of a new
field for population, such as the United States presents,
has dominated the recent economic history of Europe.
Weare so accustomed to a set of economic circum-
stances in which population, constantly increasing in
numbers and in the capacity for food consumption per
head, finds practically unlimited means of expansion,
that we can hardly understand economists like Mal thus
who were oppressed by the only too evident limits
which nature, at the time he wrote, had apparently
set.
I t seems impossible, however, not to see that a period
in which the pressure of limits to growth and expansion
may again be felt is not far off. The approach of such
a period seems to me to be suggested by the figures
which are on the surface, and I may perhaps be per-
mitted to anticipate that the idea of such an approach,
if it is not now, will soon become a familiar subject for
speculation.
The very language in which reference has been
made to the increase of population in the United States
itself, viz., that the present rate of increase implies
twenty-five years hence a population of 100 millions,
a hundred years hence a population of 800 millions,
I To make these figures quite exact, a correction ought to be made
on account of the non-European element in the population of the
United States, the coloured population in 1880 being about 6} millions.
The coloured population in the United States, however, is brought
into competition with the European, and in some degree European-
ized. It seems unnecessary. therefore, for our present purpose, to
make any correction.