Carlyle, on the Malthusian hope that people would through continence keep the population level in line with resources:
Smart Sally in our alley proves all-too fascinating to brisk Tom in yours: can Tom be called on to make pause, and calculate the demand for labour in the British Empire first? … O wonderful Mathusian prophets! Millenniums are undoubtedly coming, must come one way or the other: but will it be, think you, by twenty millions of working people simultaneously striking work in that department … ?
from Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, p. 121
