I was looking at Times Online to check my impression that the word ‘proportionate’ is suddenly being applied widely to all sorts of things.
A simple search confirmed the growth in the popularity of this idea of the need for proportion – over 200 mentions in 2009 compared with a mere 2 in the year 2000.
I turned to the historical archive to see how things had been in the past, & found one of those happy little coincidences, an unexpected result from long ago surprisingly related to another current concern.
A review from one of the very earliest editions of The Times, 19 January 1795 - On the Nature & Principles of Public Credit.
Samuel Gale of St Augustines, East Florida had a scheme to “recover this nation in less than 16 years, to a higher degree of wealth & prosperity than Britain in her greatest glory hath hitherto ever beheld … A revolution in finance, operated without any public self denials."
Since the scheme involved a rather dodgy manipulation of the character of arithmetical & geometrical progressions, the reviewer unsurprisingly concluded “It appears, upon a survey of his plan, that, if Government thought it expedient to adopt it, the financiers must apply it with the greatest caution; for a small error might be productive of the worst of consequences”
Interesting that Malthus almost simultaneous deployment of these progressions as applied to population is still reverberating
