@danimal Darwin was influenced by Malthus and his views on the perils of overpopulation, and how many individuals must die for populations not to cover every speck of this planet.
“In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work…”
I don’t think Darwin has anything to do with your question, in fact his views were very much influenced by the problem of human overpopulation as presented by Malthus, and the culling in the natural world that normally circumvents it.
@XOIIO Darwin gathered the evidence to refine our understanding of what processes could drive species to change through time (eg natural selection, sexual selection). So depending on what you define as an “evolutionist”, it would have been hard for him to have been one prior to developing his own theory of evolution.
In regards to the actual question, see laureth.