Moheau looked with favor upon population growth chiefly because, in his opinion, such growth served to augment the political and the fiscal power of the state. Population growth had this effect for two reasons: (a) man constituted the principle, the source, the creator of "wealth"; (b) human efficiency increased and technological culture progressed by virtue of growth in the density of population. -Pg. 651
Moheau qualified his emphasis upon the desirability of population growth... with the proviso that such growth be confined to classes of the population of use to the state. -Pg. 654
Believing that prevailing institutions impeded population growth, that population growth was necessary and desirable, and that factors conditioning population growth - e.g. climate, the desire to marry and procreate, the geographical and occupational composition of the population, etc. - were subject to directed modification, Moheau devoted much attention to means whereby population growth might be stimulated. -Pg. 669
How is it that Moheau is a "Prophet of Depopulation"? Simply by applying the appropriate measures of "directed modification" to the conditions of population (climate, desire, etc.), the opposite of that which Moheau advocated can be acheived. He is contrasted with Malthus & Adam Smith in that as they......presented an essentially biological theory of population growth... Moheau... noted that the procreative response of a people to any given actual or potential fund of subsistence was conditioned in a marked degree by the cultural medium within which that people lived. -Pg. 676
So, when Malthusian worries of overpopulation gain the upper hand; when growth generally or growth in certain useless classes no longer "augments the political and fiscal power of the state," modulations of the material and cultural medium of population may be injected to bring about its reduction.
And if that doesn't work: Death Camps!
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