‘Under a perfect government […] the earth would soon be overstocked’: Measure and Excess in Robert Wallace’s Various Prospects of Nature, Mankind and Providence (1761)
The question of how to regulate population in a utopia is most often addressed in terms of social control to ensure that all inhabitants abide by the rules that guarantee the community’s preservation. Wallace raises a different and original issue in his Various Prospects. Despite the admiration he v...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
2014-12-01
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| Series: | XVII-XVIII |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/1718/390 |
| Summary: | The question of how to regulate population in a utopia is most often addressed in terms of social control to ensure that all inhabitants abide by the rules that guarantee the community’s preservation. Wallace raises a different and original issue in his Various Prospects. Despite the admiration he voices for ancient and modern utopists and their equalitarian schemes, he points to the ultimate danger of a lack of measure of a mushrooming population that would necessarily result from a perfect constitution. His conclusion is that God allows evil and injustice to prevent worse consequences that the over-population of a finite earth would produce. |
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| ISSN: | 0291-3798 2117-590X |