Ravenstone's book belongs to the contemporary debate about the condition of the poor. It begins with a long critique of Malthus's population theory, which Ravenstone thinks is cruel, insulting to God's providence, and erroneous both factually and theoretically. Ravenstone seeks to establish that hunger results, not from the natural workings of the economic order, but from bad human institutions. He begins by attacking the famous geometrical ratio, whereby population is alleged to have the capacity to increase geometrically in periods of twenty-five years. In the first place, the threat of imminent overpopulation is greatly reduced by infant mortality; only eleven females out of twenty born live to the age of marriage. At first sight this does not seem to contradict Malthus, who did not suppose that the geometrical ratio actually operated (except in very unusual circumstances); premature death, often brought on by hunger itself caused by overpopulation, checked the growth of numbers. But Ravenstone maintains that the high death rate among children is endemic to the human condition and is not caused by the occurrence and recurrence of widespread malnutrition. Undoubtedly this argument had some validity in the early nineteenth century, when diseases and illnesses resulting from poor hygiene carried off young lives; but if part of Ravenstone's purpose is to defend the goodness of God, he has been less successful than he thinks.