Book I., Chap. i.

THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME FOUR

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration:

_William Hazlitt._

_From a miniature on ivory Executed by John Hazlitt about 1784_

]

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER

AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

❦

A Reply to Malthus

The Spirit of the Age

Etc.

❦

1902

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty

CONTENTS

PAGE

A REPLY TO MALTHUS’S ESSAY ON POPULATION 1

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE 185

PREFACE, ETC., FROM AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED 369

PREFACE FROM A NEW AND IMPROVED GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE 387

NOTES 397

A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION BY THE REV. T. R. MALTHUS

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS. TO WHICH ARE ADDED, EXTRACTS FROM THE ESSAY,

WITH NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Published anonymously in one 8vo vol. of 378 pages (1807) with the

following title-page: ‘A Reply to the Essay on Population, by the Rev.

T. R. Malthus. In a Series of Letters. To which are added, Extracts from

the Essay; with notes. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and

Orme, Paternoster Row. 1807.’ The volume was printed by Arliss and

Huntsman, 32 Gutter Lane, Cheapside.

ADVERTISEMENT

The three first of the following letters appeared originally in

Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register. There are several things, in which

they may seem to require some apology. First, some persons, who were

convinced by the arguments, have objected to the style as too flowery,

and full of attempts at description. If I have erred in this respect, it

has been from design. I have indeed endeavoured to make my book as

amusing as the costiveness of my genius would permit. If however these

critics persist in their objection, I will undertake to produce a work

as dry and formal as they please, if they will undertake to find

readers. Secondly, some of the observations may be thought too severe

and personal. In the first place, I shall answer that the abuse, of

which there is to be sure a plentiful sprinkling, is not I think

unmerited or unsupported; and in the second place, that if I could have

attacked the works successfully, without attacking the author, I should

have preferred doing so. But the thing was impossible. Whoever troubles

himself about abstract reasonings, or calm, dispassionate inquiries

after truth? The public ought not to blame me for consulting their

taste. As to the diffuseness, the repetitions, and want of method to be

found in these letters, I have no good defence to make. I may however

make the same excuse for the great length to which they have run, as the

Frenchman did, who apologised for writing a long letter by saying, that

he had not time to write a shorter.

LETTERS IN

ANSWER TO MALTHUS, &c.

LETTER I

INTRODUCTORY

SIR,—As the proposed alteration in the system of the Poor Laws must

naturally engage your attention, as well as that of the public; and, as

the authority of Mr. Malthus has often been referred to, and has great

weight with many people on this subject, it may not be amiss to inquire,

how far the reputation which that gentleman has gained, as a moral and

political philosopher, can be safely reposed on as the foundation of any

part of a system which is directed to objects of national utility, and

requires close, comprehensive, and accurate reasoning. You, Sir, are not

ignorant, that a name will do more towards softening down prejudices,

and bolstering up a crude and tottering system, than any arguments

whatever. It is always easier to quote an authority than to carry on a

chain of reasoning. Mr. Malthus’s reputation may, I fear, prove fatal to

the poor of this country. His name hangs suspended over their heads, _in

terrorem_, like some baleful meteor. It is the shield behind which the

archers may take their stand, and gall them at their leisure. He has set

them up as a defenceless mark, on which both friends and foes may

exercise their malice, or their wantonness, as they think proper. He has

fairly hunted them down, he has driven them into his toils, he has

thrown his net over them, and they remain as a prey to the first

invader, either to be sacrificed without mercy at the shrine of cold

unfeeling avarice, or to linger out a miserable existence under the

hands of ingenious and scientific tormentors.—There is a vulgar saying,

‘Give a dog a bad name, and hang him.’ The poor seem to me to be pretty

much in this situation at present. The poor, Sir, labour under a natural

stigma; they are _naturally_ despised. Their interests are at best but

coldly and remotely felt by the other classes of society. Mr. Malthus’s

book has done all that was wanting to increase this indifference and

apathy. But it is neither generous nor just, to come in aid of the

narrow prejudices and hard-heartedness of mankind, with metaphysical

distinctions and the cobwebs of philosophy. The balance inclines too

much on that side already, without the addition of false weights. I

confess I do feel some degree of disgust and indignation rising within

me, when I see a man of Mr. Malthus’s character and calling standing

forward as the accuser of those ‘who have none to help them,’ as the

high-priest of ‘pride and covetousness,’ forming selfishness into a

regular code, with its codicils, institutes and glosses annexed, trying

to muffle up the hand of charity in the fetters of the law, to suppress

‘the compunctious visitings of nature,’ to make men ashamed of

compassion and good-nature as folly and weakness, ‘laying the flattering

unction’ of religion to the conscience of the riotous and luxurious

liver, and ‘grinding the faces of the poor’ with texts of scripture.

Formerly the feelings of compassion, and the dictates of justice were

found to operate as correctives on the habitual meanness and selfishness

of our nature: at present this order is reversed; and it is discovered

that justice and humanity are not obstacles in the way of, but that they

are the most effectual strengtheners and supporters of our prevailing

passions. Mr. Malthus has ‘admirably reconciled the old quarrel between

speculation and practice,’ by shewing (I suppose in humble imitation of

Mandeville) that our duty and our vices both lean the same way, and that

the ends of public virtue and benevolence are best answered by the

meanness, pride, extravagance, and insensibility of individuals. This is

certainly a very convenient doctrine; and it is not to be wondered at,

that it should have become so fashionable as it has.[1]

While the prejudice infused into the public mind by this gentleman’s

writings subsists in its full force, I am almost convinced that any

serious attempt at bettering the condition of the poor will be

ineffectual. The only object at present is to gain time. The less it is

meddled with either with good or bad intentions, the better. Tampering

with the disease ‘will but skin and film the ulcerous part, while foul

corruption, mining all within, infects unseen.’ I have not confidence

enough either in the integrity, the abilities, or the power of our

state-doctors to be willing to trust it entirely in their hands. They

risk nothing, if they fail. The patient is in too desperate a state to

bring any imputation on their skill; and after all, it is only trying

experiments _in corpore vili_. The only thing they need be afraid of is

in reality doing _too much_ good. This is the only error which would

never be forgiven by those whose resentment they have most reason to

dread. This however there will be no danger of. The state of public

feeling, the dispositions of individuals, the narrow jealousy of

parties, and the interests of the most powerful members of the community

will, I suspect, suffer little effectually to be done for bettering the

condition, exalting the character, enlightening the understandings, or

securing the comforts, the independence, the virtue and happiness of the

lower classes of the people. But, I am not equally sure that the means

employed for this very purpose may not be made a handle for stifling

every principle of liberty and honour in the hearts of a free people. It

will be no difficult matter, as things are circumstanced, under pretence

of propriety and economy, to smuggle in the worst of tyrannies, a

principle of unrelenting, incessant, vexatious, over-ruling influence,

extending to each individual, and to all the petty concerns of life.

This is what strikes me on the first view of the subject. I would ask,

Is Mr. Whitbread sure of the instruments he is to employ in the

execution of his scheme? Is he sure that his managing partners in this

new political firm of opulent patronage will not play the game into the

hands of those whose views of government and civilization are very

different from his own? But it seems, that whether practicable, or no,

Mr. Whitbread must bring in a Poor Bill. The effect of it appears to me

to be putting the poor into the wardship of the rich, to be doing away

the little remains of independence we have left, and making them once

more what they were formerly, the vassals of a wealthy aristocracy. For

my own part, who do not pretend to see far into things, and do not

expect miracles from human nature, I should wish to trust as little as

possible to the liberality and enlightened views of country squires, or

to the _tender mercies_ of justices of the peace.

The example of Scotland is held out to us as a proof of the beneficial

effects of popular education, and we are promised all the same

advantages from the adoption of the same plan. The education of the poor

is the grand specific which is to cure all our disorders, and make the

leper whole again; and, like other specifics, it is to operate equally

on all constitutions and in all cases. But I may ask, Is the education

of the poor the only circumstance in which Scotland differs from

England? Are there no other circumstances in the situation of this

country that may render such a scheme impracticable, or counteract its

good effects, or render it even worse than nugatory? Is knowledge in

itself a principle of such universal and indisputable excellence that it

can never be misapplied, that it can never be made the instrument and

incentive to mischief, or that it can never be mixed and contaminated

with ‘baser matter’? Do not the peculiar principles and discipline of

the church of Scotland, does not the traditional and habitual faith in

the doctrines of religion, do not the general manners not of the poor

only, but of the other classes of society, does not the state of

cultivation, do not the employments of the people, the absence of

luxury, and temptation, the small number of great towns, and the remains

of ancient customs, tend to strengthen, to forward, to give consistency

to, and secure the good effects of education? Or will Mr. Whitbread say

that he can supply the place of these with a beadle, a white wand, a

spelling book, and a primmer? Supposing it practicable, will the

adoption of a general plan of education have the same effect in our

great manufacturing towns, in our sea-ports, in the metropolis, that it

has in the heart of Scotland, or in the mountains of Cumberland? Will it

not have the contrary effect?

It is not reading in the abstract, but the kind of reading they are

likely to meet with, and the examples about them leading them to emulate

the patterns of sobriety and industry, or of vice and profligacy held

out to them in books, that will do either good or harm to the morals of

a people. In the country the people read moral or religious, or, at

least, innocent books, and therefore, they are benefited by them; in

towns, they as often meet with licentious and idle publications, which

must do them harm. It is in vain to say that you will give them _good_

books, they will get _bad ones_. Will those hotbeds of vice, the

factories of Manchester, &c., be less fruitful for having the _farina_

of knowledge sprinkled over them? Will not corruption quicken faster,

and spread wider for having this new channel opened to it? Will a

smattering in books, and the current pamphlets of the day tend to quench

and smother the flame of the passions, or will it add fuel to them? I do

not scruple to assert, that religion itself, when it comes in contact

with certain situations, may be highly dangerous. It is the soil in

which the greatest virtues and the greatest vices take root. Where it

has not strength to stop the torrent of dissolute manners, it gives it

additional force by checking it; as the bow that has been bent the

contrary way, recoils back with tenfold violence. It is for this reason

that the morals of the people in the trading towns in the north of

England are, I believe, worse than they are farther south, because they

are brought up more religiously. The common people there are almost all

of them originally dissenters. Again, it may be asked, will the poor

people in the trading towns send their children to school instead of

sending them to work at a factory? Or will their employers, forgetting

their own interests, compel them to do it? Or will they give up their

profits and their wealth for the sake of informing the minds, and

preserving the morals of the poor? Oh! no. It may be replied, that it is

chiefly for the peasantry and country people, who compose the largest

part of the community, that this plan of education is intended. But they

are the very people who do not stand in need of it, and to whom, if it

does no harm, it will do little good. If working hard, and living

sparingly are the chief lessons meant to be inculcated in their minds,

they are already tolerably perfect in their parts. As for the rest, it

is in vain to attempt to make men any thing else but what their

situation makes them. We are the creatures not of knowledge, but of

circumstances.

For all these reasons I cannot help looking at this general parallel

between the benefits derived from education in Scotland, and those

expected from it in this country as little better than a _leurre de

dupe_. The advantages of education in the abstract are, I fear, like

other abstractions, not to be found in nature. I thought that the rage

for blind reform, for abstract utility, and general reasoning, had been

exploded long since. If ever it was proper, it was proper on general

subjects, on the nature of man and his prospects in general. But the

spirit of abstraction driven out of the minds of philosophers has passed

into the heads of members of parliament: banished from the closets of

the studious, it has taken up its favourite abode in the House of

Commons. It has only shifted its ground and its objects according to the

character of those in whom it is found. It has dwindled down into petty

projects, speculative details, and dreams of practical, positive

matter-of-fact improvement. These new candidates for fame come in

awkwardly holding up the train of philosophy; and, like the squires of

political romance, invite you to sit down with them to the spoonfuls of

whipt syllabub, the broken scraps of logic, and the same banquet of

windy promises which had been so much more handsomely served up, and to

satiety, by their masters.

I know nothing of Mr. Whitbread personally. His character stands fair

with the public, for consistency and good intention. But I cannot

recognise in his plodding, mechanical, but ill-directed and unsuccessful

endeavours to bring to justice a great public delinquent, in his flowery

common-place harangues, or in the cold, philosophic indifference of the

sentiments he has expressed upon the present occasion, either the

genius, penetration, or generous enthusiasm, (regulated, not damped by

the dictates of reason) which shall be equally proof against the

artifices of designing men, against the sanguine delusions of personal

vanity, or the difficulties, the delays, the disgust, and probable odium

to be encountered in the determined prosecution of such a task. The

celebrated Howard fell a martyr to the great cause of humanity in which

he embarked. He plunged into the depth of dungeons, into the loathsome

cells of disease, ignominy, and despair; he sacrificed health and life

itself as a pledge of the sincerity of his motives. But what proof has

Mr. Whitbread ever given of his true and undissembled attachment to the

same cause? What sacrifices has he made, what fatigues has he suffered,

what pain has he felt, what privation has he undergone in the pursuit of

his object, that he should be depended on as the friend and guardian of

the poor, as the dispenser of good or ill to millions of his

fellow-beings? The ‘champion’ should be the ‘child’ of poverty. The

author of our religion, when he came to save the world, took our nature

upon him, and became as one of us: it is not likely that any one should

ever prove the _saviour_ of the poor, who has not common feelings with

them, and who does not know their weaknesses and wants. To the officious

inquiries of all others, What then are we to do for them? The best

answer would perhaps be, Let them alone.—

I return to the subject from which I set out, and from which I have

wandered without intending it; I mean the system of Mr. Malthus, under

the auspices of whose discoveries it seems the present plan is

undertaken, though it differs in many of its features from the

expedients recommended by that author. I am afraid that the parent

discovery may, however, in spite of any efforts to prevent it, overlay

the ricketty offspring. Besides, the original design and principle gives

a bias to all our subsequent proceedings, and warps our views without

our perceiving it. Mr. Malthus’s system must, I am sure, ever remain a

stumbling block in the way of true political economy, as innate ideas

for a long time confused and perplexed all attempts at philosophy. It is

an _ignis fatuus_, which can only beguile the thoughtless gazer, and

lead him into bogs and quicksands, before he knows where he is. The

details of his system are, I believe, as confused, contradictory, and

uncertain, as the system itself. I shall, however, confine my remarks to

the outlines of his plan, and his general principles of reasoning. In

these respects, I have no hesitation in saying that his work is the most

complete specimen of _illogical_, crude and contradictory reasoning,

that perhaps was ever offered to the notice of the public. A clear and

comprehensive mind is, I conceive, shewn, not in the extensiveness of

the plan which an author has chalked out for himself, but in the order

and connection observed in the arrangement of the subject, and the

consistency of the several parts. This praise is so far from being

applicable to the reasoning of our author, that nothing was ever more

loose and incoherent. ‘The latter end of his commonwealth always forgets

the beginning.’ Argument threatens argument, conclusion stands opposed

to conclusion. This page is an answer to the following one, and that to

the next. There is hardly a single statement in the whole work, in which

he seems to have had a distinct idea of his own meaning. The principle

itself is neither new, nor does it prove any thing new; least of all

does it prove what he meant it to prove. His whole theory is a continued

contradiction; it is a nullity in the science of political philosophy.

I must, however, defer the proof of these assertions to another letter,

when, if you should deem what I have already said worthy the notice of

your readers, I hope to make them out to their and your satisfaction.

LETTER II

ON THE ORIGINALITY OF MR. MALTHUS’S PRINCIPAL ARGUMENT

SIR,—The English have been called a nation of philosophers; as I

conceive, on very slender foundations. They are indeed somewhat slow and

dull, and would be wise, if they could. They are fond of deep questions

without understanding them; and have that perplexed and plodding kind of

intellect, which takes delight in difficulties, and contradictions,

without ever coming to a conclusion. They feel most interest in things

which promise to be the least interesting. What is confused and

unintelligible they take to be profound; whatever is remote and

uncertain, they conceive must be of vast weight and importance. They are

always in want of some new and mighty project in science, in politics,

or in morality for the morbid sensibility of their minds to brood over

and exercise itself upon: and by the time they are tired of puzzling

themselves to no purpose about one absurdity, another is generally ready

to start up, and take its place. Thus there is a perpetual restless

succession of philosophers and systems of philosophy: and the proof they

give you of their wisdom to-day, is by convincing you what fools they

were six months before. Their pretensions to solidity of understanding

rest on the foundation of their own shallowness and levity; and their

gravest demonstrations rise out of the ruins of others.

Mr. Malthus has for some time past been lord of the ascendant. But I

will venture to predict that his reign will not be of long duration. His

hour is almost come; and this mighty luminary, ‘who so lately scorched

us in the meridian, will sink temperately to the west, and be hardly

felt as he descends.’ It is not difficult to account for the very

favourable reception his work has met with in certain classes of

society: it must be a source of continual satisfaction to their minds by

relieving them from the troublesome feelings so frequently occasioned by

the remains of certain silly prejudices, and by enabling them to set so

completely at defiance the claims of ‘worthless importunity in rags.’

But it is not easy to account for the attention which our author’s

reasonings have excited among thinking men, except from a habit of

extreme abstraction and over-refined speculation, unsupported by actual

observation or a general knowledge of practical subjects, in consequence

of which the mind is dazzled and confounded by any striking fact which

thwarts its previous conclusions. There is also in some minds a low and

narrow jealousy, which makes them glad of any opportunity to escape from

the contemplation of magnificent scenes of visionary excellence, to hug

themselves in their own indifference and apathy, and to return once more

to their natural level. Mr. Malthus’s essay was in this respect a nice

_let-down_ from the too sanguine expectations and overstrained

enthusiasm which preceded it. Else, how a work of so base tendency, and

so poorly glossed over, which strikes at the root of every humane

principle, and all the while cants about sensibility and morality, in

which the little, low, rankling malice of a parish-beadle, or the

overseer of a work-house is disguised in the garb of philosophy, and

recommended as a dress for every English gentleman to wear, in which

false logic is buried under a heap of garbled calculations, such as a

bad player might make at cribbage to puzzle those with, who knew less of

the game than himself, where every argument is a _felo de se_, and

defeats its own purpose, containing both ‘its bane and antidote’ within

itself, how otherwise such a miserable reptile performance should ever

have crawled to that height of reputation which it has reached, I am

utterly unable to comprehend. But it seems Mr. Malthus’s essay was a

_discovery_. There are those whom I have heard place him by the side of

Sir Isaac Newton, as both equally great, the one in natural, the other

in political philosophy. But waving this comparison, I must confess,

that were I really persuaded that Mr. Malthus had made any discovery at

all, there is so little originality, and so much ill-nature and

illiberality in the world, that I should be tempted to overlook the

large share of the latter which Mr. Malthus possesses in common with the

rest of mankind (and which in him may probably be owing to

ill-digestion, to a sickly constitution, or some former distaste

conceived against poverty) and to consider him merely in the light of a

man of genius. _Multum abludit imago._ Indeed I do not much see what

there is to discover on the subject, after reading the genealogical

table of Noah’s descendants, and knowing that the world is round. But

even allowing that there was something in the nature of the subject

which threw over it a veil of almost impenetrable obscurity, Mr. Malthus

was not the first who found out the secret. Whatever some of his

ignorant admirers may pretend, Mr. Malthus will not say that this was

the case. He has himself given us a list of authors, some of whom he had

read before, and some since the first publication of his Essay,[2] who

fully understood and clearly stated this principle. Among these Wallace

is the chief. He has not only stated the general principle with the

utmost force and precision, by pointing out the necessary disproportion

between the tendency in population and the tendency in the means of

subsistence to increase after a certain period, (and till this period,

namely till the world became _full_, I must contend in opposition to Mr.

Malthus that the disproportion would not be _necessary_, but

artificial); but what is most remarkable, he has brought this very

argument forward as an answer to the same schemes of imaginary

improvement, which the author of the Essay on population first employed

it to overturn.[3] For it is to be remembered that the use which our

author has since made of this principle to shut up the work-house, to

_snub_ the poor, to stint them in their wages, to deny them any relief

from the parish, and preach lectures to them on the new-invented crime

of matrimony, was an after-thought. His first, his grand, his most

memorable effort was directed against the modern philosophy. It was the

service his borrowed weapons did in that cause, that sanctified them at

all other purposes. I shall have occasion by and by to examine how far

the argument was a solid one; at present I am only inquiring into the

originality of the idea. And here I might content myself with referring

your readers to Wallace’s work; or it might be sufficient to inform them

that after indulging in the former part of it in all the schemes of

fancied excellence and Utopian government, which Sir Thomas More and so

many other philosophers and speculators have endeavoured to establish,

he then enters into an elaborate refutation of them, by describing the

evils, ‘the universal confusion and perplexity in which all such perfect

forms of society must soon terminate, the sooner on account of their

perfection,’ from the principle of population, and as he expresses it,

‘from these primary determinations in nature, a limited earth, a limited

degree of fertility, and the continual increase of mankind.’ However, as

it is probable that most of your readers may not have the book within

their reach, and as people do not like to take these things upon trust,

or from a mere general representation of them, I must beg your insertion

of the following extract from the work itself; and though it is pretty

long, yet as you, Sir, seem to be of opinion with me that the subject of

Mr. Malthus’s reputation is a matter of no mean interest to the public,

I am in hopes that you will not think your pages misemployed in

dissipating the illusion. As to Mr. Malthus himself, if he is a vain

man, he ought to be satisfied with this acknowledgement of his

importance.

‘But without entering further into these abstracted and uncertain

speculations, it deserves our particular attention, that as no

government which hath hitherto been established, is free from all seeds

of corruption, or can be expected to be eternal; so if we suppose a

government to be perfect in its original frame, and to be administered

in the most perfect manner, after whatever model we suppose it to have

been framed, such a perfect form would be so far from lasting for ever,

that it must come to an end so much the sooner on account of its

perfection. For, though happily such governments should be firmly

established, though they should be found consistent with the reigning

passions of human nature, though they should spread far and wide; nay,

though they should prevail universally, they must at last involve

mankind in the deepest perplexity, and in universal confusion. For how

excellent soever they may be in their own nature, they are altogether

inconsistent with the present frame of nature, and with a limited extent

of earth.

‘Under a perfect government, the inconveniences of having a family would

be so intirely removed, children would be so well taken care of, and

everything become so favourable to populousness, that though some sickly

seasons or dreadful plagues in particular climates might cut off

multitudes, yet in general, mankind would encrease so prodigiously, that

the earth would at last be overstocked, and become unable to support its

numerous inhabitants.

‘How long the earth, with the best culture of which it is capable from

human genius and industry, might be able to nourish its perpetually

encreasing inhabitants, is as impossible as it is unnecessary to be

determined. It is not probable that it could have supported them during

so long a period as since the creation of Adam. But whatever may be

supposed of the length of this period, of necessity it must be granted,

that the earth could not nourish them for ever, unless either its

fertility could be continually augmented, or by some secret in nature,

like what certain enthusiasts have expected from the philosopher’s

stone, some wise adept in the occult sciences, should invent a method of

supporting mankind quite different from any thing known at present. Nay,

though some extraordinary method of supporting them might possibly be

found out, yet if there was no bound to the increase of mankind, which

would be the case under a perfect government, there would not even be

sufficient room for containing their bodies upon the surface of the

earth, or upon any limited surface whatsoever. It would be necessary,

therefore, in order to find room for such multitudes of men, that the

earth should be continually enlarging in bulk, as an animal or vegetable

body.

‘Now since philosophers may as soon attempt to make mankind immortal, as

to support the animal frame without food; it is equally certain, that

limits are set to the fertility of the earth, and that its bulk, so far

as is hitherto known, hath continued always the same, and probably could

not be much altered without making considerable changes in the solar

system. It would be impossible, therefore, to support the great numbers

of men who would be raised up under a perfect government; the earth

would be overstocked at last, and the greatest admirers of such fanciful

schemes must foresee the fatal period when they would come to an end, as

they are altogether inconsistent with the limits of that earth in which

they must exist.

‘What a miserable catastrophe of the most generous of all human systems

of government! How dreadfully would the magistrates of such

commonwealths find themselves disconcerted at that fatal period, when

there was no longer any room for new colonies, and when the earth could

produce no further supplies! During all the preceding ages, while there

was room for increase, mankind must have been happy; the earth must have

been a paradise in the literal sense, as the greatest part of it must

have been turned into delightful and fruitful gardens. But when the

dreadful time should at last come, when our globe, by the most diligent

culture, could not produce what was sufficient to nourish its numerous

inhabitants, what happy expedient could then be found out to remedy so

great an evil?

‘In such a cruel necessity, must there be a law to restrain marriage?

Must multitudes of women be shut up in cloisters like the ancient

vestals or modern nuns? To keep a ballance between the two sexes, must a

proportionable number of men be debarred from marriage? Shall the

Utopians, following the wicked policy of superstition, forbid their

priests to marry; or shall they rather sacrifice men of some other

profession for the good of the state? Or, shall they appoint the sons of

certain families to be maimed at their birth, and give a sanction to the

unnatural institution of eunuchs? If none of these expedients can be

thought proper, shall they appoint a certain number of infants to be

exposed to death as soon as they are born, determining the proportion

according to the exigencies of the state; and pointing out the

particular victims by lot, or according to some established rule? Or,

must they shorten the period of human life by a law, and condemn all to

die after they had compleated a certain age, which might be shorter or

longer, as provisions were either more scanty or plentiful? Or what

other method should they devise (for an expedient would be absolutely

necessary) to restrain the number of citizens within reasonable bounds?

‘Alas! how unnatural and inhuman must every such expedient be accounted!

The natural passions and appetites of mankind are planted in our frame,

to answer the best ends for the happiness both of the individuals and of

the species. Shall we be obliged to contradict such a wise order? Shall

we be laid under the necessity of acting barbarously and inhumanly? Sad

and fatal necessity! And which, after all, could never answer the end,

but would give rise to violence and war. For mankind would never agree

about such regulations. Force, and arms, must at last decide their

quarrels, and the deaths of such as fall in battle, leave sufficient

provisions for the survivors, and make room for others to be born.

‘Thus the tranquillity and numerous blessings of the Utopian governments

would come to an end; war, or cruel and unnatural customs, be

introduced, and a stop put to the increase of mankind, to the

advancement of knowledge, and to the culture of the earth, in spite of

the most excellent laws and wisest precautions. The more excellent the

laws had been, and the more strictly they had been observed, mankind

must have sooner become miserable. The remembrance of former times, the

greatness of their wisdom and virtue, would conspire to heighten their

distress;[4] and the world, instead of remaining the mansion of wisdom

and happiness, become the scene of vice and confusion. Force and fraud

must prevail, and mankind be reduced to the same calamitous condition as

at present.

‘Such a melancholy situation in consequence merely of the want of

provisions, is in truth more unnatural than all their present

calamities. Supposing men to have abused their liberty, by which abuse,

vice has once been introduced into the world; and that wrong notions, a

bad taste, and vicious habits, have been strengthened by the defects of

education and government, our present distresses may be easily

explained. They may even be called natural, being the natural

consequences of our depravity. They may be supposed to be the means by

which providence punishes vice; and by setting bounds to the increase of

mankind, prevents the earth’s being overstocked, and men being laid

under the cruel necessity of killing one another. But to suppose that in

the course of a favourable providence, a perfect government had been

established, under which the disorders of human passions had been

powerfully corrected and restrained; poverty, idleness, and war

banished; the earth made a paradise; universal friendship and concord

established, and human society rendered flourishing in all respects; and

that such a lovely constitution should be overturned, not by the vices

of men, or their abuse of liberty, but by the order of nature itself,

seems wholly unnatural, and altogether disagreeable to the methods of

providence.

‘By reasoning in this manner, it is not pretended that ’tis unnatural to

set bounds to human knowledge and happiness, or to the grandeur of

society, and to confine what is finite to proper limits. It is certainly

fit to set just bounds to every thing according to its nature, and to

adjust all things in due proportion to one another. Undoubtedly, such an

excellent order, is actually established throughout all the works of

God, in his wide dominions. But there are certain primary determinations

in nature, to which all other things of a subordinate kind must be

adjusted. A limited earth, a limited degree of fertility and the

continual increase of mankind are three of these original constitutions.

To these determinations, human affairs, and the circumstances of all

other animals, must be adapted. In which view, it is unsuitable to our

ideas of order, that while the earth is only capable of maintaining a

determined number, the human race should increase without end. This

would be the necessary consequence of a perfect government and

education. On which account it is more contrary to just proportion, to

suppose that such a perfect government should be established in such

circumstances, than that by permitting vice, or the abuse of liberty in

the wisdom of providence, mankind should never be able to multiply so as

to be able to overstock the earth.

‘From this view of the circumstances of the world, notwithstanding the

high opinion we have of the merits of Sir Thomas More, and other admired

projectors of perfect governments in ancient or modern times, we may

discern how little can be expected from their most perfect systems.

‘As for these worthy philosophers, patriots, and law-givers, who have

employed their talents in framing such excellent models, we ought to do

justice to their characters, and gratefully to acknowledge their

generous efforts to rescue the world out of that distress into which it

has fallen, through the imperfection of government. Sincere, and ardent

in their love of virtue, enamoured of its lovely form, deeply interested

for the happiness of mankind, to the best of their skill, and with

hearts full of zeal, they have strenuously endeavoured to advance human

society to perfection. For this, their memory ought to be sacred to

posterity. But if they expected their beautiful systems actually to take

place, their hopes were ill founded, and they were not sufficiently

aware of the consequences.

‘The speculations of such ingenious authors enlarge our views, and amuse

our fancies. They are useful for directing us to correct certain errors

at particular times. Able legislators ought to consider them as models,

and honest patriots ought never to lose sight of them, or any proper

opportunity of transplanting the wisest of their maxims into their own

governments, as far as they are adapted to their particular

circumstances, and will give no occasion to dangerous convulsions. But

this is all that can be expected. Though such ingenious romances should

chance to be read and admired, jealous and selfish politicians need not

be alarmed. Such statesmen need not fear that ever such airy systems

shall be able to destroy their craft, or disappoint them of their

intention to sacrifice the interests of mankind to their own avarice or

ambition. There is too powerful a charm which works secretly in favor of

such politicians, which will for ever defeat all attempts to establish a

perfect government. There is no need of miracles for this purpose. The

vices of mankind are sufficient. And we need not doubt but providence

will make use of them, for preventing the establishment of governments

which are by no means suitable to the present circumstances of the

earth.’ See Various Prospects of mankind, nature and providence. Chap.

iv. p. 113.

Here then we have not only the same argument stated; but stated in the

same connection and brought to bear on the very same subject to which it

is applied by the author of the Essay. The principle and the

consequences deduced from it are exactly the same. It often happens that

one man is the first to make a particular discovery or observation, and

that another draws from it an important inference of which the former

was not at all aware. But this is not the case in the present instance.

As far as general reasoning will go, it is impossible that any thing

should be stated more clearly, more fully and explicitly than Wallace

has here stated the argument against the progressive amelioration of

human affairs, from the sole principle of population. ‘So will his

anticipation prevent Mr. Malthus’s discovery;’ for it happens that

Wallace’s book was published so long ago as the year 1761. As to the

details of the Essay, I shall leave them to the _connoisseurs_, not

pretending to know much about the matter; but as to the general

principle or ground-work, I must contend that it was completely

pre-occupied: Mr. Malthus has no more pretentions to originality on that

score, than I or any one else would have, who after having read Mr.

Malthus’s work undertook to retail the arguments contained in it and did

it in words a little different from his own.—‘Oh! but,’ I hear some one

exclaim, ‘the geometrical and arithmetical series! Has Wallace said any

thing of them? did he find them out, or was not this discovery reserved

entirely for the genius and penetration of Mr. Malthus?’ Why really I do

not know: whether after having brought his principle to light, he

christened it himself, is more than I can pretend to determine. It seems

to me sufficient for Wallace to have said that let the one ratio

increase as fast as it would, the other would increase much faster, as

this is all that is practically meant by a geometrical and arithmetical

series. I should have no objection to let Mr. Malthus have the honour of

standing godfather to another’s bantling (and Mr. Shandy was of opinion

that it was a matter of as great importance to hit upon a lucky name for

a child as to beget it) but that the technical phrase he has employed as

a convenient shorthand method of explaining the subject, in reality

applies only to one half of it. The gradual increase applies only to the

degree of cultivation of the earth, not to the quantity. These two

things are palpably distinct. It does not begin to take place till the

whole surface of the earth has been cultivated to a certain degree, or

only with respect to those parts of it which have been cultivated. It is

evident that while most of the soil remained wholly unoccupied and

uncultivated, (which must have been the case for many ages after these

two principles began to operate, and is still the case in many

countries) the power of increase in the productions of the earth, and

consequently, in the support of population would be exactly in

proportion to the population itself, for there would be nothing more

necessary in order to the earth’s maintaining its inhabitants than that

there should be inhabitants enough to till it. In this case the

cultivation of the earth would be limited by the population, not the

population by the state of the cultivation. Where there was no want of

room, and a power of transporting themselves from place to place, which

there would naturally be in great continents, and in gradually

increasing colonies, there could be no want of subsistence. All that

would be wanted would be power to raise or gather the fruits which the

earth had in store, which as long as men were born with hands they would

be always able to do. If a certain extent of ground easily maintained a

certain number of inhabitants, they would only have to spread themselves

over double the surface to maintain double the number. The difficulty is

not in making more land maintain more men, but in making the same spot

of ground maintain a greater number than it did before. Thus Noah might

have taken possession of the three contiguous quarters of the globe for

himself and his three sons; and, if instead of having three sons, he had

had three hundred, there would, I believe, have been no danger of their

starving, but the contrary, from the rapid increase of population. What

I mean to shew is, that it is not true as a general principle that the

increase of population and the increase of subsistence are necessarily

disproportionate to each other, that the one is in a geometrical, the

other is in an arithmetical ratio; but, that in a particular and very

important view of the subject, the extent of population is only limited

by the extent of the earth, and that the increase of the means of

subsistence will be in proportion to the greater extent of surface

occupied, which may be enlarged as fast as there are numbers to occupy

it. I have been thus particular, because mathematical terms carry with

them an imposing air of accuracy and profundity, and ought, therefore,

to be applied strictly, and with the greatest caution, or not at all. I

should say, then, that looking at the subject in a general and

philosophical point of view, I do not think that the expression of an

arithmetical and geometrical series applies: for, with respect to the

extent of ground occupied, which is one thing on which population

depends, and in the first instance always, this might evidently be

increased in any ratio whatever, that the increase of population would

admit, until the earth was entirely occupied; and after that there would

be no room either for a geometrical or arithmetical progression; it

would be at an absolute stand. The distinction is therefore confined to

the degree of art and diligence used in the cultivation of those parts

which have been already occupied. This has no doubt gone on at a very

slow kind of snail’s pace from the very first, and will I dare say

continue to do so. Or to adopt Wallace’s distinction, the increase of

population is either not restricted at all by the ‘limited nature of the

earth,’ or it is limited absolutely by it: it is only kept back

indefinitely by the ‘limited fertility’ of the earth; and it cannot be

said to be kept back necessarily by this, while there are vast tracts of

habitable land left untouched. Till there is no more room, and no more

food to be procured without extreme exertion and contrivance, the

arithmetical and geometrical ratios do not naturally begin to operate;

and the gradual increase that might take place after that period, is not

in my opinion (who am no great speculator) of sufficient importance to

deserve a pompous appellation. I would, therefore, rather stop there,

because it will simplify the question. Till the world is full, or at

least till every country is full, that is, maintains as many inhabitants

as the soil will admit, namely, till it can be proved satisfactorily

that it might not by taking proper methods be made to maintain double

the number that it does, the increase of mankind is not necessarily

checked by the ‘limited extent of the earth,’ nor by its ‘limited

fertility,’ but by other causes. Till then population must be said to be

kept down, not by the original constitution of nature, but by the will

of man. Till then, Mr. Malthus has no right to set up his arithmetical

and geometrical ratios upon the face of the earth, and say they are the

work of nature. You, Sir, will not be at a loss to perceive the fallacy

which lurks under the gloss which Mr. Malthus has here added to

Wallace’s text. His readers looking at his mathematical scale will be

apt to suppose, that population is a naturally growing and necessary

evil; that it is always encroaching on and straitening the means of

existence, and doing more harm than good: that its pernicious effects

are at all times and in all places equally necessary and unavoidable;

that it is at all times an evil, but that the evil increases in

proportion to the increase of population; and that, therefore, there is

nothing so necessary as to keep population down at all events. This is

the imperious dictate of nature, the grinding law of necessity, the end

and the fulfilling of the commandment. I do not mean to say, that Mr.

Malthus does not often shift his ground on this subject, or that he is

not himself aware of the deception. It is sufficient for him that he has

it to resort to, whenever he is in want of it, that he has been able to

throw dust in his readers’ eyes, and dazzle them by a specious shew of

accuracy; that he has made out a bill of indictment against the

principle of population as a common nuisance in society, and has

obtained a general warrant against it, and may have it brought into

court as a felon whenever he thinks proper. He has alarmed men’s minds

with confused apprehensions on the subject, by setting before their

eyes, in an orderly series, the malignant nature and terrible effects of

population, which are perpetually increasing as it goes on: and they are

ready to assent to every scheme that promises to keep these dreadful

evils at a distance from them. ‘_Sacro tremuere timore._ Every coward is

planet-struck.’ But nothing of all this is the truth. Population is only

an evil, as Mr. Malthus has himself shewn, in proportion as it is

excessive; it is not a necessary evil, till the supply of food can, from

natural causes, no longer keep pace with it: till this is the case, no

restraints are necessary, and when this is the case, the same wholesome

degree of restraint, the same quantity of vice and misery, will operate

equally to prevent any tremendous consequences, whether the actual

population is great or small; that is, whether it is stopped only from

having reached the utmost limits prescribed by nature, or whether it has

been starved and crushed down long before that period by positive,

arbitrary institutions, and the perverse nature of man. But this is

entering upon a matter which I intended to reserve for another letter in

which I shall examine the force of the arguments which Mr. Malthus has

built upon this principle. At present, I have done all that was

necessary to the performance of the first part of my engagement, which

was to shew that Mr. Malthus had little claim to the praise of

originality.

LETTER III

ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION AS AFFECTING THE SCHEMES OF UTOPIAN

IMPROVEMENT

‘A swaggering paradox, when once explained, soon sinks into an

unmeaning common-place.’

BURKE.

SIR,—This excellent saying of a great man was never more strictly

applicable to any system than it is to Mr. Malthus’s paradox, and his

explanation of it. It seemed, on the first publication of the Essay on

Population, as if the whole world was going to be turned topsy-turvy,

all our ideas of moral good, and evil were in a manner confounded, we

scarcely knew whether we stood on our head or our heels: but after

exciting considerable expectation, giving us a good shake, and making us

a little dizzy, Mr. Malthus, does as we do when we shew the children

_London_,—sets us on our feet again, and every thing goes on as before.

The common notions that prevailed on this subject, till our author’s

first population-scheme tended to weaken them, were that life is a

blessing, and that the more people could be maintained in any state in a

tolerable degree of health, comfort and decency, the better: that want

and misery are not desirable in themselves, that famine is not to be

courted for its own sake, that wars, disease and pestilence are not what

every friend of his country or his species should pray for in the first

place: that vice in its different shapes is a thing, that the world

could do very well without, and that if it could be got rid of

altogether, it would be a great gain. In short, that the object both of

the moralist and politician was to diminish as much as possible the

quantity of vice and misery existing in the world: without apprehending

that by thus effectually introducing more virtue and happiness, more

reason and good sense, that by improving the manners of a people,

removing pernicious habits and principles of acting, or securing greater

plenty, and a greater number of mouths to partake of it, they were doing

a disservice to humanity. Then comes Mr. Malthus with his octavo book,

and tells us there is another great evil, which had never been found

out, or at least not sufficiently attended to till his time, namely

excessive population: that this evil was infinitely greater and more to

be dreaded than all others put together; and that its approach could

only be checked by vice and misery: that any increase of virtue or

happiness, was the direct way to hasten it on; and that in proportion as

we attempted to improve the condition of mankind, and lessened the

restraints of vice and misery, we threw down the only barriers that

could protect us from this most formidable scourge of the species,

population. Vice, and misery were indeed evils, but they were absolutely

necessary evils; necessary to prevent the introduction of others of an

incalculably, and inconceivably greater magnitude; and that every

proposal to lessen their actual quantity on which the measure of our

safety depended, might be attended with the most ruinous consequences,

and ought to be looked upon with horror. I think, Sir, this description

of the tendency and complexion of Mr. Malthus’s first essay is not in

the least exaggerated, but an exact and faithful picture of the

impression, which it made on every one’s mind.

After taking some time to recover from the surprise and hurry into which

so great a discovery would naturally throw him, he comes forward again

with a large quarto, in which he is at great pains both to say and unsay

all that he had said in his former volume, and upon the whole concludes,

that population is in itself a good thing, that it is never likely to do

much harm, that virtue and happiness ought to be promoted by every

practicable means, and that the most effectual as well as desirable

check to excessive population is _moral restraint_. The mighty

discovery, thus reduced to, and pieced out by common sense, the wonder

vanishes, and we breathe a little freely again. Mr. Malthus is however,

by no means willing to give up his old doctrine, or _eat his own words_:

he stickles stoutly for it at times. He has his fits of reason and his

fits of extravagance, his yielding and his obstinate moments,

fluctuating between the two, and vibrating backwards and forwards with a

dexterity of self-contradiction which it is wonderful to behold. The

following passage is so curious in this respect that I cannot help

quoting it in this place. Speaking of the reply of the author of the

Political Justice to his former work, he observes, ‘But Mr. Godwin says,

that if he looks into the past history of the world, he does not see

that increasing population has been controlled and confined by vice and

misery _alone_. _In this observation I cannot agree with him._ I will

thank Mr. Godwin to name to me any check, that in past ages has

contributed to keep down the population to the level of the means of

subsistence, that does not fairly come under some form of vice or

misery; except indeed the check of _moral restraint, which I have

mentioned in the course of this work_; and which to say the truth,

whatever hopes we may entertain of its prevalence in future, has

undoubtedly in past ages operated with very inconsiderable force.’[5]

When I assure the reader that I give him this passage fairly and fully,

I think he will be of opinion with me, that it would be difficult to

produce an instance of a more miserable attempt to reconcile a

contradiction by childish evasion, to insist upon an argument, and give

it up in the same breath. Does Mr. Malthus really think that he has such

an absolute right and authority over this subject of population, that

provided he mentions a principle, or shews that he is not ignorant of

it, and cannot be caught _napping_ by the critics, he is at liberty to

say that it has or has not had any operation, just as he pleases, and

that the state of the fact is a matter of perfect indifference. He

contradicts the opinion of Mr. Godwin that vice and misery are not the

only checks to population, and gives as a proof of his assertion, that

he himself truly has mentioned another check. Thus after flatly denying

that moral restraint has any effect at all, he modestly concludes by

saying that it has had some, no doubt, but promises that it will never

have a great deal. Yet in the very next page, he says, ‘On this

sentiment, whether virtue, prudence or pride, which I have already

noticed under the name of moral restraint, or of the more comprehensive

title, the _preventive_ check, it will appear, that in the sequel of

this work, I shall lay considerable stress,’ p. 385. This kind of

reasoning is enough to give one the head-ache. But to take things in

their order.

The most singular thing in this singular performance of our author is,

that it should have been originally ushered into the world as the most

complete and only satisfactory answer to the speculations of Godwin,

Condorcet and others, or to what has been called the modern philosophy.

A more complete piece of wrong-headedness, a more strange perversion of

reason could hardly be devised by the wit of man. Whatever we may think

of the doctrine of the progressive improvement of the human mind, or of

a state of society in which every thing will be subject to the absolute

control of reason, however absurd, unnatural, or impracticable we may

conceive such a system to be, certainly it cannot without the grossest

inconsistency be objected to it, that such a system would necessarily be

rendered abortive, because if reason should ever get this mastery over

all our actions, we shall then be governed entirely by our physical

appetites and passions, without the least regard to consequences. This

appears to me a refinement on absurdity. Several philosophers and

speculatists had supposed that a certain state of society very different

from any that has hitherto existed was in itself practicable; and that

if it were realised, it would be productive of a far greater degree of

human happiness than is compatible with the present institutions of

society. I have nothing to do with either of these points. I will allow

to any one who pleases that all such schemes are ‘false, sophistical,

unfounded in the extreme.’ But I cannot agree with Mr. Malthus that they

would be _bad_, in proportion as they were _good_; that their excellence

would be their ruin; or that the true and only unanswerable objection

against all such schemes is that very degree of _happiness_, virtue and

improvement to which they are supposed to give rise. And I cannot agree

with him in this because it is contrary to common sense, and leads to

the subversion of every principle of moral reasoning. Without perplexing

himself with the subtle arguments of his opponents, Mr. Malthus comes

boldly forward, and says, ‘Gentlemen, I am willing to make you large

concessions, I am ready to allow the practicability and the

desirableness of your schemes, the more happiness, the more virtue, the

more refinement they are productive of the better, all these will only

add to the “exuberant strength of my argument”; I have a short answer to

all objections, to be sure I found it in an old political receipt-book,

called Prospects, &c. by one Wallace, a man not much known, but no

matter for that, _finding is keeping_, you know’: and with one smart

stroke of his wand, on which are inscribed certain mystical characters,

and algebraic proportions, he levels the fairy enchantment with the

ground. For, says Mr. Malthus, though this improved state of society

were actually realised, it could not possibly continue, but must soon

terminate in a state of things pregnant with evils far more

insupportable than any we at present endure, in consequence of the

excessive population which would follow, and the impossibility of

providing for its support.

This is what I do not understand. It is, in other words, to assert that

the doubling the population of a country, for example, after a certain

period, will be attended with the most pernicious effects, by want,

famine, bloodshed, and a state of general violence and confusion, this

will afterwards lead to vices and practices still worse than the

physical evils they are designed to prevent, &c. and yet that at this

period those who will be the most interested in preventing these

consequences, and the best acquainted with the circumstances that lead

to them will neither have the understanding to foresee, nor the heart to

feel, nor the will to prevent the sure evils to which they expose

themselves and others, though this advanced state of population, which

does not admit of any addition without danger is supposed to be the

immediate result of a more general diffusion of the comforts and

conveniences of life, of more enlarged and liberal views, of a more

refined and comprehensive regard to our own permanent interests, as well

as those of others, of corresponding habits and manners, and of a state

of things, in which our gross animal appetites will be subjected to the

practical control of reason. The influence of rational motives, of

refined and long-sighted views of things is supposed to have taken place

of narrow, selfish and merely sensual motives: this is implied in the

very statement of the question. ‘What conjuration and what mighty magic’

should thus blind our philosophical descendants on this single subject

in which they are more interested than in all the rest, so that they

should stand with their eyes open on the edge of a precipice, and

instead of retreating from it, should throw themselves down headlong, I

cannot comprehend; unless indeed we suppose that the impulse to

propagate the species is so strong and uncontrolable that reason has no

power over it. This is what Mr. Malthus was at one time strongly

disposed to assert, and what he is at present half inclined to retract.

Without this foundation to rest on, the whole of his reasoning is

unintelligible. It seems to me a most childish way of answering any one,

who chooses to assert that mankind are capable of being governed

entirely by their reason, and that it would be better for them if they

were, to say, No, for if they were governed entirely by it, they would

be much less able to attend to its dictates than they are at present:

and the evils, which would thus follow from the unrestrained increase of

population, would be excessive.—Almost every little Miss, who has had

the advantage of a boarding-school education, or been properly tutored

by her mamma, whose hair is not of an absolute flame-colour, and who has

hopes in time, if she behaves prettily, of getting a good husband, waits

patiently year after year, looks about her, rejects or trifles with half

a dozen lovers, favouring one, laughing at another, chusing among them

‘as one picks pears, saying, this I like, that I loathe,’ with the

greatest indifference, as if it were no such very pressing affair, and

_all the while behaves very prettily_; till she is at last smitten with

a handsome house, a couple of footmen in livery, or a black-servant, or

a coach with two sleek geldings, with which she is more taken than with

her man:—why, what an idea does Mr. Malthus give us of the grave,

masculine genius of our Utopian philosophers, their sublime attainments

and gigantic energy, that they will not be able to manage these matters

as decently and cleverly as the silliest women can do at present! Mr.

Malthus indeed endeavours to soften the absurdity by saying that moral

restraint at present owes its strength to selfish motives: what is this

to the purpose? If Mr. Malthus chooses to say, that men will always be

governed by the same gross mechanical motives that they are at present,

I have no objection to make to it; but it is shifting the question: it

is not arguing against the state of society we are considering from the

consequences to which it would give rise, but against the possibility of

its ever existing. It is absurd to object to a system on account of the

consequences which would follow if we were to suppose men to be actuated

by entirely different motives and principles from what they are at

present, and then to say, that those consequences would necessarily

follow, because men would never be what we suppose them. It is _very_

idle to alarm the imagination by deprecating the evils that must follow

from the practical adoption of a particular scheme, yet to allow that we

have no reason to dread those consequences, but because the scheme

itself is impracticable.—But I am ashamed of wasting your reader’s time

and my own in thus beating the air. It is not however my fault that Mr.

Malthus has written nonsense, or that others have admired it. It is not

Mr. Malthus’s nonsense, but the opinion of the world respecting it, that

I would be thought to compliment by this serious refutation of what in

itself neither deserves nor admits of any reasoning upon it. If however

we recollect the source from whence Mr. Malthus borrowed his principle

and the application of it to improvements in political philosophy, we

must allow that he is merely _passive_ in error. The principle itself

would not have been worth a farthing to him without the application, and

accordingly he took them as he found them lying snug together; and as

Trim having converted the old jack-boots into a pair of new mortars

immediately planted them against whichever of my uncle Toby’s garrisons

the allies were then busy in besieging, so the public-spirited gallantry

of our modern engineer directed him to bend the whole force of his

clumsy discovery against that system of philosophy which was the most

talked of at the time, but to which it was the least applicable of all

others. Wallace, I have no doubt, took up his idea either as a paradox,

or a _jeu d’esprit_, or because any thing, he thought, was of weight

enough to overturn what had never existed anywhere but in the

imagination, or he was led into a piece of false logic by an error we

are very apt to fall into, of supposing because he had never been struck

himself by the difficulty of population in such a state of society, that

therefore the people themselves would not find it out, nor make any

provision against it. But though I can in some measure excuse a lively

paradox, I do not think the same favour is to be shewn to the dull,

dogged, voluminous repetition of an absurdity.

I cannot help thinking that our author has been too much influenced in

his different feelings on this subject, by the particular purpose he had

in view at the time. Mr. Malthus might not improperly have taken for the

motto of his first edition, ‘These three bear record on earth, vice,

misery, and population.’ In his answer to Mr. Godwin, this principle was

represented as an evil, for which no remedy could be found but in

evil;—that its operation was mechanical, unceasing, necessary; that it

went strait forward to its end, unchecked by fear, or reason, or

remorse; that the evils, which it drew after it, could only be avoided

by other evils, by actual vice and misery. Population was in fact the

great devil, the untamed Beelzebub that was only kept chained down by

vice and misery, and that if it were once let loose from these

restraints, it would go forth, and ravage the earth. That they were

therefore the two main props and pillars of society, and that the lower

and weaker they kept this principle, the better able they were to

contend with it: that therefore any diminution of that degree of them

which at present prevails, and is found sufficient to keep the world in

order, was of all things chiefly to be dreaded.—Mr. Malthus seems fully

aware of the importance of the stage-maxim, To elevate and surprise.

Having once heated the imaginations of his readers, he knows that he can

afterwards mould them into whatever shape he pleases. All this bustle

and terror, and stage-effect, and theatrical-mummery, was only to serve

a temporary purpose, for all of a sudden the scene is shifted, and the

storm subsides. Having frighted away the boldest champions of modern

philosophy, this monstrous appearance, full of strange and inexplicable

horrors, is suffered quietly to shrink back to its natural dimensions,

and we find it to be nothing more than a common-sized tame looking

animal, which however requires a chain and the whip of its keeper to

prevent it from becoming mischievous. Mr. Malthus then steps forward and

says, ‘the evil we were all in danger of was not population,—but

philosophy. Nothing is to be done with the latter by mere reasoning. I

therefore thought it right to make use of a little terror to accomplish

the end. As to the principle of population you need be under no alarm,

only leave it to me and I shall be able to manage it very well. All its

dreadful consequences may be easily prevented by a proper application of

the motives of common prudence and common decency.’ If however any one

should be at a loss to know how it is possible to reconcile such

contradictions, I would suggest to Mr. Malthus the answer which Hamlet

makes to his friend Guildenstern, ‘’Tis as easy as lying: govern these

ventiges (the poor-rates and private charity) with your fingers and

thumb, and this same instrument will discourse most excellent music;

look you, here are the stops,’ (namely, Mr. Malthus’s Essay and Mr.

Whitbread’s Poor Bill). To sum up the whole of this argument in one

word. Let us suppose with Mr. Malthus that population can only be kept

down by a certain degree of vice and misery. Let us also suppose that

these checks are for a time removed, and that mankind become perfectly

virtuous and happy. Well, then, according to the former supposition,

this would necessarily lead to an excessive increase of population. Now

the question is, to what degree of excess it would lead, and where it

would naturally stop. Mr. Malthus, to make good his reasoning, must

suppose a miracle to take place; that after population has begun to

increase excessively, no inconvenience is felt from it, that in the

midst of the ‘imminent and immediate’ evils which follow from it, people

continue virtuous and happy and unconscious of the dangers with which

they are surrounded; till of a sudden Mr. Malthus opens the flood-gates

of vice and misery, and they are overwhelmed by them, all at once. In

short he must suppose either that this extraordinary race of men, in

proportion as population increases, are gradually reduced in size, ‘and

less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room, throng numberless, like that

pygmean race beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves’; or that they have

some new world assigned them as a breeding-place, from which attempting

to return they are immediately squeezed to death, like people rushing

into a crowded theatre. On the other hand, I contend that in the natural

course of things, that is, if we suppose people to retain their usual

dimensions, to eat, and drink, and beget children, and bring them up in

the usual way, all this could never happen: for it is impossible but

they must see and feel that there was only room for a certain number.

The moment population became excessive from the _excess_ of virtue and

happiness, its inconveniences would return, and people would no longer

be _perfectly virtuous and happy_: that is, the old checks of a certain

degree of vice and misery would come into play again, and a less degree

of them (I suppose about as much as we enjoy the advantage of at

present) would be sufficient to deter men from plunging into greater,

would put a stop to the further increase of population, and anticipate

those tremendous evils which Mr. Malthus apprehends from it, which could

never happen unless we suppose people to have come to a previous,

deliberate resolution mutually to starve one another to death. There is

therefore no foundation for the alarm given by Mr. Malthus, for vice and

misery are such ready and sure resources that we can be at a loss for

them at no time; and farther with respect to the state of society

supposed by Mr. Malthus, that is if we could once drive vice and misery

out of the world, I really do not see what occasion we should have for

them afterwards.

The most important question yet remains, which is not how Mr. Malthus

came by his discovery, nor whether he was right in endeavouring to

exemplify it in the first instance by shewing its effects on an

imaginary state of society where it would be naturally disarmed of its

malignity, but whether the practical conclusions he has drawn from it

are not of weight and moment in themselves, and whether they are not

established so clearly and fully as to make it necessary for us to

reverse almost entirely all our old reasonings on the principles of

political economy. I confess, I have some difficulty in determining,

whether Mr. Malthus’s principles do or do not materially affect the

commonly received notions on this subject, because I really do not know

what those principles are, and till Mr. Malthus himself tells us,

whether he would have us believe in the new revelation or the old, it is

impossible that any one should. If we are to consider those as Mr.

Malthus’s real and chastized opinions which are the least like himself,

which most flatly contradict his former assertions, which being forced

from him may be looked upon as confessions of the truth, I see nothing

in these that in any manner interferes with the common sense of mankind.

And though Mr. Malthus still perseveres in almost all his extreme

conclusions, yet as those conclusions are for the most part

unwarrantable assumptions, disproved even by his own concessions, and

shew nothing more than Mr. Malthus’s qualifications for the delicate

office of conscience-keeper to the rich and great, I am so far from

considering them as new and important discoveries, that I must be

excused if I consider them as in the highest degree false and dangerous,

and treat them accordingly.

LETTER IV

ON THE GENERAL TENDENCY OF POPULATION TO EXCESS

SIR,—Mr. Malthus’s argument against a state of _unlimited_ improvement,

of perfect wisdom, virtue and happiness, from the vice, misery, and

madness inseparable from such a state would, if admitted, be an

effectual bar to all limited improvement whatever. It is for this

reason, that I have dwelt so long on the subject. If out of timidity, or

complaisance, or prejudice against an unpopular system, we suffer

ourselves to be wheedled into a silly persuasion, that the worst thing

that could happen for the human race would be their being able to

realise not in words only, but in deed all the fine things, that have

been said of them, we then fairly throw ourselves upon the mercy of our

adversaries. For what is there in this case, to hinder Mr. Malthus, or

any one else, from representing every degree of practical improvement as

an approximation to this deplorable crisis, from binding up the slips

and scyons of human happiness with this great trunk of evil, and root of

all our woe, from marking with his slider and graduated scale all our

advances towards this ideal perfection, however partial or necessary, as

so many deviations from the strict line of our duty, and only sphere of

our permanent happiness? It is evident, that the only danger of all

imaginary schemes of improvement arises from their being _exaggerations_

of the real capacities of our nature, from supposing that we can pick

out all the dross, and leave nothing but the gold; that is, from their

being carried to excess, and aiming at more than is practicable. But if

we allow that improvement is an evil in the abstract, and that the

greater the improvement, the greater the mischief, that the actual and

complete success of all such schemes would be infinitely worse even than

their failure, for that the most complete and extensive improvement

would only prepare the way for the most deplorable wretchedness, and

that the very next step after reaching the summit of human glory would

plunge us into the lowest abyss of vice and misery,—why truly there will

be little encouragement to set out on a journey that promises so very

disagreeable a conclusion; such a representation of the matter will not

add wings to our zeal for practical reform, but will rather make us stop

short in our career, and refuse to advance one step farther in a road,

that is beset with danger and destruction. People will begin to look

with a jaundiced eye at the most obvious advantages, to resist every

useful regulation, and dread every change for the better. Our feelings

are governed very much by common-place associations, and are most

influenced by that sort of logic which is the shortest. Thus, ‘that the

parts are contained in the whole,’ is a general rule which is found to

hold good in most of the concerns of life; and it is not therefore easy

to drive it out of people’s heads. For this reason, it will always be

difficult to persuade the generality of mankind that a less degree of

improvement is a good thing, though a greater would be a bad thing, or

that the subordinate parts of a system, that would in reality embody all

the ills of life, can be very desirable in themselves. Mr. Malthus has

however by no means left this conclusion to the mere mechanical

operation of our feelings. He endeavours formally to establish it. The

following passage seems the connecting link in the chain, which unites

the two worlds of theory and practice together; it cements the argument,

gives solidity and roundness to it, and renders it complete against all

improvement, real or imaginary, present or future, against all absolute

perfection or imperfect attempts at it, and gradual approaches to it. It

fairly blocks up the road.

‘It cannot but be a matter of astonishment that all writers on the

perfectibility of man, and of society, who have noticed the argument of

an overcharged population, treat it always very slightly, and invariably

represent the difficulties arising from it, as at a great, and almost

immeasurable distance. Even Mr. Wallace, who thought the argument itself

of so much weight as to destroy his whole system of equality, did not

seem to be aware that any difficulty would occur from this cause, till

the whole earth had been cultivated like a garden, and was incapable of

any further increase of produce. Were this really the case, and were a

beautiful system of equality in other respects practicable, I cannot

think that our ardour in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped

by the contemplation of so remote a difficulty. An event at such a

distance might fairly be left to providence; but the truth is, that if

the view of the argument given in this Essay be just, the difficulty so

far from being remote, would be imminent and immediate. _At every period

during the progress of cultivation_, from the present moment to the time

when the whole earth was become like a garden, _the distress for want of

food would be constantly pressing on all mankind_, if they were equal.

Though the produce of the earth _might be increasing every year_,

population _would be increasing much faster_; and the redundancy must

_necessarily_ be repressed by the periodical or constant action of vice

and misery.’[6]

In answer to this statement (allowing however that it is a fair

inference from Wallace’s reasoning, and from our author’s own principle)

I would simply ask, whether _during this progress of cultivation, the

distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind_

more than it does at present. Let us suppose that men remain just as

vicious, as imprudent, as regardless of their own interests and those of

others as they are at present, let us suppose them to continue just what

they are, through all the stages of improved cultivation to the time

when the whole earth was become like a garden, would this in the

smallest degree detract from the benefit? Would nothing indeed be gained

by the earth’s being cultivated like a garden, that is, by its producing

ten times the quantity of food that it does at present, and being able

to maintain ten times the quantity of inhabitants in the same degree of

comfort and happiness that it does at present, because forsooth they

would not at the same time be ten times better off than they are now? Is

it an argument against adding to the happiness of mankind tenfold, by

increasing their number, their condition remaining the same, that we

cannot add to it a hundred-fold, by increasing their number and

improving their condition proportionably? Or is it any objection to

increasing the means of subsistence by the improved cultivation of the

earth, that the population would keep pace with it? It appears to me

that there must be a particular perversity, some egregious bias in the

mind of any person who can either deny the inference to be drawn from

these questions, or evade it as a matter of indifference, by

equivocation and subterfuge. We might as well assert that because it is

most likely that the inhabitants of the rest of Europe are not better,

nor indeed quite so well off as the people of England, that it would

therefore be no matter if the whole continent of Europe were sunk in the

sea, as if human life was merely to be considered as a sample of what

the thing is, and as if when we have a sample of a certain quality, all

the rest might be very well spared, as of no value. As however I

conceive that Mr. Malthus is not a man to be moved either by common

feelings or familiar illustrations, I shall venture to lay down one dry

maxim on the subject, which he will get over as well as he can, namely,

that an improved cultivation of the earth, and a consequent increase of

food must necessarily lead to one or other of these two consequences,

either that a greater number of people will be maintained in the same

degree of comfort and happiness, other things being the same, or that

means will be afforded for maintaining an equal number in greater ease,

plenty, and affluence. It is plain either that existence is upon the

whole a blessing and that the means of existence are on that account

desirable; that consequently an increased population is doubly a

blessing, and an increase in the means of existence doubly desirable; or

else life is an evil, and whatever tends to promote it is an evil, and

in this case it would be well if all the inhabitants of the earth were

to die of some easy death to-morrow!

For my own part, ‘who am no great clerk,’ I cannot by any efforts, of

which I am capable, separate these two propositions, that it is

desirable either that population should have stood still at first, or

that it should go on increasing till the earth is absolutely full; or in

other words, I see no rational alternative between the principle of

extermination (as far as it is in our power) and the principle of the

utmost possible degree of populousness. It is, I conceive, an

incontrovertible axiom, that the proportion between the population and

food being given (and Mr. Malthus tells us that it holds nearly the same

in all the stages of society) the actual increase of population is to be

considered as so much clear gain, as so much got into the purse, as so

much addition to the sum of human happiness. Mr. Malthus says in another

place (second edition, p. 357), ‘The only point in which I differ from

M. Condorcet in this description’ [of the evils arising from increased

population,] ‘is with regard to the period, when it may be applied to

the human race. M. Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be

applicable, but at an era extremely distant. If the proportion between

the natural increase of population and food, which was stated in the

beginning of this essay, and which has received considerable

confirmation _from the poverty that has been found to prevail in every

stage and department of human society_, be in any degree near the truth,

it will appear on the contrary, that the period, when the number of men

surpass their means of subsistence, has long since arrived, &c.’ Mr.

Malthus in different parts of his work makes a great _rout_ about the

distinction between _actual_ and _relative_ population, and lays it down

that an actual increase of population is an advantage, except when it

exceeds the means of subsistence; yet he here seems to treat the

proportion between the increase of population, and food, which he says

has always continued pretty much the same, as the only thing to be

attended to, and to represent the progressive increase of the actual

population, unless we could at the same time banish poverty entirely

from the world, as a matter of the most perfect indifference, or rather

as the most dangerous experiment, that could be tried. Is not this being

wilfully blind to the consequences of his own reasoning? Oh! but, says

Mr. Malthus, you do not state the case fairly. If men were to continue

what they are at present; if there were the same proportionable quantity

of vice, and misery in the world, what you say would be true. Every

thing would then go on as well, or indeed better than before. But this

is impossible, because this increased cultivation, and a more equal

distribution of the produce of the earth could only take place, in

consequence of the increased civilization, virtue, good sense, and

happiness of mankind: and this would necessarily spoil all. For remove

the present quantity of vice and misery existing in the world, and you

remove the only checks, that can keep population down. ‘Though the

produce of the earth might be increasing every year, the population

would be increasing much faster; and the redundancy must be repressed by

the old restraints of vice and misery.’ That is to say, though

(according to the second edition) vice, misery, and moral restraint,

operate mutually as checks to population, and though the diminution of

vice and misery could only be the consequence of the increased strength

in the principle of moral restraint, yet this latter principle would in

reality have no effect at all, and in proportion as the other checks to

population, viz. vice and misery, were superseded, they would become

more and more necessary. If there could be a gradual, and indefinite

improvement in the cultivation of the soil, and every facility could be

afforded for the supply of an increasing population, without supposing

some change in the institutions of society, which would render men

better and wiser, than they now are, Mr. Malthus will perhaps with some

reluctance, and uncertainty hanging over his mind, allow that this would

be a considerable advantage; the population might in this case be kept

within some bounds, and not increase faster than the means of

subsistence: but as this is a change that cannot be looked for without

supposing a correspondent improvement in the morals and characters of

men, we must set off one thing against another, and give up the chance

of improvement, to prevent the shocking alternative connected with it.

With our present modicum of wit and command over our passions, we do

contrive in some measure to make both ends meet, or to cut our coat

according to our cloth, or look before we leap, and are not carried

away, neck or nothing, by this high-mettled courser, Population, over

all the fences and barriers of common sense. But if we were to make any

considerable improvements in horsemanship, or in our _knack_ at

calculation, we should instantly, belying all reasonable expectation,

throw the bridle on the horse’s neck, rush blindly forward in spite of

all obstacles, and freed from the shackles of necessity without having

acquired the discipline of reason, though the one always instantly

resumes its sway, the moment the other ceases, plunge into all the

miseries of famine, without remorse, or apprehension.

This I conceive is an express contradiction in terms. Yet I grant that

it is a logical inference from Mr. Malthus’s original statement, that

vice and misery are the only adequate checks to population. If this were

indeed the case, all the consequences that Mr. Malthus describes, the

utmost degree of vice and misery, would necessarily be the lot of man in

all stages and departments of society, whether in his improved or

unimproved state, because in all cases and at all times his reason would

be of no use to him. However great or however small our attainments in

arts or science, or in all other virtues might be, in this respect we

should still be the same; that is, we should be exactly in the condition

of the brutes, entirely governed by an impulse, over which we should

have neither check nor control. Mr. Malthus, however, finding that this

account is inconsistent with the state of human life, and with those

checks which certainly do keep population back from going its natural

lengths, now adds moral restraint as a convenient supplement to his

theory, and as our chief security against vice and misery, though he

still insists that where its effect must be greatest, it would have no

effect at all. He gives up his principle, but retains his conclusion, to

which he has no right. He is like a bad poet who to get rid of a false

concord alters the ending of his first line, and forgets that he has

spoiled his rhyme in the second. On the whole, then, it appears, that at

no one period during the progress of cultivation from the present moment

to the time when it should have reached its utmost limits, would the

distress for want of food be greater than it is at present. In the mean

time, the number of mankind, and consequently their happiness would go

on increasing with the means of their happiness, or subsistence, till

the whole earth had been cultivated like a garden, and was incapable of

any further increase, and we should then be exactly where we are now

with respect to the checks on population. That is, the earth would

maintain ten times its present number of inhabitants in the same comfort

as at present, without our having involved ourselves in any of those

straits and difficulties, those pits and snares, against which we are so

kindly warned by Mr. Malthus. The population, and the means of

subsistence would indeed be stationary, but so they may be said to be at

present. The only difference is that they are at present unnecessarily

stationary from artificial causes, from moral and political

circumstances; in that case the line would be drawn by nature herself,

in other words, by the limited extent of the earth, and by its limited

fertility. _This being the case and were a beautiful system of equality

in other respects practicable_, (for observe, reader, I leave the

question as _to those other respects_ exactly where I found it) _I

cannot think that our ardour in pursuit of such a scheme can in any wise

be damped by the contemplation of the difficulties attendant upon it

from the principle of population._ All that could be gained, would be

pure gain without any loss whatever. In short, the principle of

population does not, as I conceive, affect the future improvement of

society in any way whatever, whether on a larger or a smaller scale,

theoretically or practically, generally, or particularly. I have thus,

Sir, endeavoured to answer Mr. Malthus’s argument against the improved

cultivation of the earth, and an increase of population, from the

increased difficulties (as he falsely represents them), that would all

the way press upon society during its progress. He has rendered his

paradox in some measure palatable to the reader, by introducing it as

one branch of his answer to Condorcet, and others of the same school,

herein imitating the policy of the house of commons, who sometimes

prevail on the house of lords to pass a bill which they do not much

like, by tacking a money-bill to it. However as the two subjects are

entirely distinct, I beg that they may not be confounded. The question

is simply, whether we are to look upon the progress of agriculture,

civilization, and the populousness which would follow, (no matter to

what extent, nor by whom it is brought about, whether it is projected by

a junto of philosophers, or decided upon in a committee of the house of

commons, enlightened by the genius of Mr. Malthus and guided by Mr.

Whitbread’s wisdom), whether I say, as a general principle we are to

look upon an addition to the inhabitants of a state, if there is enough

to support them, as a good or an evil. Mr. Malthus has chosen to answer

this question under the head, _modern philosophy_, so that he is secure

of the protection of the court. I have been willing not to deprive him

of this advantage, and have answered it under the same head. If however

any of my readers should dislike the argument in this connection, they

may easily take it out of the mould in which it is cast, without doing

it the least hurt. To shew how lightly all schemes of improvement sit on

Mr. Malthus’s mind, how easily he thinks they may be puffed aside with

the least breath of sophistry, it will be sufficient to quote the

following passage. After allowing in general that even the best

cultivated countries in Europe might be made to produce double what they

do at present, he says, ‘We should not be too ready to make inferences

against the internal economy of a country from the appearance of

uncultivated heaths without other evidence.’ [It is wonderful with what

slowness and circumspection Mr. Malthus always proceeds in his

disapprobation of any thing, that comes in the prepossessing garb of an

evil. He is only confident and severe in his decisions against those

hidden mischiefs, which lie concealed under a delusive appearance of

good. There is something in the prospect of dearth and barrenness which

is perfectly congenial to the disposition of Mr. Malthus. He is

unwilling to give up a subject which promises so much scope for his

singular talents of bringing good out of evil.] ‘But the fact is, that

as no country has ever reached, or probably will ever reach its highest

possible acme of produce, it _appears always_, as if the want of

industry, or the ill-direction of that industry was the actual limit to

a further increase of produce and population, and not the absolute

refusal of nature to yield any more; but a man who is locked up in a

room, may be fairly said to be confined by the walls of it, _though he

may never touch_ them; and with regard to the principle of population,

it is never the question whether a country will produce _any more_, but

whether it may be made to produce a sufficiency to keep pace with an

unchecked increase of people.’ This I confess is a singular passage for

a practical philosopher to write. Mr. Malthus here lays it down that the

question is not whether we should do all the good we can, but whether we

should do what we cannot. As to his illustration of a man locked up in a

room, though it is smart and clever, it is not much to the purpose. The

case is really that of a man who has the range of a suite of rooms and

who in a fit of the spleen, or from indolence, or stupidity, or from any

other cause you please, confines himself to one of them, or of a man who

having hired a large commodious apartment, says, I never make use of the

whole of this apartment, I never go within a foot of the walls, I might

as well have it partitioned off, it would be snugger and warmer, and so

still finding that he does not run against his partition any more than

against the wall, should continue, being determined to have no

unnecessary spare-room, to hemm himself in closer and closer till at

last he would be able to stir neither hand nor foot. That any one,

allowing as Mr. Malthus does, that with proper management and industry

this country might be made to maintain _double_ its present number of

inhabitants, or twenty millions instead of ten, should at the same time

affect to represent this as a mere trifling addition, that practically

speaking cannot be taken into the account, can I think only be explained

by supposing in that person either an extreme callousness of feeling, or

which amounts to pretty much the same thing, a habit of making his

opinions entirely subservient to his convenience, or to any narrow

purpose he may have in view at the moment.—Perhaps if the truth were

known, I am as little sanguine in my expectations of any great

improvement to be made in the condition of human life either by the

visions of philosophy, or by downright, practical, parliamentary

projects, as Mr. Malthus himself can be. But the matter appears to me

thus. It requires some exertion and some freedom of will to keep even

where we are. If we tie up our hands, shut our eyes to the partial

advantages we possess, and cease to exert ourselves in that direction in

which we can do it with the most effect, we shall very soon ‘go deep in

the negative series.’ Take away the hope and the tendency to

improvement, and there is nothing left to counteract the opposite

never-failing tendency of human things ‘from bad to worse.’ There is

therefore a serious practical reason against losing sight of the object,

even when we cannot attain it. However, I am ‘free to confess’ (to

borrow the language of my betters) that there is as much selfishness as

public spirit in my resistance to Mr. Malthus’s contradictions. It is a

remote question whether the world will ever be much wiser than it is:

but what I am certainly interested in, is not to submit to have all my

ideas confounded by barren sophistry, nor to give up the little

understanding which I may actually possess. Nor for my own part, were I

confined to my room, should I think myself obliged to any one for

blocking up my view of a pleasant prospect, because I could not move

from the place, where I was.

The fundamental principle of Mr. Malthus’s essay is that population has

a constant tendency to become excessive, because it has a tendency to

increase not only in a progressive, but in a geometrical ratio, whereas

the means of subsistence are either positively limited, or at most can

only be made to increase in an arithmetical ratio. But to be sure of

avoiding any thing like misrepresentation in this part of the argument,

where the least error or omission might be fatal to our author’s whole

scheme, let us take his own words.

‘It may be safely affirmed that population when unchecked goes on

doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical

ratio.

‘That we may be the better able to compare the increase of population

and food, let us make a supposition, which without pretending to

accuracy, is clearly more favourable to the power of production in the

earth, than any experience that we have had of its qualities will

warrant.

‘Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the

former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly

would do, were to remain the same; and that the produce of this island

might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what

it at present produces; the most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose

a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every

acre of land in the island like a garden.

‘If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be allowed

that the subsistence for man which the earth affords, might be increased

every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present

produces; this will be supposing a rate of increase much greater than we

can imagine that any possible exertions of mankind could make it.

‘It may be fairly pronounced therefore that considering the present

average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under

circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly

be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.

‘The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when

brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population of

this island eleven millions; and suppose the present produce equal to

the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the

population would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also

doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In

the next twenty-five years, the population would be forty-four millions,

and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirty-three

millions. In the next period, the population would be eighty-eight

millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half

that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the population

would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of

subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions; leaving a

population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for.

‘Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration would of

course be excluded: and supposing the present population equal to a

thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2,

4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence

as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand

years, the difference would be almost incalculable.

‘In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the produce of the

earth. It may increase for ever, and be greater than any assignable

quantity; yet still _the power of population being in every period_ so

much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down

to the level of the means of subsistence by the _constant operation of

the strong law of necessity_ acting as a check upon the greater power;’

or as he elsewhere expresses it ‘_by misery or the fear of misery_.’

Oh! my good Sir, spare your calculations. We do not wish to be informed

what would be the exact proportion of the _imaginary_ means of

subsistence to the _imaginary_ population at a period, and at a rate of

increase, at which, if it had been possible for it to have gone on only

half so long as you suppose, the whole race would have been long ago

_actually_ extinct. Mr. Malthus here treats us as the fantastical

landlord treated _Sancho Panza_, by giving him a magnificent list of a

great variety of delicacies, which it appeared on examination were not

to be had, but made no mention of an excellent dish of cow-heel, which

was the only thing he had in the house, and which exactly suited the

stomach of the squire. I am, like Sancho, disposed to be satisfied with

what I can get; and therefore I must fairly tell Mr. Malthus that if he

will only spare me that first ratio of his, of a doubled population with

respect to this island, or to the whole earth (though there, begging his

pardon, if all other things went right, his arithmetical and geometrical

distinction would not as I have shewn come into play for some time), I

say if he will allow, as far as the principle of population is

concerned, that it is possible to double the number of inhabitants of

this country or of the world without any injury, I shall be perfectly

content with this concession: this first ratio shall be to me the golden

number of Pythagoras, and he may do as he pleases with all the remaining

links of an impossible series, which he has started only, I imagine, as

we throw out a tub to a whale by way of diversion. As to any serious

argument, it is perfectly immaterial, perfectly irrelevant to the

question, _whether we should double our population_, that we cannot

forsooth go on doubling it for ever; unless indeed it could be shewn

that by thus doubling it once, when we can do it without any

inconvenience, we should be irresistibly impelled to go on doubling it

afterwards when it would have become exceedingly inconvenient, and in

fact till the consequence would be general famine and the most extensive

misery. Without this addition to his argument, either expressed or

implied, Mr. Malthus’s double series is of no use or avail whatever: it

looks very pretty upon paper, and reads very neat, but is of no

practical importance. The evils which it describes so accurately as

arising from the increased disproportion between the ratios at every

step are mere imaginary things, existing no where but in the morbid

enthusiasm of Mr. Malthus’s mind, unless we suppose that every increase

of the existing population, either with or without a proportionable

increase in the means of subsistence, is a vicious habit, a species of

phrensy, where one step only leads to another, till we are plunged into

irretrievable ruin. But I would ask, supposing the inhabitants of a

country to have increased gradually in consequence of an increase in the

means of subsistence, from two millions to four, how that population of

four millions would have a greater tendency to excess, than the present

population of two millions? Would not the same sense of inconvenience,

the same dread of poverty, the same regard to the comforts of life,

operate in the same way and just as much upon every individual of the

four millions, as upon every individual of the two millions? What then

becomes of the increased tendency to excessive population in consequence

of its actual increase? Yet without this, an increased population is not

in itself an evil, or a good necessarily leading to evil, but a pure and

unmixed good unconnected with any greater evil.

Even our author’s own account will give us a new country and a new

earth; it will double all the happiness and all the enjoyment that there

is at present in the world. If he had been a man of sanguine or poetical

feelings, methinks this single consideration would have been enough to

have made his heart leap up with a lively joy—to see ‘fast by hanging in

a golden chain this pendant world,’ &c. but he is a man whom you may

call rather of a saturnine than of a sanguine disposition. He therefore

had no leisure to behold this cheering object, but passes on ‘to

nature’s farthest verge,’ till he enters once more into ‘the confines of

Chaos, and the bosom of dim night.’ Mr. Malthus somewhere speaks

familiarly of the association of ideas, as if he were acquainted with

that doctrine. He has here at any rate very skilfully availed himself of

that kind of reasoning, which owes all its weight to that mechanical

principle. In all the stages of an unchecked population, except the

first, it having appeared that there is a great disproportion between

this principle and the progress of agriculture, our author concludes

that his readers will forget that that, which is so often represented as

an evil, can ever be a good, and therefore peremptorily adds, in

defiance of his own statement, that in _every period_ of the increase,

the power of population is much superior to the other. Though it appears

to me then that Mr. Malthus by his ratios has gained nothing in point of

argument over his readers, he has gained much upon their imagination. By

representing population so often as an evil, and by magnifying its

increase in certain cases as so enormous an evil, he raises a general

prejudice against it. Whenever you talk of any improvement or any

increase of population consequent upon it, he immediately plays off his

infinite series against you. He makes the transition from a practicable

to an impracticable increase of population, from that degree of it,

which is desirable to that which is excessive, by the assistance of his

mathematical scale, as easily as you pass from the low notes of a

harpsichord to the high ones. There seems no division between them. It

is true that so long as we confine ourselves to the real question before

us and distinguish between what is practicable, and what can never

possibly happen, the evil consequences of the system we contend for are

merely chimerical. But as Hercules in order to strangle the earth-born

Antæus was obliged to lift him from the ground, Mr. Malthus, in order to

complete his triumph over common sense, is obliged to call to his aid

certain airy speculations and fanciful theories of dangers, that, by his

own confession, can never possibly exist. Whenever you are for setting

out on the road of reform, Mr. Malthus stops you on the threshold, and

says, Do you consider where you are going? Don’t you know where this

road will lead you? and then, with a ‘come on, sir, here’s the place:

look how fearful and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eye so low’; he hurries

you forward to his imaginary precipice, and shews you the danger you

have so narrowly escaped. However, it is not Mr. Malthus’s rhetoric, but

our own wilful blindness, that must persuade us that we have escaped

being dashed to pieces down any precipices, when he himself tells us

that the road is nothing more than a long winding declivity.

I conceive there were two very capital errors in Mr. Malthus’s first

essay, which though he has abandoned or in a great measure softened them

down in his subsequent edition, still adhere to all his reasonings, and

give them a wrong bias. The first of these was, that vice and misery are

the only checks to population: secondly, that if population were for any

time freed from these restraints, it would in that case go on increasing

with a force and rapidity, which nothing would be able to withstand, and

which would bear down the feeble mounds that had before opposed its

progress till the whole would end in one wide scene of universal uproar

and confusion. As if, in the first place, mere misery of itself, without

a sense of greater misery, and a desire to avoid it, would do any thing

to prevent population; and in the second place, as if though the tax of

vice and misery were taken off for a time, yet the recurrence of the

same evils afterwards would not operate in the same way to repress

population, or as if population would in the mean time have acquired any

preternatural strength, with which its counteracting causes would be

unable to contend, or as if the mere mechanical checks to population

from the actual evils attendant upon it were not always necessarily a

match for, and proportioned to, the strength of the principle itself,

and its immediate tendency to excess. It is astonishing to see how those

men, who pique themselves the most on the solidity of their

understandings, and on a kind of dull matter-of-fact plodding accuracy,

are perpetually led away by their imaginations: the more so because they

are the dupes of their own vanity, and never suspect that they are

liable to any such deception. In the present instance our author has

been hurried into an unfounded assumption by having his imagination

heated with a _personification_. He has given to the principle of

population a personal existence, conceiving of it as a sort of infant

Hercules, as one of that terrific giant brood, which you can only master

by strangling it in its cradle; forgetting that the antagonist principle

which he has made its direct counterpoise, still grows with its growth

and strengthens with its strength, being in fact its own offspring: and

that the sharper evils which excessive population brings along with it,

more severe in proportion to its excess, naturally tend to repress and

keep population down to the same level, other circumstances being

supposed the same. Nothing can be clearer to my understanding than this;

yet it is upon the misrepresentation or misconception of this principle

that most of Mr. Malthus’s sophisms and ambiguities hinge.

It is necessary to make a distinction between the tendency in population

to increase, and its power to increase; otherwise we may fall into great

errors. The power of population to increase is an abstract thing

independent of circumstances, and which is therefore always the same.

Its effects may therefore be very well described by a mathematical

series. When we speak of the power of population to increase in a

certain continued ratio, we do not mean to say that it will or will not

do so, but merely that it is possible that it should do so from the

nature of the principle itself. The power of population to increase is

in fact the same both before and after it has become excessive. But I

conceive this is not the case with its _tendency_ to increase, unless we

mean its _unchecked tendency_, which is saying nothing; for if we speak

of its real tendency to increase, this certainly is not always the same,

but depends exceedingly on circumstances, that is, is greater or less in

proportion as the population is or is not excessive. The ratio in which

Mr. Malthus has represented population as having a natural tendency to

increase, can therefore only relate to its unchecked progress, or to its

increase while the means of subsistence can be made to keep pace with

it; inasmuch as it has an actual tendency to increase in this ratio,

only while it is free from checks; but the moment these checks begin to

operate it is necessarily limited by them, or kept down within a certain

point to the level of the means of subsistence. In short, as a practical

guide, Mr. Malthus’s table is extremely fallacious; for the population

has a tendency to go on as 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. only while the subsistence

answers to it, or is as 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. and when the means of

subsistence can only be made to increase as 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. then the

population will, in the natural course of things, come down to it and

increase only as 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. or supposing it to have generally a

certain tendency to excess, it will then increase as 1¼, 2½, 3¾, 5, &c.

The actual, positive, practical tendency in population _to increase_ is

not therefore always the same, and for that very reason its tendency _to

excess_ is always the same, neither greater nor less, in consequence of

the absolute increase in population. Mr. Malthus himself admits fully

the distinction between the actual increase of population and its

excessive increase, between the tendency of population to increase with

the means of subsistence and its tendency to increase beyond those

means. In fact, almost one half of his voluminous work is taken up by

extensive historical researches to prove that the population is in all

ages and countries, in every form of society, and stage of civilization

kept down _nearly_ to the means of subsistence: that population has not

therefore at one time more than another, when it is strong than when it

is weak, in an improved than in a neglected state of cultivation, a

tendency to rush on beyond its necessary limits: yet if there is any one

inference to be drawn from the general spirit and tenor of Mr. Malthus’s

reasonings, it is this, that we ought not to encourage population, nor

be anxious about the increase of the means of subsistence, but ought

rather to keep them back as much as possible, because every addition

made to population by whatever means or in whatever circumstances, has a

direct and unavoidable tendency to make it go on increasing with an

accelerated force; or that the positive benefit of an enlarged

population is always counterbalanced by the increased danger of the

excess to which it naturally leads. Mr. Malthus by setting a certain

degree of plenty against a certain degree of excessive population, has

made it appear as if the two things were inseparably connected, as if

supposing a certain progress made in the one ratio you may then by

passing over to the opposite line see immediately what progress had been

made at the same time in the other, that is, what quantity of actual and

excessive population, proportioned to the increase in the means of

subsistence and its immediate consequence, would require to be cut off

by forcible and unnatural means, by vice and misery. It therefore looks

very much as if plenty were the immediate fore-runner of famine, as if

by sowing the seeds of virtue and happiness you were ensuring a larger

harvest of vice and misery, the evil engrafted on any good being always

greater than the real benefit itself, and as if by advancing population

and increasing the means of its support, you were only opening a new

Iliad of woes, and giving larger scope to the baneful operation of this

principle. So that it is not the increase of good that we are to think

of, but the introduction of evil that we are to guard against. The

proportion by which we are to be guided is clear and demonstrable; it is

as 256 to 9, and so regularly through all the gradations upwards and

downwards. At this rate it is pretty clear that our only object must be

to confine human happiness within as narrow limits, and to keep the

population down as low as possible, at least to suffer no addition to

it. We are something in the condition of a man suspended on a balance

with sharp-pointed spikes placed close to his body, and who must not

stir for his life. Now the source of this fallacy (on which the whole

turns, for without it it is null and abortive) lies here, namely in

supposing that of the two ratios here connected together, the one is the

cause of, or has any thing to do with the other. For the ratio in the

upper line being at number 256 does not depend on the other ratio being

at number 9, but simply on its being so many removes from the root or

first number. It only expresses a possible or imaginary series, or the

independent, direct, physical power of increase, or abstract tendency to

increase in population at each step, and what that increase would amount

to in a given number of steps, being left entirely to itself. If it

expresses any thing else, or the actual increase of population combined

with and in reference to the means of subsistence, it is utterly false

and delusive, and a contradiction in terms. For population as regulated

by, and arising out of the means of subsistence cannot have got the

start of it in so prodigious a manner, and as unconnected with the

increase of the latter cannot depend upon it. In the one case,

population instead of being to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9,

will only be a little a-head of it, or as 9½ to 9: in the other case it

will be as 256, whether the food has in a given time increased from 1 to

9, or only from 1 to 6, or whether it has stood still at 1. The number

of inhabitants from the beginning of the world, proceeding by the

geometrical ratio, would have been going on just the same whether they

had ever had any thing to eat or not (they are a kind of enchanted

people who live without food) whether the quantity of food had been more

or less, whether there has been any improvements in agriculture or not.

Though the improvements in agriculture had stood still at 1 in the

arithmetical scale this would not lessen or alter the height to which

the geometrical scale would have mounted in the interval. ‘It keeps on

its way unslacked of motion.’ By advancing in the arithmetical scale or

increasing the means of subsistence, you do not advance the geometrical

scale, much less by increasing the disproportion between the two, do you

increase the _waste_ population of the world, which must be greater in

proportion as less of it had been provided for. On the other hand, you

necessarily lessen this disproportion. For instead of supposing that if

we had remained at 1 in the lower scale, we should then have been at 1

in the upper, or that if we had advanced no further than 3, the

disproportion would then only have been 4 to 3, and so on, whereas by

going on it is now as 256 to 9, the fact is that the disproportion

instead of being as 256 to 9, would have been 256 to 1, or 2, or 3: and

that the further we go in the one scale, though we cannot keep up with,

or overtake the other, yet we lose so much the less ground and are

nearer it than we should otherwise be. To argue otherwise is to be like

the children who when they cannot keep up with others, stand still and

begin to cry, thinking this the likeliest way to make them slacken their

pace. I shall therefore beg leave to look upon every increase in the

means of subsistence or actual population, as so much gained upon the

_infinite series_: by keeping back the _actual_ means of subsistence, I

do not lessen the _possible_ or abstract tendency of population to

increase, and I only add to its actual tendency to increase in

proportion as I add to its actual means of support. We have therefore a

clear addition to its actual quantity without any addition to its

tendency to excess, or without strengthening the evil principle, the

germ of incalculable mischief, which population contains within it. Mr.

Malthus has taken no pains to guard his readers against the conclusion,

that by increasing the actual population, you increase its actual

tendency to increase, as if either the disposition to propagate the

species were stronger in proportion to the number of those who possess

it, or as if in proportion as the power is spread over a larger surface,

it were not counteracted by being accompanied in each individual with a

proportionable share of common sense and reason, so that he will not be

a bit more likely to run upon famine because there will be twice as many

to keep him company as there used to be. The tendency to excessive

population in any community does not depend upon the number of

individuals in it, who have the power of abusing their liberty, or on

the quantity of mischief they _might_ do, but upon the moral character

of the individuals composing it, upon the difference between the

strength of moral restraint and the strength of physical appetite, or on

the actual inconvenience to which they _will_ submit for the sake of

gratifying their passions. In short the tendency to excess does not

depend on the point in the scale where the _limit_ is drawn, but upon

the tendency to overleap that limit; now this tendency or _impetus_ is

not increased by the distance which it has gone, like a stone rolling

down a hill, or like a torrent of water accumulating, but is like a cart

or waggon left on a declivity with a drag-chain fastened to one of the

wheels, which is carried forward till the chain is pulled tight and then

it stops of itself. This is a very clumsy comparison, but it has some

resemblance to the thing. We are not to calculate the actual tendency to

excess in population by the excess of the power itself over the means of

subsistence, which is greater as we advance, but by the excess of the

power restrained by other motives and principles over the means of

subsistence. In algebraic language the tendency to excess is not equal

to the power of population simply, but to the power, _minus_ the

difficulty of providing for its support, or the influence which that

difficulty has on the conduct of rational beings.

If we suppose a barren island with half a dozen savages upon it, living

upon roots, vermin, and crawfish, without any of the arts or any of the

conveniences of life, ignorant of agriculture, neither knowing nor

caring how to improve their condition, passing their time in stupid

indolence, with as little pretensions to reason or refinement as can

well be desired, in short a very unphilosophical, improgressive,

viscious, miserable set of barbarians as need be; now what difference

would it make in the condition of these poor uninformed wretches, or how

would it add to their vices, their ignorance, or ‘squalid poverty,’ if

we suppose another island at a few leagues distance, of about the same

circumference, maintaining nearly the same number of inhabitants living

in the same manner? Yet as it is probable that these poor lousy

wretches[7] leading a life of sloth and hunger, may upon the whole have

more enjoyment than misery (for even the life of a savage seems better

than no life at all, nay some have gone so far as to say that it was

better than any other life) it would be desirable that there should be

such another island so inhabited. But it is exactly the same thing

whether we suppose twice the number of people inhabiting twice the

extent of ground, or maintained on the same ground, being twice as much

cultivated; population would not press the more on the means of

subsistence, nor would the misery be greater, nor the checks required to

prevent it greater. That is to say, an advance made in the state of

cultivation and in the arts of life so as to maintain double the

population must always be the means of doubling the numbers and

enjoyment of any people. The only possible difference would be that as

this increased population would be the consequence of greater industry

and knowledge, it would, one should think, denote of itself, that the

people would be less liable to unforeseen accidents, and less likely to

involve themselves in wilful distress than before. This is the first

step in the progress of civilization and in the history of all nations.

From this description of a barren island supporting a few wandering

half-starved ignorant savages, such as England might have been once, let

us turn our eyes to what England is now;—populous, enlightened, free,

rich, powerful and happy; excelling equally in arts, and arms, the

delight and terror of the rest of the world; the abode of science, the

nurse of virtue, the darling seat of the muses; boasting her long line

of heroes, and sages; her Bacon, her Newton, her Shakespear, her Milton,

and her Locke;[8] blest with the most perfect government administered in

the most perfect manner; having a king, lords, and commons, each

balancing the other, and each in their several station and degree being

security for every kind of liberty and every kind of property,

harmoniously conspiring together for the good of the whole, taking care

first of their own rights and interests as the most important, and then

of those of others: subject to mild and equal laws, which afford the

same immediate protection to every one in the enjoyment of his liberty

and his property, whether that property is five thousand a year or no

more than a shilling a day: maintaining in different degrees of comfort,

and affluence, from the common necessaries to the highest luxuries of

life, ten millions of souls, all supported by their own labour and

industry or that of others; all plying close with cheerful and patient

activity to some ingenious and useful handicraft, or some more severe

but necessary labour, or else reclining in ease and elegance, and

basking in the sunshine of life; her meanest beggar owing the rags which

cover his nakedness, and the crust of bread which keeps his body and

soul together to some of the most useful inventions which support, and

to that humanity which is only to be found in civilized society. Shall

we forget her schools, her colleges, her hospitals, her churches, her

crowded cities, her streets lined with shops, enriched with the produce

and manufactures of her own soil, or glittering with the spoils of a

hundred nations, her thronged assemblies, her theatres, her balls, her

operas, her ‘palaces, her ladies and her pomp’; her villas, her parks,

her cottages, her hamlets, her rich cultivated lands, teeming with

plenty, her green valleys, her ‘upland swells, echoing to the bleat of

flocks,’ her brave contented peasantry, their simple manners and honest

integrity; and shall we wish to degrade this queen of nations, this

mistress of the world once more into a horde of fierce barbarians,

treading back our steps, and resigning this splendid profusion of all

that can adorn and gladden human life, this gay variety, this happy

union of all that is useful and all that is ornamental, the refinements

of taste and decorations of fashion, the beautiful distinctions of

artificial society, and the solid advantages derived from our

constitution in church and state, for the groveling dispositions, the

brutal ignorance, the disgusting poverty, the dried skins and miserable

huts of the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, or New Holland? Yet this it

seems from the doctrine of Mr. Malthus is our only safe policy, since

the lower we are in the scale of existence, the fewer and more miserable

we are, the farther removed we must be from the tremendous evils of

excessive population, which are the necessary consequences of the

progress of refinement and civilization. But as the fact _so far_ does

not, as I suppose Mr. Malthus will himself allow, square with his

theory, (for at no time during the progress of cultivation does the

population appear to have been pressing with increased force on the

means of subsistence, so that though the produce of the earth was

increasing every year, the inhabitants were increasing much faster,

every addition to the actual produce only occasioning some new addition

to the swoln and bloated state of population, and aggravating the

already dreadful symptoms of the disease) as I say the progress of

cultivation and improvement of different kinds has not produced any of

those fatal consequences we might be led to expect from it, so neither

do I apprehend any of these fatal consequences in future from carrying

it as much farther as it can go. I should just reverse the reasoning of

Mr. Malthus, who taking the evil as at its greatest height when the

world is supposed to be completely full and completely enlightened,

thence argues downwards against all attempts at improvement as dangerous

innovations; so I, finding that an improved cultivation and enlarged

population are good things through the inferior gradations, am apt to

think they would continue so, proceeding upwards to the topmost round of

the ladder, as far as population is concerned, for I once more give full

and fair warning that I engage in this question no farther, any loose,

general or accidental expressions to the contrary notwithstanding. To

make good Mr. Malthus’s argument against population, we must suppose, as

I have said before, that the tendency in population to increase goes on

increasing with the thing itself: this would be true, if as our author

supposes in his first edition, the passion always required the same

vent, in all circumstances, that is if we suppose man to be a mere

headstrong animal in this respect, his reason having no influence

whatever over his conduct, or which amounts to the same thing, that

_actual_ vice and misery (not foreseen, but felt) are the only checks to

population. At this rate, it is evident that the degree of misery

attending the gratification of the passion would have no effect to

restrain it, all degrees being alike indifferent or that the quantity of

actual misery incurred would be in proportion to the increased power of

producing it. I shall examine these positions more at large in another

letter; I here wish to shew in a few words that as applied to the

subject of increasing population, they lead to a direct absurdity. If we

suppose this passion to be perfectly blind and insensible, to be deaf to

all remonstrance, and regardless of all consequences, then no matter in

what depths of misery it involves us, it will have its way, and go its

own lengths. Take away the preventive check of _moral restraint_ (which

only comes in as a snivelling interpolation in some places of the second

edition) and the population would no doubt go on doubling as fast as it

could, not as fast as the means of subsistence would let it; that is,

the excess of population would be great in proportion to the actual

previous increase, or the excessive multiplication of the species would

be the necessary consequence of, and commensurate with the power of

excessive multiplication, which would depend on the number of persons

having that power. Now this is contrary to all we know of facts and

human nature, since in this case there could be no restraint to

population at any time, but the extreme of vice or the extreme of

misery. The power of population to increase is (we will grant)

unlimited, but the tendency to increase is necessarily limited by its

tendency to excess and limited by it in proportion to the excess. That

is to say, it does not follow that though when there ought to be only

two millions of inhabitants, there may be four, owing to the weakness of

the above-mentioned principle of _moral restraint_, that therefore that

four (by the tendency of population to increase in a geometrical ratio

or to double itself,) will in like manner become eight, and so on,

namely because the checks to it will increase in proportion; or though

the prospect of the inconveniences arising from doubling the population

in the first instance, the quantity of food remaining the same, might

not be sufficient to deter people, or overcome this propensity, yet the

prospect of famine consequent upon the second doubling undoubtedly

would, because their regard to consequences is supposed to remain the

same, and the evils they have to dread in the one case are greater, and

unless we suppose them to have become more stupid and brutal, must

operate upon them more forcibly than in the other. The strength of the

passion itself may be considered as always the same, or a given

quantity: but the motives to resist it arising from the consequences of

its indulgence are not always the same, but may be either none at all,

or very slight, or considerable, or extreme, as the obstacles to its

indulgence may be either none at all, of a trifling inconvenience, or

poverty, or absolute famine. Now the degree of excess in population, or

the inconveniences to which we expose ourselves by inconsiderate

gratification will depend entirely on the difference, be it more or

less, between the strength of the passion in each individual, and the

strength of moral restraint. If the latter principle is weak, it will

require to be stimulated by the immediate apprehension of some very

great inconvenience, before it will become a match for the importunity

of physical desire. If it is strong, a general conviction of the

propriety or prudence of self-denial will be sufficient to incline the

balance. But in no case unless we suppose man to be degraded to the

condition of the brutes, will this principle be so low and weak as to

have no effect at all, so that no apprehension of the last degree of

wretchedness, as the consequence, would take off or abate the edge of

appetite. There is therefore always a point at which the excess ceases,

and we have seen what this point at all times is. Thus if the operation

of rational motives is so much upon a level with the physical impulse,

as to keep population exactly or nearly down to the means of

subsistence, it will do so equally whether that population is actually

greater or less, whether it is stationary or progressive, for it will

increase only with the means by which it is supported. On the other hand

if from the manners, the habits, and institutions of society, there is a

considerable tendency in population to excess, this tendency to excess

will not be greater or less in proportion to the actual number of

inhabitants, or the actual quantity of food, nor will it depend on their

being progressive or stationary, but on the morals of the people being

retrograde, progressive, or stationary; for the tendency of population

itself to excess or to _increase_ excessively (a dubious kind of

expression) is not a perpetual, indefinite, invariable tendency to

increase from 2 to 4, from 4 to 8, &c. (as I have just shewn) but a

tendency to increase _beyond_ the means of subsistence to a certain

point or degree. This tendency to excess will consequently be the same

wherever we fix the point of subsistence, because it is only a given

tendency to outstrip that limit whether nearer or farther off, whether

advancing or retreating.[9] It is true there is a tendency in population

in this case to increase _faster_ than the means of subsistence, but not

to increase _faster and faster_, or to get more and more a-head of it.

It is in fact only a disproportionate superiority in certain motives

over others, which subjects the community or certain classes of it to a

great degree of want and hardship: and as far as their imprudence and

folly will carry them, they will go, but they will not go farther. They

will submit to be _pinched_, but not to be _starved_, unless this

consequence may sometimes be supposed to follow from the partial and

unnatural debasement of certain classes of the community, by driving

them to despair and rendering them callous to suffering. But the general

tendency in population to become excessive can only be increased by the

increased relaxation of moral restraint, or by gradually weakening the

motives of prudence, reason, &c. I cannot make this matter plainer.

Mr. Malthus has not I conceive given this question of increasing

population and practical improvement fair play. He has contrived to

cover over its real face and genuine features with the terrible mask of

modern philosophy. His readers having been prevailed upon to give up the

fee-simple of their understandings into his hands, that no undue

advantages might be taken of them by the _perfectibility_ school, they

find it difficult to get it back out of his hands, though they want it

to go on again (the alarm being over) in the old road of common sense,

practical improvement, and liberal discussion. He had persuaded himself

that population was such an enormous evil in connection with a scheme of

unlimited improvement, that he can hardly reconcile himself to it, or

tell whether to think it a good or an evil in any shape, or according to

any scheme. By indulging his prejudices, he has so confounded his

perceptions, that he cannot judge rightly, even when he wishes to do it.

He found it most convenient, when he had to confute Mr. Godwin, to

describe reason as a principle of no practical value whatever, as a mere

negation. As therefore by the removal of vice and misery the office of

checking population would devolve upon this principle, which could do

nothing, population would in fact have no check left to it, and then

certainly the most terrible consequences would ensue. The only question

would be, how soon we should begin cutting one another’s throats, or how

many (whether a greater or a smaller number) had better be employed on

this kind of work. We perceive very plainly that this must be the

inevitable consequence of increased population, if it can only be kept

down by the positive checks of vice and misery. We apply the theory very

clearly to a future stage of the progress; but though, if the theory

were true, exactly the same scenes ought to be acting before our eyes at

present on a smaller scale, yet as we find that this is not the case, we

leave this circumstance out of the question, and conclude that there

must be some secret difference, some occult cause, something we cannot

very well explain, which makes the present state of things preferable to

all others: at least whatever might be the consequences of population,

if certain alterations and improvements were to take place, we are sure

that it produces no such consequences at present. With respect to the

lower, or actual stages of population and improvement, Mr. Malthus

supposes the _preventive_ checks to operate as well as the _positive_,

the fear of misery as well as the misery itself, because we know that it

does: but whenever you suppose any alteration or improvement to take

place in the world, so that you have not the fact to confront him with,

he immediately assumes the positive checks, or actual vice and misery,

as the only checks to population; herein trusting to his theory.

Whenever you are found to be advancing in the scale (which must be

indeed from some of the restraints being taken off) he directly supposes

that you are to be set free from all restraints whatever. He lets loose

his ratios upon you, and away they go like a clock running down. This

indeed would not be so well. Mr. Malthus thus artfully makes the

question of progressive improvement to be, whether we are to be governed

as now by mixed motives, or to be released from all moral restraint, for

he supposes that if population once passes a certain bourne, which he

points out to you, it will then become perfectly untractable, all its

future excesses will be prevented only by actual vice and misery. Thus

though all the good of our present situation, all wherein it differs

from a state of brutal violence or lingering want, is in fact owing to

the prevalence of a less degree of reason and foresight, yet that if

that principle were strengthened, and the consequence were an increase

of population, and a more general diffusion of the comforts of life,

this principle would then be of no avail in preventing or correcting the

excesses to which the unrestrained indulgence of our appetites would

give rise. There is a degree of absurdity, which staggers belief and

almost challenges our conviction, by making it incredible that if we

ourselves do not labour under some strong deception, the human

understanding should be capable of such extreme folly.

I shall conclude this letter by laying down two or three general maxims,

which appear to me to follow clearly from the view which has been here

taken of the subject.

First, while population goes on increasing at that tremendous rate

described by Mr. Malthus, it shews that there is nothing to restrain it;

that there is no need of any thing to restrain it: that it is wanted,

that its increase is a thing to be desired, not to be dreaded, and that

if it were possible for it to increase ten times faster, it would be so

much the better.

Secondly, when it arrives at a certain point, that is, where the

population begins to press on the means of subsistence, either from

natural or artificial causes, or when it threatens to become an evil

from excess, it naturally stops short of its own accord, the checks to

it from vice, misery and moral restraint taken all together becoming

stronger as the excess becomes greater. It therefore produces its own

antidote and produces it in quantities exactly in proportion to its own

extent. It is not therefore (as Mr. Malthus would, when he pleases, have

us believe) like a stone hanging suspended over a precipice, which if it

once loses its balance will be hurled furiously down, rolling and

bounding from steep to steep with increased velocity till it reaches the

bottom, but like a balance suspended by a check-weight, where you cannot

increase the pressure on one side without increasing the resistance

proportionably on the other. It may therefore at worst be left very

safely to itself, instead of being considered as an evil against whose

unforeseen ravages no precautions are sufficient.

Thirdly, as the same quantity of vice and misery co-operating with the

same degree of moral restraint, will always keep population at the same

(relative) point, so a less degree of actual vice and misery operating

on a greater degree of moral restraint, that is, of reason, prudence,

virtue, &c. will produce the same effect: and we may always judge of the

happiness of a people, and of the beneficial effects of population by

the prevalence of moral restraint over vice and misery, instead of

supposing that vice and misery are the best pledges of the happiness of

a state, and the only possible security against excessive population.

Consequently, the object of the philosopher must be to increase the

influence of rational motives, and lessen the actual operation of vice

and misery. It is only in proportion as he does this, that he does any

thing; for not only are vice and misery such cheap commodities that they

may be had at any corner merely with asking for (any bungler may

contract for them in the gross) but farther though they undoubtedly

operate as checks to population, I must be excused from admitting that

they _remedy_ the evils of population, unless the disease can be

considered as its own remedy, for in the degree in which they generally

exist, they are the only evils, that are ever likely to rise from it,

and as to those imaginary, unknown and unheard of evils, with which Mr.

Malthus is perpetually threatening us in order to reconcile us to those

we bear, I deny the possibility of their existence upon any known

principles of human society, either in its improved, or unimproved

state.

I do not mean to say that there is any thing in the general principles

here stated that Mr. Malthus is at present disposed to deny, or that he

has not himself expressly insisted on in some part or other of his

_various_ work; it is enough for my purpose that there are other parts

of his work in which he has contradicted them and himself, and that the

uniform tenor of his first work leans directly the opposite way; and it

is not my business so much to inquire, how much Mr. Malthus retains of

his old philosophy, as how many of their old feelings his readers retain

on the subject, on which he will be able to build as many false

conclusions as he pleases, and with more safety to himself, than if he

still persevered in the direct and unqualified assertion of exploded

error. Plain, downright consistent falsehood is not dangerous: it is

only that spurious mixture of truth and falsehood, that perpetual

oscillation between the two extremes, that wavering and uncertainty that

baffles detection by rendering it difficult to know on what ground you

are to meet your adversary, that makes the sophist so formidable as he

is. In order therefore that Mr. Malthus may not avail himself of his

inconsistencies, I shall assume a right to contradict him as often as he

contradicts himself, and to consider the peculiar doctrines of his work

as its essential and only important doctrines.

LETTER V

WHETHER VICE AND MISERY ARE THE NECESSARY CONSEQUENCES OF, AND THE ONLY

CHECKS TO, THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION

SIR—I have in my last letter taken more pains than, I believe, was

necessary to shew that the tendency of population to increase is not a

_dangerous_ one; or at any rate that the actual increase of population

does not increase the danger. The same proportionable quantity of vice

and misery would always be _sufficient_ to keep down the excess of

population beyond the means of subsistence, whether we suppose those

means to be great or small: there is another question, whether the same

quantity of vice and misery is always _necessary_ for this purpose; and

further, whether all the vice and misery in the world are not only

necessary checks to, but the immediate effects of, the principle of

population, and of nothing else.

Before I proceed, I must stop to observe that I have just been perusing

the corrections, additions, &c. to the third and _last_ edition of the

Essay; and I confess I have not much heart to go on. The pen falls from

my hand. For to what purpose is it to answer a man, who has answered

himself, who has hardly advanced an opinion that he has not retracted,

who after all your pains to overturn the extravagant assertions he had

brought forward, comes and tells you, Why I have given them up myself;

so that you hardly know whether to look upon him in the light of an

adversary or an ally. I do not like this shadow-fighting, any more than

Sancho liked his master’s fighting with enchanters. When Don Quixote had

to encounter the knight of the Prodigious Nose, his valour was inflamed,

and he rushed fiercely on his antagonist, but when after having unhorsed

him, he found that it was his old friend and neighbour the Batchelor

Carrasco, the fury of his arm was suspended, and he knew not what to say

or do.[10] Till Mr. Malthus lays aside his harlequin’s coat and sword,

and ceases to chase opinions through a rapid succession of varying

editions, it is not an easy matter to come up with him or give him fair

battle. It was thought a work of no small labour and ingenuity to make a

harmony of the Evangelists. I would recommend it to some one (who thinks

himself equal to the task) to make a harmony of Mr. Malthus’s different

performances. Till this is done, it seems impossible to collect the

sense of his writings, and consequently to answer them. It should not

therefore be the object of any one who would set himself to answer Mr.

Malthus, so much to say that such and such are the real and settled

opinions of that author, as that such opinions are floating in different

parts of his writings, that they are floating or fixed in the minds of

his readers, and that those opinions are not so correct as they might

be. If Mr. Malthus had chosen to disclaim certain opinions with their

consequences, advanced in the first edition, instead of denying that he

ever held such opinions, though he may still be detected with the

_manner_, he would have saved me the trouble of writing, and himself the

disagreeable task of reading, this _rude_ attack upon them.

Mr. Malthus lays down as the basis of all his reasonings the two

following positions, viz. ‘First, that food is necessary to the

existence of man.’

‘Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will

remain nearly in its present state.’

‘These two laws,’ he adds, ‘ever since we have had any knowledge of

mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature; and as we have

not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude

that they will ever cease to be what they are now, without an immediate

act of power in that Being who first arranged the system of the

universe. The best arguments for the perfectibility of man are drawn

from a contemplation of the great progress that he has already made from

the savage state, and the difficulty of saying where he is to stop. But

towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no progress

whatever has hitherto been made. It appears to exist in as much force at

present as it did two thousand, or four thousand years ago. There are

individual exceptions now as there always have been. But, as these

exceptions do not appear to increase in number, it would surely be a

very unphilosophical mode of arguing to infer merely from the existence

of an exception, that the exception would in time become the rule, and

the rule the exception.’

As to the first position here laid down that food is necessary to the

existence of man, I shall not certainly dispute it. As to the second

kind of necessity, the gratification of the passion between the sexes, I

must beg leave to deny that this necessity is ‘like unto the first’ or

to be compared with it. Does Mr. Malthus really mean to say that a man

can no more abstain from the commerce of women, than he can live without

food? If so, he states what is not the fact. Does he mean to assert,

that the impulse to propagate the species, call it lust, or love, is a

principle as strong, as ungovernable, as importunate, as uniform in its

effects, as incapable of being subjected to the control of reason, or

circumstances, in short as much an affair of mere physical appetite, as

hunger? One would suppose so, for he makes no distinction between them,

but speaks of them both in the same terms, as equally _necessary_, as

equally fixed, and immutable laws of our nature, the operation of which

nothing short of a miracle can suspend or alter. There are two

circumstances, the mentioning of which will however be sufficient to

shew that the two kinds of necessity here spoken of are not of the same

order, or cogency, and cannot be reasoned upon in the same manner,

namely, that there are many instances of persons who have lived all

their lives without any intercourse with the other sex, whereas there is

no instance of any person living without food; in the second place, what

makes a most marked distinction between the two cases, is that the

longer we have been accustomed to do without the indulgence of the one

appetite, the more tractable we find it, whereas the craving occasioned

by the want of food, the longer it continues, becomes more and more

pressing, and at last utterly ungovernable, and if not satisfied in

time, is sure in all cases whatever, without a single exception, to

destroy the person’s life. These two considerations are of themselves

quite sufficient to overturn the analogy which is here pretended to be

set up between love and hunger (a delicate comparison)—to shew that the

first of these impulses is not an affair of mere physical necessity,

that it does not operate always in the same way, and that it is not a

thing, over which reason, or circumstances have no power. What can be a

stronger instance of the power of reason, or imagination, or habit over

this principle than the number of single women, who in every country,

till the manners become quite corrupt, preserve either through their

whole lives, or the best part of them the greatest purity and propriety

of conduct? One would think that female modesty had been a flower that

blossomed only in other climes (instead of being the peculiar growth of

our own time and country!) that Mr. Malthus in the heat of his argument,

and urged on by the ardour of his own feelings, is blind to the example

of so many of his fair countrywomen, in whom the influence of a virtuous

education, of virtuous principles, and virtuous dispositions prevails

over the warmth of the passions and force of temptation. Mr. Malthus’s

doctrine is a most severe satire against the modesty and self-denial of

the other sex, and ruins in one sweeping clause the unblemished

reputations of all those expecting or desponding virgins who had

hitherto been supposed to live in the daily, hourly practice of this

virtue. Trenched as he is behind history, philosophy, and a knowledge of

human nature, he laughs at all their prudery and affectation, and tells

them fairly that the thing is impossible; and that unless a miracle

could be worked in their favour, they might as well pretend to live

without eating or drinking, or sleeping, as without the men. He must be

of opinion with Iago, that ‘their greatest merit is not to leave it

undone but keep it unknown.’ Surely, _no maid could live near such a

man_.—Though this is what Mr. Malthus _might_ say, it is not what he

_does_ say: on the other hand, when he comes to particulars, (as he is

rather a candid man, and does not trouble himself much about

consistency) instead of representing real chastity as a kind of miracle

or monster in nature, he represents it as a very common thing and bears

honourable testimony to the virtue of most women, particularly in the

middle and higher ranks of life, in this respect. But then this virtue

is confined entirely to the women; the men neither do, nor ever will be

able to practise it; and this again salves the objection to his

argument. But this is of all others the strongest proof of the futility

of Mr. Malthus’s reasoning: for to what is this difference owing but to

the opinion of the world respecting their conduct, that is, to moral

causes? It cannot be said I presume that the greater command which the

other sex have over themselves is because their heads are stronger and

their passions weaker, (this would, I am sure, be out of all anatomical

proportion): it is owing solely to the institutions of society, imposing

this restraint upon them; though these institutions, if we are to

believe Mr. Malthus, can never in any circumstances whatever have any

effect on this passion. It is impossible to add any thing to the force

and conclusiveness of this argument by enlarging upon it: it speaks for

itself. I can only say, that I am willing to rest the whole controversy

on this single fact. If the passion is thus capable of being modified

and influenced by circumstances, opinion, and manners, and not merely

slightly modified, or for a short time, in one or two solitary

instances, as an exception to the general rule (though even this would

shew that the necessity is not absolute, invincible, fatal) but actually

kept under (as far as it has any thing to do with population, or

child-bearing) by one half the sex in every well-regulated community, I

conceive Mr. Malthus can only be justified in saying, that no possible

circumstances will ever render this passion entirely subject to the

control of reason, by saying that no circumstances will ever arrive in

which it would be the imperious and indispensable duty of every one to

habituate himself to such restraint, in which that necessity would be

generally felt and understood and enforced by the opinion of the whole

community, and in which nothing but a general system of manners formed

upon that opinion could save the community from ruin, or from the evils

of excessive population, which is point-blank contrary to Mr. Malthus’s

whole doctrine. In short, Mr. Malthus’s whole book rests on a malicious

supposition, that all mankind (I hope the reader will pardon the

grossness of the expression, the subject is a gross one) are like so

many animals _in season_. ‘Were they as prime as goats, as hot as

monkeys, as salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross as ignorance

made drunk,’ matters could then be no worse than he represents them.

Population could then only be checked by vice and misery and by nothing

else. But I hope things are not quite so bad.[11] Mr. Malthus says,

‘that the passion between the sexes is necessary, or at least that it

will remain nearly in its present state.’ To this I might perhaps

assent, if I knew what ‘its present state’ is. Does Mr. Malthus mean by

its present state its present state in England or in Scotland, or in

Italy, or in Asia, or in Africa, or America, for in all or most of these

places is its present state a very different thing from what it is in

the rest of them? One would imagine from the easy complacency with which

Mr. Malthus treats the subject, that the present state of this passion

was a something really given, a fixed quantity, a general rule like the

relation between two and two and four, or _between food and the human

stomach_,[12] that it was indulged universally and equally in all

countries, instead of being as various in itself and its effects as

climate and all other causes, natural and artificial, can make it.—Thus

to give an example as much in point as can be, is the present state of

this passion, _i.e._ of the indulgence of it, the same in Lancashire,

that it is in Westmoreland, the very next county to it? In the one you

find the most profligate manners, and the most extreme licentiousness,

in the other there is hardly any such thing. Mr. Malthus often says, he

will never dispute any thing that is proved by experience and a real

observation of human life. Now I conceive that the observation which I

have just stated is a _fact_. Yet Mr. Malthus seems to have been quite

insensible to this, and many other facts of the same kind. But the truth

is, that your practical reasoners, your matter-of-fact men are the

dullest of all mortals. They are like justices of the peace who are

bound to receive no evidence unless it is given in upon oath, and who

without descending from the bench and forfeiting the dignity of their

pretensions cannot attend to any of those general surmises, those

obvious sources of information or casual impressions, by which other

people arrive at common sense, and human feelings.—They shut their eyes

to the general face of nature, and trying to grope their way by the help

of facts as they call them, wander like blind men from _pillar to post_,

without either guide or object, and are lost in a labyrinth of dates,

names, capital letters, numeros, official documents, authenticated

copies of lying affidavits, curious records that are nothing to the

purpose, registers of births, deaths, marriages, and christenings,

voyages and travels.—Mr. Malthus may perhaps mean, when he says that

‘the sexual passion will remain nearly in its present state,’ that it

will remain in the same state in each country. To this I should also

assent, if I could agree with him, ‘that ever since we have had any

knowledge of mankind, the passion of which we are speaking, appears to

have been a fixed law of our nature, and that as we have not hitherto

seen any alteration in it, we have no right to conclude that there will

ever be any.’ If Mr. Malthus in this passage meant to confine him to the

passion or impulse itself, I should not certainly be at much pains to

contradict him. But that is not the question. The question relates

solely to the irregular indulgence of, or the degree of restraint

imposed on the passion; and in this respect his assertion is evidently

false. The difference in the state of manners in the same country at

different periods is as striking and notorious as that between the

manners of different countries. There is as much difference between what

England was in this respect a hundred and sixty years ago, and what she

is now, as there is between England and Italy at the present day. Was

there no difference between the manners of ancient Rome in the early

periods of her history, and towards the decline of the empire? May not

the state of manners in Italy under the republic, under the emperors,

and under the popes, be distinctly traced to the influence of religious

or political institutions, or to other causes, besides the state of

population, or the facility of gratifying the abstract instinctive

propensity to sexual indulgence? Was there not a striking difference

between the severity and restraint which was required and undoubtedly

practised under Charles I. and in the time of the Puritans, and that

torrent of dissipation and undisguised profligacy which burst upon the

kingdom after the restoration of Charles II.? This sudden transition

from demure and saint-like or hypocritical austerity to open shameless

licentiousness cannot assuredly be accounted for from the increasing

pressure of population. Nor can it be pretended to have been owing to

this principle that the tide afterwards turned again at the Revolution

with the habits and fashions of the court, and with the views and maxims

of that party who had now got the ascendancy. A learned writer might

easily fill a volume with instances to the same purpose. But the few

which are here skimmed from the mere surface of history, and which must

be familiar to every one, are sufficient to disprove Mr. Malthus’s

assertion, not as a metaphysical refinement, but as a practical rule,

that the passion between the sexes and the effects of that passion have

remained always the same. The indulgence of that passion is so far from

being a law antecedent to all other laws, and paramount to all other

considerations, that it is in a manner governed almost entirely by

circumstances, and may be said to be the creature of the imagination.

But Mr. Malthus says, that no regular or gradual progress has hitherto

been made towards the extinction of this passion, and that it exists in

as much force at present, as it did two thousand, or four thousand years

ago. The question is whether this passion is fixed and stationary,

always remaining at the same point, controuling circumstances, but not

controuled by them, not whether the change of circumstances and lapse of

time may not bring it back to the same point again. I think it probable

that if Mr. Malthus had to preach a sermon on the truth and excellence

of revealed religion, he would be inclined to take for one of his topics

the benefit we have derived from it in the government of our passions,

and general purity of our manners. He might launch out into a

description shewing how the contemplation of heavenly things weans the

affections from the things of the world, and mortifies our carnal

desires, how a belief in future rewards and punishments strengthens our

resolution, and is indeed the only thing that can render us proof

against every species of temptation; he might enlarge on the general

purity and elevation which breathes through the sacred writings, on the

law confining the institution of marriage to pairs; he might dwell on

the grossness and pernicious tendency of the Pagan mythology; he might

glance at the epistle to the Romans, or the preamble to the Jewish laws,

and finding that the practices there described are not common among

_us_, without travelling to Rome, or inquiring into the present state of

Chaldæa, conclude by felicitating his hearers on the striking contrast

between ancient and modern manners, and on the gradual improvement of

morals and refinement of sentiment produced by the promulgation of

christianity. Though we in general reason very incorrectly in comparing

ancient and modern manners, (for we always confound the former with

eastern, and the latter with our own manners) I am apt to think that

some change has taken place in this passion in the course of time. It

seems to be more modified by other feelings than it used to be; it is

less a boiling of the blood, an animal heat, a headlong, brutal impulse

than it was in past ages. The principle is somewhat taken down and

weakened, the appetite is not so strong, we can stay our stomachs better

than we used to do, we do not gorge indiscriminately on every kind of

food without taste or decency. The vices of the moderns are more

artificial than constitutional. They do not arise so much from instinct

as from a depraved will. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

We stimulate ourselves into affected passion: we are laborious imitators

of folly, and ape the vices of others in cold blood. But whatever may be

the result of an inquiry into the comparative state of ancient and

modern manners, I cannot allow that it has any thing to do with the

present question. I will allow that the progress of refinement and

knowledge has in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred tended to

deprave instead of improving the morals of men, that at the same time

that it has taken away the gross impulse, it has introduced an

artificial and studied depravity, the operation of which is more subtle,

dangerous and universal; in short that nations as they grow older like

individuals grow worse, not from constitution, but habit. Still this

fact if granted (and I am afraid it is too near the truth) will not at

all prove Mr. Malthus’s theory, that this passion remains always the

same, being influenced neither by time nor circumstances. Secondly, it

will not overturn the speculations respecting the possibility of making

an entire change in the passion ‘in a state of society altogether

different from any that has hitherto existed,’ but will on the contrary

render such a change more desirable and necessary, as our only resource

against the general contagion of vice and profligacy. If this vice is

found to spread gradually wider and wider, clinging to the support of

institutions, which in all other respects favour selfishness and

sensuality, if it is not the only one among the vices, which, while all

others spread and flourish and are fostered in the eye of the world,

does not hide its diminished head, this is not to be wondered at. But it

would be a singular way of defending the present institutions of

society, that from all our past experience we find that their progress

has been attended with the gradual corruption of manners, and has

uniformly ended in an utter debasement of character and the relaxation

of every moral tie; and it would be a strange kind of inference to say

that no alteration in the circumstances or institutions of society would

ever make men different from what they are, because as long as those

circumstances and institutions have been known to exist, mankind have

remained always the same, or have been growing worse instead of better.

Mr. Malthus denies that Mr. Godwin has any right to conclude that

because population has not produced the dreadful effects he ascribes to

it in any known state of society, it would not therefore produce them in

a state of society quite different from any other; and in the same

manner I should deny that Mr. Malthus has any right to infer because the

progress of the human mind has not in the past history of the world been

productive of any very beneficial consequences, that it will never be

productive of any such consequences under very different circumstances.

Knowledge, as I have shewn in a former letter, is not a necessary,

absolute good: neither is it a necessary evil. Its utility depends on

the direction which is given to it by other things; e.g. in Scotland,

the case before alluded to, knowledge does not seem to be the enemy of

sobriety and good manners, but a support to them. The decay in the

purity and simplicity of Scotch manners, whenever it arrives, will not I

dare say be owing to the increase of knowledge, but to the spread of

luxury, or other external causes. When the whole mass is tainted, it

cannot be expected that knowledge should escape the infection. All

therefore that the advocates for the future progressive improvement of

mankind have to prove in order to make out a consistent case, is that

the state of the passion between the sexes depends not upon physical,

but moral causes; that where these latter causes have been favourable to

severity of manners, and the elevation of the character, these effects

have uniformly flowed from them, and may be seen not in one or two

singular exceptions, but in large classes of people, in the prevailing

manners of whole ages and nations. Thus we do not merely know that

Scipio was chaste, and Nero profligate, but we know that there was

nothing singular in the chastity of the one, or the profligacy of the

other; it was little more than the emanation of the character and

circumstances of the times in which they lived. The leaders of the

republican party in the time of Cromwell, such men as Milton, Hampden,

Pym, Marvel, Sydney, were not I believe in the command over their

passions exactly on a level with the young courtiers in the following

reign: but though the names of these men stand out and ever will stand

out in history, giving dignity to our nature in all its parts, yet it is

not to be supposed that they alone drank of the pure waters of faith and

reason, which flowed freely at that time; but that the same lofty

thoughts, the same common exertions, and the same passions, growing out

of the circumstances of the times, must have imparted a sort of severe

and high-toned morality to men’s minds in general, influencing the

national character in a very different way from the foreign fopperies

and foreign vices, from the train of strumpets, buffoons, fiddlers, and

obscene rhymers let loose upon the people in the succeeding reign. It is

not necessary to prove that manners have always changed for the better,

but that they have always changed for the better, as far as those

general causes have operated in part, from the complete success of which

a total change is predicted. This passion as it runs into licentiousness

is certainly one great obstacle in the way of improvement, and one of

those passions which we must conquer before we can hope to become

perfectly reasonable beings (if this is a thing either desirable or

possible). But to say, that we may get a complete mastery over our

passions, and that we shall still be in danger from the principle of

population is to me a paradox. Population is only dangerous from the

excess of this passion, and I see no reason why its excesses may not be

restrained as well as those of any other passion. We find by uniform

experience that it is, like other passions, influenced by example,

institution, and circumstances, according to the degree of strength they

have; and if there is reason to suppose it possible that any of the

other passions should ever be totally eradicated, or subjected to moral

restraint, there is no reason why this should not be so too. It does not

form any anomaly to the other prevailing passions of men. It is not,

like hunger, a necessary instinct. Its effects are more like those of

drunkenness: and we might as well make this latter vice an

insurmountable objection to the good order and happiness of society, by

saying that there will always be as many drunken disputes, brawls and

riots, as there are at present, because there are as many instances of

people getting drunk now as there were two thousand years ago, as

pretend to deduce the same consequence from the existence of such a

passion as lust.—To judge from his book, I should suppose Mr. Malthus to

be a man of a warm constitution, and amorous complexion. I should not

hesitate in my own mind, to conclude that this is ‘the sin that most

easily besets him.’ I can easily imagine that he has a sufficient

command over himself, in all other respects. I can believe that he is

quite free from the passions of anger, pride, avarice, sloth,

drunkenness, envy, revenge, and all those other passions which create so

much disturbance in the world. He seems never to have heard of, or never

to have felt them; for he passes them over as trifles beneath the notice

of a philosopher. But the women are _the devil_.—The delights and

torments of love no man, he tells us, ever was proof against: there all

our philosophy is useless; and reason but an empty name. ‘The rich

golden shaft hath killed the flock of all affections else,’ and here

only he is vulnerable. The smiles of a fair lady are to him

irresistible; the glimpse of a petticoat throws him into a flame; and

all his senses are up in arms, and his heart fails within him, at the

very name of love. His gallantry and devotion to the fair sex know no

bounds; and he not only answers for himself, but undertakes to prove

that all men are made of the same combustible materials. His book

reminds one of the title of the old play, ‘All for love, or the world

well lost.’ If Mr. M.’s passions are too much for him, (though I should

not have the worse opinion of him on this account) I would advise him to

give vent to them in writing love-songs; not in treatises of philosophy.

I am aware, however, that it is dangerous to meddle in such matters. As

long as Mr. Malthus gravely reduces the strength of the passion to a

mathematical certainty, he is sure to have the women on his side; while

I, for having the presumption to contradict his amorous conclusions,

shall be looked upon as a sour old batchelor, and convicted of rebellion

against the omnipotence of love.

But to return. It is the direct object of Mr. Malthus’s philosophy to

draw our attention from the slight and superficial influence which human

institutions have had on the happiness of man, to those ‘deeper-seated’

causes of misery which arise out of the principle of population. These,

he says, are by far the most important, and the only ones worth our

attending to, because they are the only ones on which all our reasonings

and all our exertions will have no effect. He very roundly taxes Mr.

Godwin and others as men who talked about what they did not understand,

because they did not perceive that social institutions, and the

different forms of government, and all the other means in our power of

affecting the condition of human life are ‘but as the dust in the

balance,’ compared with a principle entirely out of our power, which

renders the vices of those institutions necessary, and any essential

improvement in them hopeless. He is also angry with Hume for saying

something about ‘indolence.’ We are in no case to look beyond the

principle of population, in accounting for the state of man in society,

if we would not fall under Mr. Malthus’s displeasure, but are to resolve

every thing into that. In his hands, population is the Aaron’s rod which

swallowed up all the other rods. The piety of some of the old divines

led them to see all things in God. Mr. Malthus’s self-complacency leads

him to see all things in the Essay. He would persuade us that his

discovery supersedes all other discoveries; that it is the category of

political science; that all other causes of human happiness and misery

are merged and sunk in that one, to which alone they owe their

influence, and their birth. So that we are in fact to consider all human

institutions, good, bad, and indifferent, all folly, vice, wisdom,

virtue, knowledge, ignorance, liberty and slavery, poverty and riches,

monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, polygamy, celibacy, all forms and

modes of life, all arts, manufactures, and science, as resulting

mechanically from this one principle; which though simple in itself, yet

in its effects is a jumble, a chaos of contradictions, a mass of

inconsistency and absurdity, which no human understanding can unravel,

or explain. Over this crew and medley of opinions, Mr. Malthus ‘sits

umpire, and by decision more embroils the fray by which he reigns’: for

he is not quite undetermined in his choice between good and evil, but is

always inclined to give the preference to vice and misery, not only as

the most natural, but as the most safe and salutary effects of this

principle, as we prescribe a low diet and blisters to persons of too

full a temperament. ‘Our greatest good is but plethoric ill.’—Mr.

Malthus may perhaps plead in his own defence that at the outset of his

work (second edition) he professes to treat only of _one_ of the causes

which have hitherto impeded the progress of virtue and happiness, and

that he was not therefore, by the terms of the agreement, bound to take

cognizance of any of the other causes which have tended to produce the

same effect. He is like a man who takes it into his head to make a huge

map of Scotland, (larger than any that ever was made of the whole world

besides) and gives you into the bargain as much or as little of Ireland

or the rest of Great Britain as he pleases. Any one else who chuses, may

make a map of England or Ireland on the same scale. There is something

fair and plausible in this. But the fact really is, that Mr. Malthus

will let nobody make a map of the country but himself: he has put

England, Wales, and Ireland in the three corners of his great map (for

the title takes up one of the corners) and he insists upon it that this

is quite sufficient.—What he aims at in all his plans and calculations

of existing grievances is to magnify the evils of population, to

exonerate human institutions, and to throw the whole blame on nature

herself. I shall therefore try to give such a sketch, or bird’s-eye view

of the subject as may serve to shew the unfairness of our author’s

statement. How little he has confined himself to his professed object,

and how little he can be considered in the light of a joint-inquirer

after truth, will be seen by quoting the following passages at large.

‘The great error under which Mr. Godwin labours throughout his whole

work is, the attributing of almost all the vices and misery that prevail

in civil society to human institutions. Political regulations, and the

established administration of property are with him the fruitful sources

of all evil, the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. Were

this really a true state of the case, it would not seem an absolutely

hopeless task to remove evil completely from the world; and reason seems

the proper and adequate instrument for effecting so great a purpose. But

the truth is, that though human institutions _appear_ to be the obvious

and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, they are, in reality,

light and superficial, in comparison with those deeper-seated causes of

evil which result from the laws of nature.’

Now by ‘the laws of nature,’ of which human institutions are here made

only a sort of _cat’s-paw_, our author means neither more nor less than

the principle of population. For after supposing in compliment to Mr.

Godwin, a state of society in which the spirit of oppression, the spirit

of servility, and the spirit of fraud, in which envy, malice, and

revenge, in which every species of narrowness and selfishness are

banished from the world, where war and contention have ceased to exist,

where unwholesome trades and manufactures are no longer encouraged, &c.,

he breaks out into his usual cant of, ‘I cannot conceive a form of

society so favourable upon the whole to population.’ He then proceeds

gravely to shew, by a train of reasoning which has been already

recapitulated, and which need not surely be refuted twice, how in such a

state of happy equality population would go on increasing without limit,

because all obstacles to it, ‘all anxiety about the future support of

children,’ would be entirely removed, though it would at the same time

be attended in every stage of the progress with increasing and

aggravated wretchedness, because those very obstacles, and the same

difficulty of providing for the support of children would still remain.

‘Here then,’ he says, ‘no human institutions existed, to the

perverseness of which Mr. Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst

men. No opposition had been produced by them between public and private

good. No monopoly had been created of those advantages which reason

directs to be left in common. No man had been goaded to the breach of

order by unjust laws. Benevolence had established her reign in all

hearts. And yet in so short a period as fifty years, violence,

oppression, falsehood, misery, every hateful vice, and every form of

distress, which degrade and sadden the present state of society, seem to

have been generated by the most imperious circumstances, by laws

inherent in the nature of man, and absolutely independent of all human

regulations.’

‘It is a perfectly just observation of Mr. Godwin, that _there is a

principle in human society by which population is perpetually kept down

to the level of the means of subsistence_. The sole question is, what is

this principle? Is it some obscure and occult cause? Is it some

mysterious interference of heaven, which at a certain period strikes the

men with impotence, and the women with barrenness? Or is it a cause open

to our researches, within our view; a cause which has constantly been

observed to operate, though with varied force, in every state in which

man has been placed? Is it not misery and the fear of misery,’

[certainly two very different things] ‘the necessary and inevitable

results of the laws of nature, which human institutions, so far from

aggravating, have tended considerably to mitigate, though they can never

remove?’ He then proceeds to shew how the distinctions of property and

the other regulations of society would necessarily result from the

principle of population, and adds, that ‘certainly if the great

principle of the Essay be admitted, it affects Mr. Godwin’s whole work,

and essentially alters the foundations of political justice. A great

part of his book consists of an _abuse_ of human institutions’ [very sad

indeed] ‘as productive of all or most of the evils which afflict

society. The acknowledgement of a new and totally unconsidered cause of

misery must evidently alter the state of these arguments,’ [comfortable

again] ‘and make it absolutely necessary that they should be either

newly modified, or _entirely rejected_.’—How fortunate to have

discovered that the evils in society are not owing to a cause which

might be remedied, but to one that renders their removal absolutely

hopeless!

I might here, if I were to follow the impulse of my own levity, say that

the yellow fever has I believe made its appearance since the first

edition of Political Justice, though I do not know that this

circumstance would make it necessary entirely to new-model the

arguments. As to Mr. Malthus’s ‘new and unconsidered cause of misery,’ I

deny that the necessity of providing a proportionable quantity of food

for an increase of people was new or unconsidered. All that Mr. Malthus

has discovered is that the population would go on increasing, though

there was nothing to support it!—Our author has chosen to justify or

palliate the real disorders which prevail in society by supposing a case

of fictitious distress; by which means he proves incontestably that the

present vices and defects of political institutions, &c. are

_comparative_ blessings. He supposes that in a state of society where

the public good was the constant guide of action, men would entirely lay

aside the use of their reason, and think of nothing but begetting

children, without considering in the least how they were to be

maintained. Now I will also for a time take a license from common sense,

and make a supposition as wise as Mr. Malthus’s. I will suppose all the

inhabitants of this town to come to a determination to live without

eating, and do nothing but drink gin. What would be the consequence?

Perpetual intoxication, quarrels, the fierceness of hunger, disease,

idleness, filth, nakedness, maudlin misery, sallow faces, sights of

famine and despair, meagre skeletons, the dying, and the dead. But why

need I attempt to describe what has been already so much better

described by Hogarth? Here then, I might exclaim, no human institutions

existed, no unjust laws, no excessive labour, no unwholesome trades, no

inequality, no malice, envy, lust, or revenge, to produce the dreadful

catastrophe we just have witnessed: yet in the short space of a single

month or fortnight we see that scenes of distress, shocking beyond any

thing of which we can at present form even a conception, would arise out

of the most imperious circumstances, from laws inherent in the nature

and constitution of man, and absolutely independent of all human

regulations, namely, _from the unrestricted use of gin_. The inference

is direct and unavoidable, that we ought to submit patiently and

thankfully to all the abuses, vices, and evils that are to be found in

this great city, and flatter, excuse, and encourage them by all the

means in our power, _because_ they all of them together do not amount to

a tenth part of the mischief that would be the consequence of the

unrestrained indulgence of a single pernicious habit. This is something

the way in which Mr. Malthus reasons about the unrestricted increase of

population. But the absurdity is too gross even for burlesque.

The following is, I conceive, a fair summary of Mr. Malthus’s theory.

First, that the principle of population is a necessary, mechanical

thing, that it is the ‘grinding law of necessity,’ unavoidably leading

to a certain degree of vice and misery, and in fact accounting for

almost all the evils in human life. Secondly, that all the other sources

of vice and misery which have been so much and idly insisted on, have no

tendency to increase the necessary evils of population, but the

contrary, or that the removal of those different sources of evil would

instead of lessening the evils of population, which are much the most

important, really aggravate them. Here then three questions naturally

present themselves.

First, how much of the vice and misery in society is actually owing to

human institutions, or the passions, follies, imperfections, or

perversities of human nature, independently of the principle of

population.

Secondly, whether the removing or diminishing the evils produced by

those causes would necessarily increase the evils of population, and

open a door to the influx of more vice and misery than ever.

Thirdly, whether the tendency of population to excess is the effect of a

simple principle operating mechanically, whether it is to be looked upon

as one of the laws inherent in our very nature, or whether the state of

morals in every country does not depend greatly and principally on the

state of society, on the condition of the people, on public opinion, and

on a variety of other causes which are more or less within our power;

that is, whether human institutions, laws, &c. instead of being the mere

blind instruments of this principle, do not re-act very powerfully upon

it, and give it its direction and limits.—If it can be shewn under this

last head, that there is some connection between the form of government

and the state of morals, and that the better the government, the better

the morals, the evils of population instead of forming an excuse for bad

governments will only aggravate their mischief, and increase the

necessity of getting rid of them. Again, if it can be made to appear

that there is no necessary, or general proportion between the degree of

vice in any country, and the pressure of population on the means of

subsistence, that it is not always the effect of want, but constantly

outruns the occasion, being self-propagated, and often spreading like a

contagion through those countries and those ranks in life, where the

difficulty of providing for a family is least felt, this will shew that

the mere existence of vice is no proof of its being necessary, or that

it is to be considered as a test of the excessive increase of

population.

Farther, if on the other hand, improving the condition of the lower

classes of the people is generally found, instead of leading to an

unrestrained increase of population, and thus adding to their misery, to

give them a greater attachment to the decencies and comforts of life, to

make them more cautious how they part with them, to open their ideas and

prospects, to strengthen the principle of moral restraint, and so

confine population within reasonable limits, this will be an additional

motive for improving their condition (really and truly, not by taking

from them the comforts and privileges they already possess). Again, if

it should be found that independently of the immediate acts of tyranny

exercised by particular governments, and the poverty and wretchedness

experienced by certain classes of the community there is a tendency in

some governments to keep population down infinitely below the level to

which it might rise by a proper encouragement of agriculture, and the

methods of industry by which population is supported, it will be but a

poor defence of the folly or tyranny of such governments to say, that

they are a necessary expedient to prevent the excess of population.

Lastly, if those states or communities, where the greatest equality

prevails, are those which maintain the greatest number of inhabitants,

and where the principle of moral restraint is likely to operate with

most effect, that is, where population is soonest able to reach its

utmost limits, and goes the least beyond them, certainly those

institutions which favour the greatest disparity of conditions, the

extremes of poverty and the extremes of luxury, will receive no very

striking support from the principle of population. These are I think the

chief points and inferences to which I wish to direct the reader’s

attention in the few slight remarks which I have to make upon the

subject.

It may be proper to observe, in the first place, that Mr. Malthus by

making vice and misery the necessary consequences of his favourite

principle lays himself open to a very obvious objection. For if he means

to prove any thing by his theory, the question immediately is, what

degree of vice and misery is rendered necessary by this principle, or by

the _physical constitution of man_? Are we to suppose that only so much

evil is necessary as naturally grows out of the British constitution? Or

does this principle also prove that all the evils that are suffered

under the Turkish government, or that were suffered under the old

government of France, or that may arise out of its present government

are equally necessary and salutary? How far are we to go? Where are we

to stop? Are we to consider every evil and abuse as necessary, merely

because it exists, or only as much of the thing as we cannot get rid of?

But how much can we really get rid of? Are vice and misery uniformly

owing to the development of this principle in certain situations, or are

they to be in part ascribed to the intervention of other arbitrary, and

gratuitous causes, the operation of which may be more easily set aside?

In what manner are we to distinguish between what is necessary, and what

is not? All these questions require to be asked before we can proceed to

build any practical conclusions on Mr. Malthus’s theory of the evils of

population. The vague, general term, ‘vice and misery,’ gives us no

clue. It is mere cant; and applies equally to the best and worst of all

possible governments. It proves either nothing, or it proves a great

deal more than I conceive Mr. Malthus would in all cases wish to prove

by it.

There is no species of vice or oppression that does not find a ready

excuse in this kind of reasoning. And besides, by leaving the quantity

of vice and misery always uncertain, we never subject ourselves to the

necessity of following a general principle into any obnoxious

conclusions; and are always at liberty to regulate our opinions

according to our convenience by saying—I would have no more vice and

misery than at present prevails: but that degree of vice and misery

which is inwoven with the present constitution of things, I would by no

means have removed, it might endanger the whole fabric. This is a double

advantage. We thus sacrifice to the powers that be, without violating

decorum, or being driven off our guard by an inflexible and pedantic

logic. I have so good an opinion of Mr. Malthus that I do not think he

has any predilection for vice and misery in the abstract, or for their

own sakes: I do not believe he would stand forward as the advocate of

any abuses from which he himself does not reap some benefit, or which he

may not get something by defending.

I do not know that I can go so far as with Mr. Godwin to ascribe the

original sin of the worst men to social institutions, but of this I am

very sure that that original sin and those institutions do not proceed

entirely from the principle of population. There are other vices and

mischievous propensities inherent in our nature, besides the love of

pleasure. We are troubled with a complication of disorders, and it is

bad advice to say, that we ought to direct all our attention to the one

that is perhaps the most inveterate, or because we despair of doing any

thing with that, make no attempts to counteract the progress of the

others, either by palliatives or otherwise. If we are deceived with

respect to the real extent, and sources of our disorders, it is

impossible we should hit upon the right method of cure, whatever might

be the case, if we were informed of our true situation.—The principle of

population alone, according to the description Mr. Malthus gives of it

as a principle of unbridled and insatiable lust, would indeed be

sufficient to account for all the vice and misery in the world, and for

a great deal more than there is in the world. It would soon overturn

every thing. But we have seen that that account is not just. It is in

fact only one of the principles or passions by which the conduct of

mankind is influenced; and he would be a bold man who should assert that

neither ambition, nor avarice, nor sloth, nor ignorance, nor prejudice

have had any share in producing the various evils that abound in civil

society. The other passions are sturdy claimants and know how to bustle

for themselves, and will not be so easily pushed out of the world. Let

any one write the words, ambition, pride, cruelty, hatred, oppression,

falsehood, selfishness, indolence, lust, and hunger in the same line,

and let him see if there is any peculiar charm in the two last, which

draws all their virtue and meaning out of the rest. Yet this is the

impression which Mr. Malthus seems anxious to leave on the minds of his

readers. Indeed all the others appear to owe their efficacy and their

sting to lust alone. If it were not for this one principle, the world

might go on very well.

Mr. Malthus charges it as a great error on Mr. Godwin’s system that

‘political regulations and the established administration of property

are with him the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the

crimes that degrade mankind.’ Be it so, that this is an error. The next

question is, as Mr. Malthus does not deny that these institutions are

the immediate causes of many of the evils that exist, to what principle

they really owe their rise. Mr. Malthus says, they are the necessary

results of laws inherent in our nature, and that though all the other

passions and vices of men could be got rid of altogether, the principle

of population alone would still render those institutions with all the

abuses belonging to them as necessary as ever. This I take upon me to

dispute. Will he say, that (leaving the principle of population entirely

out of the question) pride, avarice, and indolence have had no share in

the establishment, or continuance of the inequality of property, in

goading men on to the accumulation of immense riches by oppression,

extortion, fraud, perjury, and every species of villainy, or in making

them undergo every kind of distress, sooner than apply themselves to

some regular and useful occupation. If I were inclined to maintain a

paradox on the subject, I might take up Hume’s assertion, ‘that

indolence is the source of all mischief in the world.’ For if men had

not been averse to labour, if there had been no idlers to take advantage

of, to offer temptation to, and enlist upon any terms in any lawless

enterprize, that promised an easy booty, the tyrant would have been

without his slaves, the robber without his gang, and the rich man

without his dependents. But these smart points and pithy sayings are

soon found to be fallacious, if we attend a little closely to the

subject. For instance, it may be true that if there had been no idle

people, there would have been no one to take advantage of, but if there

had been no pride, rapacity, or selfishness, there would have been no

one to take an undue advantage of them, or foment the mischief. The

fellows that generally compose a gang of robbers only wish to gain a

cheap livelihood by acts of violence; the captain of the gang is also

actuated by vanity, revenge, the spirit of adventure, and the desire to

keep the country for twenty or thirty miles round in awe of him. The

common soldier is glad of sixpence a-day to be shot at every now and

then, and do nothing the rest of his time: the general is not easy,

unless he can lay waste provinces, overrun kingdoms, and make the world

ring with the terror of his name. The lazy and unthinking would not do

half the mischief, of which they are capable, without the active, the

enterprizing and turbulent: fools and knaves are as necessary to the

body politic, as the head and limbs are to the human body. The Romans

might have staid quietly within their own walls, but for the plotting

heads at home that sent them out to victory; and his thirty thousand

followers would no more have thought of setting out to India of their

own accord, than Alexander would have thought of marching there by

himself.

It is to me pretty clear that as long as there are such passions as

sloth and rapacity, these will be sufficient to account for the unequal

division of property, and will render the laws relating to it necessary:

and it is equally clear to my mind that if these passions could be

completely subdued, so that no one would refuse his share in the common

labour, or endeavour to take an unfair advantage of others either by

force or fraud, that the established administration of property would be

no longer necessary.[13] If, as Mr. Malthus supposes, ‘Benevolence had

so far established her reign in all hearts,’ that every one was ready to

give up the enjoyments of ease and luxury as far as related to himself,

I do not think that in such a state of unparalleled disinterestedness

and heroic virtue, any madman would be found to violate the public

happiness, and begin the work of contention anew, for the sake of

transmitting a contingent inheritance of vice and misery _to his heirs_!

If reason and virtue are at present no match for the principle of

population, neither are they a match for the principle of selfishness,

or for any of our other passions. But truly, if benevolence had once

established her reign in all hearts, we should see wonders, she would

perform the part of vice and misery to a miracle.—It is evident then

that the seeds of inequality, of vice and misery are not sown entirely

in the principle of population; that the same untoward passions which

first rendered civil establishments necessary, have continued to operate

ever since, that they have produced most of the disorders in the world,

and are still in as much force as ever; that they very well deserve a

chapter by themselves in the history of human nature, and ought not to

come in as a note or parenthesis to Mr. Malthus’s great work.

But whatever account we may chuse to give of the origin of the

establishment of property or government in general, this has nothing to

do with the real question, unless it could be shewn that the same form

of government, the same inequality of conditions, and the same degree of

vice and misery are to be found alike in every country. Mr. Malthus’s

system goes to the support of all political regulations and existing

evils, or it goes to the support of none. Let us cast our eyes over the

map of Europe, and ask whether all that variety of governments and

manners by which it is distinguished took their rise solely from the

principle of population. A principle common to human nature, a law

inherent in the physical constitution of man, may in its progress be

necessarily attended with a certain degree of vice and misery; but it

cannot be productive of different degrees of vice and misery in

different countries; as the stern law of necessity, it must operate

every where alike. If it does not do so, this of itself shews that it is

not the sole moving spring in all human institutions, that it is not

beyond the reach of all regulation and control, and that there are other

circumstances, accidents, and principles on which the happiness of

nations depends. Whatever difference there is, then, between one

government and another, whether that government is despotic, or mixed,

or free; whatever difference there is in the administration of that

government, whether it is cruel, oppressive, and arbitrary in the

extreme, or mild, just, and merciful; whatever difference there is

between the manners of one nation and those of another, whether the most

licentious that can be, or strict and exemplary; whatever difference

there is in the arts and conveniences of life, in the improvements of

trade and agriculture in various countries, whatever differences are

produced by religion, by contrarieties of opinion, by the state of

knowledge, by useful or mischievous regulations of all kinds, all these

cannot be owing to one and the same cause.

Will Mr. Malthus say that all these differences are as nothing, that

they are not worth insisting on, or contending about, that they are

nominal, rather than real, or at any rate that what is gained in one way

is lost in another, for that the principle of population still requires

the same vent, and produces first or last the same quantity of vice and

misery of one sort or other in every country? He must assert on the one

hand that all other causes put together do not materially affect the

happiness of a people, or on the other hand that the state of all those

other causes depends on, and arises out of the state of population,

though they do not in the least influence the principle of population

itself. These absurdities, than which it would be difficult to advance

greater, are however necessary to bear out the author’s conclusion, that

arts, knowledge, liberty and virtue, and the best institutions can do

little for the happiness of mankind. For instance, if it is true that

religion or opinion of any kind exerts a direct influence over morals,

then it is not true that morals depend entirely on the state of

population. Or if it is true, that the invention of a useful art, which

is accident, or the public encouragement of it, which is design, may

contribute to the support of a larger population without multiplying its

inconveniences, then it is not true that all human happiness or misery

can be calculated according to a mechanical ratio. But these matters

are, I confess, set in the clearest light by a reference to facts, and I

can quote no better authority than Mr. Malthus himself.

He says, ‘It will not be difficult, from the accounts of travellers, to

trace the checks to population, and the causes of its present decay [in

Turkey]; and as there is little difference in the _manners_ of the

Turks, whether they inhabit Europe or Asia, it will not be worth while

to make them the subject of distinct consideration.’ [I shall presume

that I have so far reconciled the reader’s mind to the bugbear,

population, that he will not regard _depopulation_ as one of the most

beautiful features in the economy of a state.]

Our author then proceeds, ‘The fundamental cause of the low state of

population in Turkey, compared with its extent of territory, is

undoubtedly the nature of its government. Its tyranny, its feebleness,

its bad laws and worse administration of them, with the consequent

insecurity of property, throw such obstacles in the way of agriculture,

that the means of subsistence are necessarily decreasing yearly, and

with them, of course, the number of people. The _miri_ or general

land-tax, paid to the sultan, is in itself moderate; but by abuses

inherent in the Turkish government, the pachas, and their agents have

found out the means of rendering it ruinous. Though they cannot

absolutely alter the impost which has been established by the sultan,

they have introduced a number of changes, which, without the name,

produce all the effect of an augmentation. In Syria, according to

Volney, having the greatest part of the land at their disposal, they

clog their concessions with burthensome conditions, and exact the half,

and sometimes even two-thirds of the crop. When the harvest is over,

they cavil about losses, and, as they have the power in their hands,

they carry off what they think proper.’ [What they leave behind them, is

what Mr. Malthus when he gets into his abstractions calls ‘_the fund

appropriated to the maintenance of labour_,’ or, ‘_the aggregate

quantity of food possessed by the owners of land beyond their own

consumption_.’] ‘If the season fail, they still exact the same sum, and

expose every thing that the poor peasant possesses to sale. To these

constant oppressions are added a thousand accidental extortions.

Sometimes a whole village is laid under contribution for some real or

imaginary offence. Arbitrary presents are exacted on the accession of

each governor; grass, barley, and straw are demanded for his horses’;

[Mr. Malthus thinks, farther on in his book, that ‘the waste of the

rich, and the horses kept for pleasure’ in this country are no detriment

to the poor _here_, but rather a benefit, page 478.] ‘and commissions

are multiplied, that the soldiers who carry the orders may live upon the

starving peasants, whom they treat with the most brutal insolence and

injustice. The consequence of these depredations is, that the poorer

class of inhabitants, ruined, and unable any longer to pay the _miri_,

become a burden to the village,’ [something I suppose in the same way

that the poor among us become a burden to the parish] ‘or fly into the

cities; but the _miri_ is unalterable, and the sum to be levied must be

found somewhere. The portion of those who are thus driven from their

homes falls on the remaining inhabitants, whose burden, though at first

light, now becomes insupportable. If they should be visited by two years

of drought and famine, the whole village is ruined and abandoned; and

the tax, which it should have paid, is levied on the neighbouring lands.

The same mode of proceeding takes place with regard to the tax on

Christians, which has been raised by these means,’ [by what means, by

the principle of population?] ‘from three, five, and eleven piastres, at

which it was first fixed, to thirty-five and forty, which absolutely

impoverishes those on whom it is levied, and obliges them to leave the

country. It has been remarked that these exactions have made a rapid

progress during the last forty years, from which time are dated the

decline of agriculture, the depopulation of the country, and the

diminution in the quantity of the specie carried to Constantinople. The

peasants are every where reduced to a little flat cake of barley, or

_doura_, onions, lentils, and water. Not to lose any part of their corn

they leave in it all sorts of wild grain, which often produces bad

consequences. In the mountains of Lebanon and Nablous, in time of

dearth, they gather the acorns from the oak which they eat after boiling

or roasting them on the ashes. By a natural consequence of this misery,

the art of cultivation is in the most deplorable state. The husbandman

is almost without instruments, and those he has are very bad. His plough

is frequently no more than the branch of a tree cut below a fork and

used without wheels. The ground is tilled by asses and cows, rarely by

oxen, which would bespeak too much riches. In the districts exposed to

the Arabs, as in Palestine, the countryman must sow with his musket in

his hand, and scarcely does the corn turn yellow before it is reaped and

concealed in subterraneous caverns. As little as possible is employed

for seed corn, because the peasants sow no more than is barely necessary

for their subsistence. Their whole industry is limited to the supply of

their immediate wants, and to procure a little bread, a few onions, a

blue shirt, and a bit of woollen, much labour is not necessary. The

peasant lives therefore in distress, but at least he does not enrich his

tyrants, and the avarice of despotism is its own punishment.’

[_Note._—These are the unhappy persons, as our author expresses it in a

passage, which may hereafter be quoted at length, ‘who in the great

lottery of life have drawn a blank; and with whose exorbitant and

unreasonable demands the owners of the aforesaid surplus produce neither

think it just nor natural to comply.’ I confess, I cannot account for

all the contention and distress which is here implied, for the conflict

between famine and riches, when I seriously consider with Mr. Malthus,

‘that the quantity of food, which one man can consume, is necessarily

limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; that it is not

certainly probable that he should throw away the rest; or if he

exchanged his surplus produce for the labour of others, that this would

be better than that these others should absolutely _starve_.’ But human

life, as well as our reasonings about it, is a mystery, a dream.] ‘This

picture which is drawn by Volney, in describing the state of the

peasants in Syria, seems to be confirmed by all the other travellers in

these countries, and according to Eton, it represents very nearly the

condition of the peasants in the greater part of the Turkish dominions.

Universally the offices of every denomination are set up to public sale,

and in the intrigues of the seraglio, by which the disposal of all

places is regulated, every thing is done by means of bribes. The pachas

in consequence, who are sent into the provinces, exert to the utmost

their power of extortion, but are always outdone by the officers

immediately below them, who, in their turn, leave room for their

subordinate agents. The pacha must raise money to pay the tribute, and

also to indemnify himself for the purchase of his office; support his

dignity, and make a provision in case of accidents; and as all power,

both civil and military, centers in his person, from his representing

the sultan, the means are at his discretion, and the quickest are

invariably considered as the best. Uncertain of to-morrow, he treats his

province as a mere transient possession, and endeavours to reap, if

possible, in one day, the fruit of many years, without the smallest

regard to his successor, or the injury that he may do to the permanent

revenue. The cultivator is necessarily more exposed to these extortions

than the inhabitants of the towns. From the nature of his employment, he

is fixed to one spot, and the productions of agriculture do not admit of

being easily concealed. _The tenure of the land and the right of

succession are besides uncertain._ When a father dies, the inheritance

reverts to the sultan, and the children can only redeem the succession

by a considerable sum of money. These considerations naturally occasion

an indifference to landed estates. The country is deserted, and each

person is desirous of flying to the towns, where he will not only in

general meet with better treatment, but may hope to acquire a species of

wealth, which he can more easily conceal from the eyes of his rapacious

masters. To complete the ruin of agriculture, a maximum is in many cases

established, and the peasants are obliged to furnish the towns with corn

at a fixed price. It is a maxim of Turkish policy, originating in the

feebleness of the government, and the fear of popular tumults, to keep

the price of corn low in all the considerable towns. In the case of a

failure in the harvest, every person who possesses any corn is obliged

to sell it at the price fixed, under pain of death: and if there be none

in the neighbourhood, other districts are ransacked for it. When

Constantinople is in want of provisions, ten provinces are perhaps

famished for a supply. At Damascus, during a scarcity in 1784, the

people paid only one penny farthing a pound for their bread, while the

peasants in the villages were absolutely dying with hunger. _The effect

of such a system of government_ on agriculture, need not be insisted on.

The causes of the decreasing means of subsistence are but too obvious;

and the checks which keep the population down to the level of these

decreasing resources, may be traced with nearly equal certainty, and

will appear to include almost every species of vice and misery.’ Happy

country, secured by the very nature of its government from the terrors

of increasing population, and where every species of vice and misery,

wisely anticipated, on the principle that the imagination of a thing is

worse than the reality, takes away all fear of any greater evils than

those they already endure!

In the same chapter, he says, that in Persia ‘the lower classes of

people are obliged to defer marriage till late; and that it is only

among the rich that this union takes place early. The dreadful

convulsions to which this country has been subject for many hundred

years, must have been fatal to her agriculture. The periods of repose

from external wars, and internal commotions have been short and few, and

even during the times of profound peace, the frontier provinces have

been constantly subject to the ravages of the Tartars.—The effect of

this state of things is such as might be expected. The proportion of

uncultivated to cultivated land, Sir John Chardin states to be, ten to

one; and the mode in which the officers of the state and private owners

let out their lands to husbandmen, is not that _which is best calculated

to reanimate industry_. The other checks to population in Persia are

nearly the same as those in Turkey. _The superior destruction of the

plague in Turkey is perhaps nearly balanced by the greater frequency of

internal commotions in Persia._’

These extracts furnish, I think, a tolerably clear idea of the manner in

which it is possible for human institutions to aggravate instead of

mitigating the _necessary_ evils of population. We have a sufficient

specimen of the effects of bad government, of bad laws, of the worse

execution of them, of feeble and selfish policy, of wars and commotions,

or of diseases probably occasioned for the most part by the numbers of

people who are huddled together in dirt and poverty in the great towns

in the manner we have seen—in altering the natural proportion between

the produce of the soil, and the maintenance of the inhabitants; in

wantonly diminishing the means of subsistence by a most unjust and

unequal distribution of them; in diverting the produce of industry from

its proper channels, in drying up its sources, in causing a stagnation

of all the motives and principles which animate human life, in

destroying all confidence, independence, hope, cheerfulness, and manly

exertion, in thwarting the bounties of nature by waste, rapacity,

extortion and violence, and spreading want, misery, and desolation in

their stead. How admirably does Mr. Malthus balance his checks! What the

plague does in Turkey, is in Persia happily effected by means of civil

commotions. Population is thus kept down to the level of the means of

subsistence. But it seems, that wars, and intestine commotions, those

blind drudges of Providence in clearing away the filth, rubbish, and

other evils of a too crowded population, sometimes go beyond their

errand, or do their work the wrong way, by striking at the root of

population instead of lopping off its superfluous branches. According to

our author’s general system, the killing ten, or twenty, or a hundred

thousand men is an evil of a very trifling magnitude, if it is to be

looked upon as an evil at all. Population will only go on with the

greater alacrity, marriage will be rendered more practicable, and the

deficiency will soon be supplied from the sprightly and ever-teeming

source of nature. The dreadful convulsions, however, to which Persia has

been subject for so many hundred years have not been merely vents to

carry off the excess of population beyond the means of subsistence, but

they have further been fatal to agriculture itself, or to those very

means of subsistence. The proportion of _uncultivated_, to _cultivated_

land, we find, is ten to one; so that the population is not only reduced

to a level with the means of subsistence, but reduced ten times lower

than it need be.[14]

I beg leave to accompany this description of the effects of political

regulations and the established administration of property in Turkey,

with the following critical commentary, taken from another part of the

same work, which will throw considerable light on the _necessity_ of

those institutions to prevent the evils of population. Mr. Malthus’s

usual plea for ‘vice and misery,’ is that nothing else can put a stop to

the excesses of population; which _they_ do in the most effectual and

eligible manner. But he has here deserted his idols.

‘It has appeared, I think, clearly, in the review of different

societies given in the former part of this work, that those countries,

the inhabitants of which were sunk in the most barbarous ignorance, or

oppressed by the most cruel tyranny, however low they might be in

actual population, were very populous in proportion to their means of

subsistence; and upon the slightest failure of the seasons, generally

suffered the severities of want.’ [Yet it was the sole object of Mr.

Malthus’s discovery to prove the converse proposition, that the

highest degree of knowledge, and a perfect exemption from every

species of tyranny would only lead to the lowest state of human

wretchedness.]—‘Ignorance and despotism seem to have no tendency to

destroy the passion which prompts to increase; _but they effectually

destroy the checks to it from reason and foresight_. The improvident

barbarian who thinks only of his present wants, or the miserable

peasant, who from his political situation feels little security of

reaping what he has sown, will seldom be deterred from gratifying his

passions by the prospect of inconveniences which cannot be expected to

press on him under three or four years. But though this want of

foresight, which is fostered by ignorance and despotism, tend thus

rather to encourage the procreation of children, it is absolutely

fatal to the industry which is to support them. Industry cannot exist

without foresight and security. The indolence of the savage is well

known; and the poor Egyptian or Abyssinian farmer, without capital,

who rents land, which is let out yearly to the highest bidder and who

is constantly subject to the demands of his tyrannical masters, to the

casual plunder of an enemy, and not unfrequently to the violation of

his miserable contract, can have no heart to be industrious, and if he

had, could not exercise that industry with success. Even poverty

itself, which appears to be the great spur to industry, when it has

once passed certain limits, almost ceases to operate. The indigence

which is hopeless, destroys all vigorous exertion, and confines the

efforts to what is sufficient for bare existence. _It is the hope of

bettering our condition and the fear of want, rather than want itself,

that is the best stimulus to industry, and its most constant and best

directed efforts will almost invariably be found among a class of

people above the class of the wretchedly poor._’

What a pity that a man, who writes so well at times, should, for the

sake of an hypothesis, involve ‘himself in absurdities and

contradictions that would disgrace the lips of an ideot.’ Mr. Malthus

will excuse me, if I make use of some of the hints contained in this

excellent passage, for the benefit of our English poor, who I think

should not have harder measure dealt them than others, and try to soften

some of the harshest constructions of the grinding law of necessity in

their favour. I do not see why they alone are to be the martyrs of an

abstraction. But Mr. Malthus reserves the application of his theory _in

its purity_ for his own countrymen. He has some natural feelings, and a

certain degree of tender weakness for the distresses of other countries,

but he will not suffer his feelings for a moment to get the better of

his reason, with regard to those to whom he is bound by stronger ties,

and over whose interests he watches with a paternal anxiety. He will

hear of no palliations, no excuses, no shuffling temporary expedients to

put off the evil day, he insists upon their submitting to the full

operation of the penalty incurred by the laws of God and of nature,

nothing short of the utmost severity will satisfy him, (’tis death to

spare) he will not bate them a jot of his argument, he makes them drain

the unsavoury cup of misery to the very dregs.

In the same chapter, which is entitled ‘Of the principal sources of the

prevailing errors on population,’ he says, ‘It has been observed that

many countries at the period of their greatest populousness have lived

in the greatest plenty, and have been able to export corn; but at other

periods, when their population was very low, have lived in continual

poverty and want, and have been obliged to import corn. Egypt,

Palestine, Rome, Sicily, and Spain are cited as particular

exemplifications of this fact; and it has been inferred, that an

increase of population in any state, not cultivated to the utmost, will

tend rather to augment than diminish the relative plenty of the whole

society,’ &c. After contradicting this inference without giving any

reasons against it, he goes on, ‘Scarcity and extreme poverty,

therefore, may or may not accompany an increasing population, according

to circumstances. But they must always accompany a permanently declining

population; because there has never been, nor probably ever will be, any

other cause than want of food, which makes the population of a country

permanently decline. In the numerous instances of depopulation which

occur in history, the causes of it may always be traced to the want of

industry, or the ill-direction of that industry, arising from violence,

bad government, ignorance, &c. which first occasions a want of food, and

of course depopulation follows. When Rome adopted the custom of

importing all her corn, and laying all Italy into pasture, she soon

declined in population. The causes of the depopulation of Egypt and

Turkey have already been alluded to; and in the case of Spain, it was

certainly not the numerical loss of people, occasioned by the expulsion

of the Moors; but the industry and capital thus expelled, which

permanently injured her population.’ [I do not myself see, how the

expulsion of capital could permanently injure the population.] ‘When a

country has been depopulated by violent causes, if a bad government,

with its usual concomitant, insecurity of property, ensue, which has

generally been the case in all those countries which are now less

peopled than formerly; neither the food nor the population, will recover

themselves, and the inhabitants will probably live in severe want,’ &c.

Yet Mr. Malthus elsewhere affects to consider all human institutions and

contrivances as perfectly indifferent to the question. We have here,

however, a truer account of the matter. The state of population is

evidently no proof of what it might be: to judge whether it is more or

less than it might or ought to be, we must take into consideration good

and bad government, the progress of civilization, &c. It is a thing _de

facto_, not _de jure_. It is not that rock, against which whosoever sets

himself shall be dashed to pieces, but the clay moulded by the potter

into vessels of honour or dishonour. With respect to Spain, it is

allowed that her population is deficient, or short of what it might be.

The problem of political economy I take to be, how far this is the case

with respect to all other countries, and how to remedy the defect; or

how to support the greatest number of people in the greatest degree of

comfort. But I have said this more than once before.

To the same purpose I might quote Algernon Sydney, who in his Discourses

on government gives the following account of the decline and weakness of

many of the modern states from the loss of liberty.[15]

‘I take Greece to have been happy and glorious, when it was full of

populous cities, flourishing in all the arts that deserve praise among

men; when they were courted and feared by the greatest kings, and never

assaulted by any but to his own loss and confusion; when Babylon and

Susa trembled at the motion of their arms: and their valour, exercised

in those wars and tumults, which our author [Filmer] looks upon as the

greatest evils, was raised to such a power, that nothing upon earth was

found able to resist them. And I think it now miserable, when peace

reigns within their empty walls, and the poor remains of those exhausted

nations, sheltering themselves under the ruins of the desolated cities,

have neither any thing that deserves to be disputed among them, nor

spirit or force to repel the injuries they daily suffer from a proud and

insupportable master.’

‘The like may be said of Italy. Whilst it was inhabited by nations

governing themselves by their own will, they fell sometimes into

domestic seditions, and had frequent wars with their neighbours. When

they were free, they loved their country and were always ready to fight

in its defence. Such as succeeded well, increased in vigour and power;

and even those which were the most unfortunate in one age, found means

to repair their losses, if their government continued. While they had a

property in their goods, they would not suffer the country to be

invaded, since they knew they could have none, if it were lost. This

gave occasion to wars and tumults; it sharpened their courage, kept up a

good discipline, and the nations that were most exercised by them,

always increased in power and number: so that no country seems ever to

have been of greater strength than Italy was when Hannibal invaded it,

and after his defeat the rest of the world was not able to resist their

valour and power. They sometimes killed one another; but their enemies

never got any thing but burying-places within their territories. All

things are now brought into a very different method by the blessed

governments they are under. The fatherly care of the king of Spain, the

pope, and other princes has established peace among them. We have not in

many ages heard of any sedition among the Latins, Sabines, Volsci, Equi,

Samnites, and others. The thin, half-starved inhabitants of walls

supported by ivy fear neither popular tumults, nor foreign alarms; and

their sleep is only interrupted by hunger, the cries of their children,

or the howling of wolves. Instead of many turbulent, contentious cities,

they have a few scattered, silent cottages; and the fierceness of those

nations is so tempered, that every rascally collector of taxes extorts,

without fear, from every man, that which should be the nourishment of

his family. And if any of those countries are free from these pernicious

vermin, it is through the extremity of their poverty.’

[How differently do people see things! According to Mr. Malthus, this

rascally tax-gatherer, this vile nuisance, is a very sacred sort of

character, a privileged person, one of the most indispensable and active

instruments in the procession of vice and misery, those harbingers of

human happiness; and all our reproaches and indignation should fall on

the poor peasant, for bringing beings into the world whom he could not

maintain, in ‘the face of the clearest warning, and in defiance of the

express command of God,’ as proved by the tax-book. Our superficial

politician was not aware (Mr. Malthus tells us that first appearances

are very deceitful) that the produce of the husbandman’s labour was much

better employed in supporting the waste and extravagance of the rich,

than in affording nourishment to his family, as this would only enable

him to _rear_ his family, which must operate as an encouragement to

marriage, and this again would produce other marriages, and so on _ad

infinitum_, to which unrestricted increase of population it is necessary

to put a timely stop.]

‘Even in Rome a man may be circumvented by the fraud of a priest, or

poisoned by one, who would have his estate, wife, whore, or child; but

nothing is done that looks like violence or tumult. The governors do as

little fear Gracchus as Hannibal; and instead of wearying their subjects

in wars,’ [We have not yet reached this pitch of perfection] ‘they only

seek by perverted laws, corrupt judges, false witnesses, and vexatious

suits, to cheat them of their money and inheritance. This is the best

part of their condition. Where these arts are used, there are men, and

they have something to lose; but for the most part, the lands lie waste;

and they who were formerly troubled with the disorders incident to

populous cities, now enjoy the quiet and peaceable estate of a

wilderness.—Again, there is a way of killing worse than that of the

sword; for as Tertullian says upon a different occasion, _vetare nasci

est interficere_; those governments are in the highest degree guilty of

blood, which by taking from men the means of living, bring some to

perish through want, drive others out of the country, and generally

dissuade men from marriage, _by taking from them all ways of supporting

their families_.’ [Our author, we see, has not here put the cart before

the horse. He seems to have understood the necessity of food to

population, though Mr. Malthus’s essay had not then been heard of.]

‘Notwithstanding all the seditions of Florence, and other cities of

Tuscany, the horrid factions of Guelphs and Gibelines,[16] Neri and

Bianchi, nobles and commons, they continued populous, strong, and

exceeding rich; but in the space of less than a hundred and fifty years,

the peaceable reign of the Medici is thought to have destroyed nine

parts in ten of the people of that province. Among other things it is

remarkable, that when Philip the second of Spain gave Sienna to the Duke

of Florence, his embassador then at Rome sent him word, that he had

given away more than six hundred and fifty thousand subjects; and it is

not believed there are now twenty thousand souls inhabiting that city

and territory. Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, and other towns, that

were then good and populous, are in the like proportion diminished, and

Florence more than any. When that city had been long troubled with

seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, it still

retained such strength, that when Charles the eighth of France, being

admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the

kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking up arms,

struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such

conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in the

year 1298 Florence alone, with the Val d’Arno, a small territory

belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell,

bring together a hundred thousand well-armed men. Whereas now that city,

with all the others in that province, are brought to such despicable

weakness, emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist

the oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves, if

they were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed or

destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice,

Genoa, Rome, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence:

they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the

government they are under. But he who has thus cured them of disorders

and tumults does in my opinion deserve no greater praise than a

physician, who should boast there was not a sick person in a house

committed to his care, when he had poisoned all that were in it. The

Spaniards have established the like peace in the kingdoms of Naples and

Sicily, the West Indies, and other places. The Turks by the same means

prevent tumults in their dominions. And they are of such efficacy in all

places, that Mario Chigi, brother to pope Alexander the seventh, by one

sordid cheat upon the sale of corn, is said within eight years to have

destroyed above a third part of the people in the ecclesiastical state.

And that country, which was the strength of the Romans in the time of

the Carthaginian wars, suffered more by the covetousness and fraud of

that villain, than by all the defeats received from Hannibal, &c. Chap.

ii. p. 223.

It will be worth the reader’s while to turn to Lord Kaims’s account of

the kingdom of Siam, which, though one of the most fertile countries in

the world, is reduced to the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness by

the absurd and tyrannical policy of its government. Some of the finest

districts that were formerly cultivated, are now inhabited only by wild

beasts. One of the arts by which they preserve the balance of population

in that country is, that the keeper of the king’s menagerie is

authorized to let loose the elephants into the gardens of all those

within a given distance of the capital, who do not pay him a large fine

yearly to be excused from this intrusion. Yet according to our Essayist,

human institutions have a very slight influence on the happiness of a

people, because they cannot alter the necessary ratios of the increase

of food and population. It is probable, however, that some of the cases

here cited, which seem to bear rather hard on Mr. Malthus’s rule, might

have led those hasty writers, whom he censures for their want of a due

insight into the subject, to conceive an unjust prejudice against human

institutions; and perhaps some of my readers may also be led to suspect,

from not comprehending fully the scope and connection of his arguments,

that bad governments are not quite such innocent things, as Mr. Malthus

would sometimes represent them. Is it necessary to press this subject

any farther? I do not pretend to be very deep-read in history, in the

constitution of states, the principles of legislation, the progress of

manners, or the immediate causes of the revolutions that have taken

place in different countries. All that I can presume to bring to this

question is a little stubborn common sense, an earnestness of feeling,

and a certain familiarity with abstruse subjects, that is not willingly

or easily made the dupe of flimsy distinctions. But without much

learning in one’s self, it is easy to take advantage of the learning of

others. By the help of a common-place book, which is all that is wanted

in these cases (and I am fortunate enough to have such a one by me in

the collections of ‘that honest chronicler,’ James Burgh) I might soon

swell the size of these letters to a bulk, which the bookseller would

not like, by a number of striking illustrations from the most celebrated

authors. I might make myself a splendid livery of the wisdom of others.

But I have no taste for this pompous drudgery. However, to satisfy those

readers who are unable to discern the truth without the spectacles of

facts, it will not be amiss to refer to the opinions of a few of the

writers, who seem with sufficient clearness to have traced the causes of

the rise and fall of particular states to principles quite independent

of, which were neither first set in motion nor afterwards regulated by

the principle of population, and the effects of which were utterly

disproportionate to the actual operation of that principle. After all,

it is impossible to answer a paradox satisfactorily. The real answer

consists of the feelings and observations of our whole lives; and of

course, it must be impossible to embody these in any single statement.

All that can be done in these cases is to set the imagination once more

in its old track.

‘Hear,’ says my authority, ‘the excellent Montague on the prevalence of

luxury among the Romans.’

‘If we connect the various strokes interspersed through what we have

remaining of the writings of Sallust, which were levelled at the vices

of his countrymen, we shall be able to form a just idea of the manners

of the Romans in his time. From this picture, we must be convinced, that

not only those shocking calamities, which the republic suffered during

the contest between Marius and Sylla, but those subsequent and more

fatal evils, which brought on the utter extinction of the Roman liberty

and constitution, were the natural effects of that foreign luxury, which

first introduced venality and corruption.’ [Now by _luxury_ we may

understand a very great superabundance of the good things of this life,

either in the community at large or in certain classes of it, but it

cannot by any construction be made to signify the general and absolute

want of them. Luxury in some classes may produce want in others, but

poverty is in this case the effect of the unequal distribution of the

produce of the earth, not of its real deficiency. Or if by luxury we

understand only certain exterior decorations or artificial indulgences,

which have nothing to do with the real support of life, such as dress,

furniture, buildings, pictures, gold and silver, rarities, delicacies of

all kinds, every thing connected with shew and expence (though all these

things among the Romans being the effects not merely of leisure or of

supernumerary hands, but of _power_, and foreign dominion, must imply a

command over the more substantial necessaries of life) yet even in this

sense the passion for luxury or for those indulgences (which is here

said to have been one great instrument in the overthrow of the state) is

certainly a very different thing from the passion of hunger, or want of

food, Mr. Malthus’s key to the solution of all problems of a political

nature.] ‘Though the introduction of luxury from Asia preceded the ruin

of Carthage in point of time, yet as Sallust informs us, the dread of

that dangerous rival restrained the Romans within the bounds of decency

and order. But as soon as ever _that obstacle was removed_, they gave a

full scope to their ungoverned passions. The change in their manners was

not gradual, and by little and little as before, but rapid and

instantaneous. Religion, justice, modesty, decency, all regard for

divine or human laws, were swept away at once by the irresistible

torrent of corruption. The nobility strained their privileges, and the

people their liberty, alike into the most unbounded licentiousness.

Every one made the dictate of his own will, his only rule of action.

Public virtue, and the love of their country, which had raised the

Romans to the empire of the universe, were extinct. Money, which alone

could enable them to gratify their darling luxury, was substituted in

its place. Power, dominion, honours, and universal respect were annexed

to the possession of money. Contempt, and whatever was the most

reproachful was the bitter portion of poverty; and to be poor, grew to

be the greatest of all crimes, in the estimation of the Romans. Thus

wealth and poverty contributed alike to the ruin of the republic. The

rich employed their wealth in the acquisition of power, and their power

in every kind of oppression and rapine for the acquisition of more

wealth. The poor, now dissolute and desperate, were ready to engage in

every seditious insurrection, which promised them the plunder of the

rich, and set up both their liberty and country to sale, to the best

bidder. The republic, which was the common prey to both, was thus rent

to pieces between the contending factions.—A state so circumstanced must

always furnish an ample supply of proper instruments for faction. For as

luxury consists in an inordinate gratification of the sensual passions,

and as the more they are indulged, the more importunate they grow, the

greatest fortune must at last sink under their insatiable demands. Thus

luxury necessarily produces corruption. As wealth is necessary to the

support of luxury, all those who have dissipated their private fortunes

in the purchase of pleasure, will be ever ready to enlist in the cause

of faction for the wages of corruption. And when once the idea of

respect and homage is annexed to the possession of wealth alone, honour,

probity, every virtue and every amiable quality will be held cheap in

comparison and looked upon as awkward, and quite unfashionable. But as

the spirit of liberty will yet exist in some degree, in a state which

retains the name of freedom, even though the manners of that state

should be generally depraved, an opposition will arise from those

virtuous citizens, who know the value of their birth-right, liberty, and

who will not submit tamely to the chains of faction. Force will then be

called in to the aid of corruption, a military government will be

established on the ruins of the civil, and all commands and employments

will be at the disposal of arbitrary, lawless power. The people will be

fleeced to pay for their own fetters, and doomed, like the cattle, to

unremitting toil and drudgery, for the support of their tyrannical

masters.’ [All this is evidently erroneous, when we apply to it the

touch-stone of the theory of population. The people are not fleeced and

worked in this manner for the benefit of those who fleece and work them,

to gratify any appetites or passions of theirs, it is out of pure

good-will to the poor wretches themselves, that they may live more at

their ease, and in a greater degree of affluence than they would without

this timely warning of the evils of poverty.] ‘Or if the outward form of

civil government should be permitted to remain, the people will be

compelled to give a sanction to tyranny by their own suffrages, and to

elect oppressors instead of protectors.—From this genuine portrait of

the Roman state it is evident that the fatal catastrophe of that

republic, of which Sallust himself was an eye-witness, was the natural

effect of the corruption of their manners; and again, that this

corruption was the effect of the introduction of foreign wealth and

luxury. This fatal tendency was too obvious to escape the notice of

those who had any regard for liberty and their ancient constitution.

Many sumptuary laws were made to restrain the excesses of luxury; but

these efforts were too feeble to check the over-bearing violence of the

torrent. Cato proposed a severe law, enforced by the sanction of an

oath, against bribery and corruption at elections; where the scandalous

traffic of votes was established by custom, as at a public market. But

he only incurred the resentment of both parties by that salutary

measure. The rich, who had no other merit to plead but what arose from

their superior wealth, thus found themselves precluded from all

pretensions to the highest dignities. The electors abused, cursed and

even pelted him as the author of a law which reduced them to the

necessity of subsisting by labour. Corruption was arrived at its height,

and those excesses which were formerly esteemed the _vices_ of the

people were now, by the force of custom, become the _manners_ of the

people. To pilfer the public money and to plunder the provinces by

violence, though state crimes of the most heinous nature, were grown so

familiar, that they were looked upon as no more than mere office

perquisites.’ Really I am afraid that the reader will suspect me of

falsifying the historical record to write a satire against our own

times. Some of these remarks are I confess _home_ truths. To a person

who has not that mysterious kind of penetration which the author of the

Essay possesses, they carry more weight, and give a clearer insight into

the principles that operate in the decomposition of states, than all Mr.

Malthus’s indiscriminate and shadowy reasonings on the evils of

population, which can no more prove anything decisively on the subject,

than we can account for the inequalities in the surface of the earth

from its being round.

The same author adds, ‘Though there is a concurrence of several causes

in the ruin of a state, yet where luxury prevails, that parent of all

our fantastic wants, ever craving, and ever unsatisfied, we may safely

assign it as the leading cause; since it ever was and ever will be the

most baneful to public virtue. _As luxury is contagious from its very

nature_, it will gradually descend from the highest to the lowest ranks

till it has ultimately affected a whole people.—We see luxury gradually

increasing and prevailing over the Roman spirit and virtue, till at

length the contagion _even_ reached ladies of the greatest distinction,

who in imitation of the prince and his court, had their assemblies and

representations in a grove, planted by the Emperor, where booths were

built, and in them sold whatever incited to sensuality and wantonness.

Thus was even the outward appearance of virtue banished the city, and

all manner of avowed lewdness, depravity and dissoluteness introduced in

its room, men and women being engaged in a contention to outvie each

other in glaring vices, and scenes of impurity. Again.—About the time

that the Roman republic was tottering to its fall, it was observed that

there was an universal degeneracy of manners prevailing, particularly

that the women were very scandalous in their behaviour at Rome, while

those of the countries called by them barbarous were remarkably

exemplary in this respect.’ Was this difference wholly owing to the

difference in the state of population? Or shall we believe that the

ladies of Roman knights, that the wives and daughters of Emperors, that

the mistresses of those to whom the world was tributary, who scattered

pearls and gold among their followers, who gave largesses of corn to the

people, and entertained them at ten thousand tables at a time, who ate

the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, and the brains of parrots,

whose dogs were fed with the livers of geese, their horses with raisins,

and their wild beasts with the flesh of partridges and pheasants, shall

we believe that these delicate creatures, who dreamt of nothing but

pleasure and feasting, who reclined on silken couches, whose baths were

made of rose-water and wine, who scented the air with all the perfumes

of the East, whose rich dresses were upborne by a train of

waiting-women, and idle boys, were driven to the necessity of

stimulating their passions by lewd exhibitions, and wanton dances, and

lascivious songs, and soft music and obscene practices, because they

were hindered from gratifying their honest desires in a lawful way by

the difficulty of providing for their future offspring, or the pressure

of population on the means of subsistence? Yet this is what we must be

led to suppose from Mr. Malthus’s theory, according to whom vice is the

natural consequence of want, and want the effect of increasing

population. For any one who is acquainted with the state of manners, and

the mode of living among the great at Rome at this time to pretend that

all this was owing to nothing but the advanced state of population, just

as the rising or falling of the weather-glass depends on the pressure of

the air outside, betrays a most astonishing ignorance of human nature. I

think I am warranted in laying down the two following maxims; that

luxury is itself an immediate cause of dissoluteness of manners;

secondly, that example, particularly that of the great, has a powerful

influence over manners.

Before I quit this subject of Roman luxury, I shall just mention a fact

quoted by my author, which seems to contradict Mr. Malthus’s notion that

the luxuries of the rich do not in the least affect the condition of the

poor. ‘The good Emperor Aurelius,’ says Burgh, ‘sold the plate,

furniture, jewels, pictures and statues of the imperial palace, _to

relieve the distresses of the people_, occasioned by the invasion of

barbarians, pestilence, famine, &c. the value of which was so great,

that it maintained the war for five years, beside other inestimable

expences.’ If according to Mr. Malthus’s reasoning on this subject in

different parts of his work, every man’s stomach can hold only a certain

quantity of food, and what does not go into one man’s stomach

necessarily goes into some other’s, that is, if every person has as

large a share as it is possible he should have of the necessaries of

life, I do not see what this moving of pictures or statues about, or

setting them up to auction should have to do with the state of

provisions, or how it should relieve the necessities of the poor. Mr.

Malthus’s reasonings are sometimes as remarkable for their simplicity as

they are at others for their complexity. He sees things in the most

natural or in the most artificial point of view, as he pleases. At one

time, every thing comes round by a labyrinth of causes, and all the

intricate secretions of the state; at another time the whole science of

political economy is reduced to a flat calculation of the size of a

quartern loaf, and the size of the human stomach.

All authors (but Mr. Malthus) seem agreed that luxury has been fatal to

the spirit of liberty, and that the loss of liberty has led to the loss

of independence. ‘The welfare of every country depends upon the morals

of the people. Though a nation may become rich by trade, thrift, and

industry, or from the advantages of soil and situation, or may attain to

great eminence and power either by force of arms, or by the sagacity of

their councils; yet when their manners are depraved, they will decline

insensibly, and at last come to utter destruction. When a country is

grown vicious, industry decays, and the people become unruly,

effeminate, and unfit for labour. Luxury, when introduced into free

states, and suffered to spread through the body of the people was ever

productive of that degeneracy of manners, which extinguishes public

virtue, and puts a final period to liberty. Thus the Assyrian empire

sunk under the arms of Cyrus with his poor but hardy Persians. The

extensive and opulent empire of Persia fell an easy prey to Alexander

and a handful of Macedonians. And the Macedonian empire, when enervated

by the luxury of Asia, was compelled to receive the yoke of the

victorious Romans. The descendants of the heroes, philosophers, orators,

and free citizens of Greece are now the slaves of the Grand Turk. The

posterity of the Scipios and Catos of Rome are now singing operas, in

the shape of Italian eunuchs, on the English stage.’[17] It should seem

from the length of time which these countries have remained in the same

degraded condition without a single effort or even wish to relieve

themselves from it, that there must be other causes of the permanent

depression of states, and other channels of transmission, by which the

habits, and characters of the people, their customs and institutions,

are handed down through successive generations without any hope of a

change for the better, besides the mechanical fluctuations in the

principle of population. If all laws, institutions, manners, and customs

were only so many _expressions_ (as I may say) of the power of that

principle, kingdoms would rise and fall with the operation of the checks

provided for it; their alternate renovation and decay would be as

regular as the ebbing and flowing of the tide; in proportion as they

sank deep in wretchedness, they would tower to greater happiness and

splendour; the foundation of their future prosperity would be laid in

the lowness of their fortune; the exhausted state would rise, like the

phœnix, out of its own ashes, and enter the career of liberty and glory

in all its pristine vigour. But we do not find that the accounts in

history correspond with the oscillations of Mr. Malthus’s theory. We

find through a long, dreary tract of time, during which our author’s

ratios must have been ascending and descending like buckets in a well,

that the inhabitants of those devoted countries have remained just where

they were,—in the lowest scale of human being. They have for a great

many hundred years been undergoing the wholesome discipline of vice and

misery without being the better for it, the iron yoke of necessity to

which they have so long and patiently submitted does not seem ever to

have been relaxed in their favour, and they have reaped none of those

reversionary benefits which might be expected from slavery and famine.

These powerful principles have not done much to rekindle in their

breasts their ancient love of liberty, the glow of genius,—or to open a

new field for the rapid increase of population. They have not been

favoured with any of those _ups_ and _downs_, those pretty whirls and

agreeable vicissitudes of good and evil, which Mr. Malthus describes as

the natural consequence of the principles on which his machine of

population is constructed. This is a radical objection to his machine;

it shews plainly that it is not constructed on true principles, that we

cannot safely trust ourselves in it, and will I hope deter us from

getting up into it.

‘The Swiss keep the same unchanged character of simplicity, honesty,

frugality, modesty, bravery. These are the virtues which preserve

liberty. They have no corrupt court, no blood-sucking placemen, no

standing army, the ready instruments of tyranny, no ambition for

conquest, no debauching commerce, no luxury, no citadels against

invasions and against liberty. Their mountains are their fortifications,

and every householder is a soldier, ready to fight for his country.’

This is the account which Voltaire gives of that country. Since that

time, it has fallen by a power greater than its own, and paid with its

liberty for the folly and madness of the rest of Europe. I hope I shall

not offend any of the sycophants of power, any of the enlightened

patriots of the day who regard the general distinctions of liberty and

slavery as slight and evanescent, by adding to my list of political

grievances foreign conquest as an evil, and an evil that tends to no

certain good.—I would fain know from the adepts in the science of

population whether according to that system it would be an advantage to

this country to be conquered by the French. The necessary ratios of the

increase of food and population (which according to our author are every

thing,—he utterly rejects the idea that established governments can do

any mischief) would of course remain the same; and as to the practical

part, population would, if any thing, go on slower than before. I cannot

but think however that most of my readers would in such a case

anticipate the consequences which our political reformer describes in

his croaking old-fashioned way as proceeding from another cause, the

corruption of the people, and the abuses of government at home. ‘I see’

he says, ‘my wretched country in the same condition as France is now.’

[This was written at a time when it was the fashion for the English to

reproach all other countries for their misery and slavery, as they have

since been in the habit of hunting them down for their attempts at

liberty.] ‘Instead of the rich and thriving farmers, who now fill or who

lately filled, the country with agriculture, yielding plenty for man and

beast, I see the lands neglected, the villages and farms in ruins, with

here and there a starveling in wooden shoes, driving his plough, his

team consisting of an old goat, a hide-bound bullock, and an ass, value

in all forty shillings. I see the once rich and populous cities of

England in the same condition with those of Spain; whole streets lying

in rubbish, and the grass peeping out between the stones in those which

continue still inhabited. I see the harbours empty, the warehouses shut

up, and the shop-keepers playing at draughts, for want of customers. I

see our noble and spacious turnpike roads covered with thistles and

other weeds, and hardly to be traced out. I see the studious men reading

the Political Disquisitions, and the histories of the eighteenth

century, and execrating the stupidity of their fathers, who in spite of

the many faithful warnings given them, sat still, and suffered their

country to be ruined by a set of wretches, whom they could have crushed.

I see the country devoured by an army of 200,000 men. I see justice

trodden under foot in the courts of justice. I see _Magna Charta_, the

_Habeas Corpus_ act, the bill of rights, and trial by jury, obsolete,

and royal edicts and _arrets_ set up in their place. I see the once

respectable land-owners, tradesmen, and manufacturers of England sunk

into contempt, and placemen and military officers the only persons of

consequence, &c.’ I do not know but there may be some staunch adherents

to the new philosophy, some hyper-graduates in the school, who would

think such a state of things ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished.’ But

it is happy that where our reason leaves us, our prejudices often come

to our aid. Though there may be some persons in this country who would

not care a fig for the Bastile, or letters _de cachet_, there is no one

who has not a just dread of Buonaparte; or who would not indignantly

spurn at the wretch who told him that so long as the disproportion in

the increase of food and the increase of mankind continued, it was of

little consequence to him whether he was subject to the yoke of a

foreign tyrant, or governed by a mild and lawful sovereign.—It has

always been the custom for the English to extol themselves to the skies

as the freest and happiest nation on the face of the earth. Ever since I

was a boy, I remember to have heard of the trial by jury, Magna Charta,

and the bill of rights, of the Bastile in France, and the Inquisition in

Spain, and the man in the Iron mask. Now whether it is that I was a boy

when I first heard of these things, or that they carry some weight and

meaning in themselves, certain it is that they have made such a strong

and indelible impression on my mind as totally to preclude the effects

of Mr. Malthus’s philosophy. Whether it is owing to the strength of my

reason or my prejudices, I cannot receive the benefit of his new light.

As these are some of the strongest feelings I have, (though they may

perhaps be just as childish as those which I still have in reading the

story of Goody Two-Shoes, or the Little Red Riding-hood) it occurred to

me to make some use of them in answer to Mr. Malthus’s challenge to shew

that there is no difference between one government and another in the

essentials of liberty and happiness. Or I thought I might contrast the

constitution of this country with that of Denmark, where (says Lord

Molesworth) the peasants are as absolute slaves as the negroes in

Jamaica, and _worse fed_. This seemed to be strong ground. But then I

recollected that the very same expression had been applied by a person,

whom it would be unbecoming in me to contradict, to the peasants in this

country.[18] I also met with a passage something to the same purpose in

the Political Disquisitions, which a little damped my patriotic

eagerness. ‘A poor hard-working man, who has a wife and six children to

maintain’ [what a wicked wretch!] ‘can neither enjoy the glorious light

of heaven, nor the glimmering of a farthing candle, without paying the

window tax and the candle tax. He rises early and sits up late; he fills

the whole day with severe labour; he goes to his flock-bed with half a

belly-full of bread and cheese denying the call of natural appetite,

that his wife and little starvelings may have the more.’ [Why he is very

justly punished to be sure. True; but mark the sequel.] ‘In the mean

while the exactors of these taxes are revelling at the expence of more

money for one evening’s amusement, than the wretched hard-working man

(who is obliged to find the money for them to squander) can earn by half

a year’s severe labour.’ On the whole, I was obliged to relinquish my

project. I found that my picture must either want effect, or be out of

all keeping. And besides the relations of things had not only changed,

but men’s opinions had changed with them. An overcharged description of

English liberty and continental slavery would not be at all to the taste

of the times. It would sound like mere rant, and would come to nothing.

But when I came to that fine representation of the effects of slavery,

which Burgh has left us, with those exquisite figures of the old goat,

the bullock and the ass, and the group of shop-keepers playing at

draughts for want of something to do, I was determined to bring it in,

cost what it would. At last, I bethought me of the expedient of an

invasion,—at that word I knew that every true friend of his country

would grow pale, would see the odious consequences of slavery in their

native deformity, and turn with disdain from those vile panders to vice

and misery, those sanguine enthusiasts of mischief, who would artfully

reconcile them to every species of want, oppression, and unfeeling

barbarity, as the necessary consequences of the principle of population.

So much more credit do we attach to names, than things!—The whole of the

account of Denmark to which I have just referred, is well worthy of

attention: I cannot forbear giving the following extract. ‘The

consequence of this oppression is that the people of Denmark finding it

impossible to secure their property’ [from the tax-gatherers] ‘squander

their little gettings, as fast as they can, and are irremediably poor.

Oppression and arbitrary sway beget distrust and doubts about the

security of property; doubts beget profusion, men chusing to squander on

their pleasures what they apprehend may excite the rapaciousness of

their superiors; and this profusion is the legitimate parent of that

universal indolence, poverty and despondency, which so strongly

characterize the miserable inhabitants of Denmark. When Lord Molesworth

resided in that country, the collectors of the poll-tax were obliged to

accept of old feather-beds, brass and pewter pans, &c. instead of money,

from the inhabitants of a town, which once raised 200,000 rix dollars

for Christiern IV. on twenty-four hours’ notice. The quartering and

paying the king’s troops is another grievance no less oppressive. The

boors are obliged to furnish the king and every little insolent courtier

with horses and waggons in their journeys, and are beaten like cattle.

Consequently, Denmark, once very populous, is become thin of

inhabitants; as poverty, oppression, and meagre diet do miserably check

procreation, besides producing diseases which shorten the lives of the

few who are born.’ [How miserably short-sighted must our author have

been not to perceive that these were great advantages!] ‘All this the

rich and thriving and free people of England may bring themselves to, if

they please’ [by following up Mr. Malthus’s theory.] ‘It is only letting

the court go on with their scheme of diffusing universal corruption

through all ranks, and it will come of course.’—There is one passage in

this account, which malevolence itself cannot apply to the history of

this country. ‘Before the government of Denmark was made hereditary and

absolute in the present royal family, by that fatal measure in 1660, the

nobility lived in great splendour and affluence. _Now they are poor and

their number diminished._’

I shall conclude these extracts with the following passages, taken at

random, which will at least serve to shew the strange prejudices that

prevailed on the subject, before Mr. Malthus, like the clown in

Shakespear, undertook to find out an answer that should explain all

difficulties. ‘It must indeed be an answer of most monstrous size that

fits all demands.’ But perhaps Mr. Malthus is by this time convinced,

that ‘a thing may serve long, and not serve ever.’

‘The richest soil in Europe, Italy, is full of beggars; among the

Grisons, the poorest country in Europe, there are no beggars. The

bailage of Lugane is the worst country, the least productive, the most

exposed to cold and the least capable of trade of any in all Italy, and

yet is the best peopled. If ever this country is brought under a yoke

like that which the rest of Italy bears, it will soon be abandoned, for

nothing draws so many people to live in so bad a soil, when they are in

sight of the best soil in Europe, but the easiness of the government.’

Burnet’s Travels.

‘Italy shews, in a very striking light, the advantages of free

government.[19] The subjects of the Italian republics are thriving and

happy. Those under the Pope, the dukes of Tuscany, Florence &c. wretched

in the extreme.—Lucca, to mention no other, is a remarkable instance of

the happy effects of liberty. The whole dominion is but thirty miles

round, yet contains, besides the city, 150 villages, 120,000

inhabitants, and all the soil is cultivated to the utmost. Their

magistrates are re-elected every two months out of a body of nobility,

who are chosen every two years.’ Modern Universal History. See also A.

Sydney as before quoted.—These differences cannot be accounted for by

the length of time or the force with which the principle of population

has operated in these states. The countries are equally old, and the

climate very nearly the same.

‘In England an industrious subject has the best chance for thriving,

because the country is the freest. In the Mogul’s dominions the worst,

because the country is the most effectually enslaved.’

‘The title of freemen was formerly confined chiefly to the nobility and

gentry, who were descended of free ancestors. _For the greatest part of

the people_ was restrained under some species of slavery, so that they

were not their own masters.’ Spelman’s Glossary.[20]—On this passage my

author remarks very gravely, ‘What has been in England may be again. If

liberty be on the decline, no one knows how low it may sink, and to what

pitch of slavery and cruelty it may grow.’ Mr. Malthus’s theory tends to

familiarise the mind to such a change as the necessary effect of the

progress of population. But this pretext is here clearly done away, as

we have fought up to our present free, and flourishing state, in the

_teeth_ of this principle. Our progress has not been uniformly

_retrograde_, as it ought to have been to make any thing of the

argument.

‘It is constantly (said a member in Queen Elizabeth’s time) in the

mouths of us all, that our lands, goods and laws are at our prince’s

disposal.’ We do not at present come _quite_ up to the loyalty of this

speaker.

‘Nations have often been deceived into slavery by men of shining

abilities.’ Perhaps the late Mr. Burke was an instance of this. I by no

means insist that he was, because there may be differences of opinion on

that point. But of this I am sure, that the effect of his writings, good

or bad, cannot be measured—by the principle of population.

‘A single genius changes the face and state of a whole country, as

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and Peter the great of Russia. Confucius

produced a reformation in one of the oriental kingdoms in a few months.’

‘Commerce introduced by the czar Peter introduced luxury. Universal

dissipation took the lead, and profligacy of manners succeeded. _Many of

the lords began to squeeze and grind the peasants to extort fresh

supplies from them for the incessant demands of luxury_’—not of

population.

‘The extreme poverty occasioned by idleness and luxury in the beginning

of Lewis XIII. of France filled the streets of Paris with beggars. The

court disgusted at the sight, which indeed was a severe reproach on

them, issued an order, forbidding all persons, on severe penalties, to

relieve them, intending thereby to drive them out of the town, and not

caring though they dropped down dead, before they could reach the

country towns and villages.’ This was a project worthy of the genius of

Mr. Malthus.

‘Government, according to Plato, is the parent of manners. One judicious

regulation will often produce a very salutary effect on a whole people,

as experimental philosophy shews us, that a wire will secure a castle

from the once irresistible force of lightning.—Mankind may be brought to

hold any principles and to indulge any practices, and again to give them

up.—Is there any notion of right and wrong, about which mankind are

universally agreed? Is it not evident that mankind may be moulded into

any shape? How come we to know that antimony or quicksilver may, by

chemical processes, be made to pass through twenty different states, and

restored again to their original state? Is it not by experiment? Are not

the various legislations, institutions, regulations of wise or designing

statesmen, priests, and kings, a series of experiments, shewing that

human nature is susceptible of any form or character?’ According to the

most modern discovery, these things never did, nor ever will have any

effect at all. The question is simply whether the state of food and the

state of population being the same, the different causes here alluded to

have not produced very different results with respect to the degree both

of vice and misery existing in the world.[21]

‘The great difference we see between the behaviour of the people called

Quakers, and all others; between English, Scotch, Irish, French,

Spanish, Heathens, Mahometan, Christian, Popish, Protestant manners and

characters, &c. the regular and permanent difference we see between the

manners of all these divisions of mankind, shews beyond all doubt that

the principles and habits of the people are very much in the power of

able statesmen.’

‘Among the Lacedemonians there was no such crime as infidelity to the

marriage-bed: yet Lycurgus in framing his laws had used no precaution

against it, but the virtuous and temperate education he prescribed for

the youth of both sexes.—The influence which education has on the

manners of a people is so considerable that it cannot be estimated. But

by _education_ it is to be observed, we must understand not only what is

taught at schools and universities, but the impressions young people

receive from parents, and from the world, which greatly outweigh all

that can be done by masters and tutors. Education, taken in this

enlarged sense, is almost all that makes the difference between the

characters of nations; and it is a severe satire on our times, _that the

world makes most young men very different beings from what those who

educated them intended them to be_.’ This last remark is I think of the

utmost force and importance; and has never been sufficiently attended to

by those who prate most fluently and triumphantly about the inherent

perversity of human nature. A young man is seldom tainted by the world,

till he becomes dependent on it. I have known several persons who I am

sure have set out in life with the utmost purity of intention, and a

noble ingenuousness of mind, and were prepared to act on very different

principles from those, which they found prevailing in the world. Is the

fault in this case in the wood, or in the carver? Is it in the stuff, or

in the mould, in which it is cast? The difficulty seems to be, how to

get a better mould.

‘Aristotle lays down very strict rules concerning the company young

people may be allowed to keep, the public diversions they may attend;

the pictures they may see, and against obscenity, intemperance, &c. And

the eighth book of his politics is employed wholly on education, in

which he shews, that youth ought to be strongly impressed with the idea

of their being members of a community, whose good they are to prefer to

their private advantage in all cases where they come in competition. He

commends the wisdom of the Spartans in paying such attention to this

great object. Such is the delicacy of this old Heathen, that he

hesitates about the propriety of young men’s applying to music, as being

likely to enervate the mind.’

‘Lycurgus did not allow the Spartans to travel, lest they should be

tainted by the manners of other nations.’ I do not chuse to name all the

vices that have been imported into this country within the last fifty

years by the aid of foreign travel. Vice is unfortunately of a very

tenacious quality, and there is no quarantine against the epidemics of

the mind. In return, however, we have learned to converse, to dress, and

dance better than we used to do.

‘At Sparta, the poets could not publish any thing without a license; and

all immoral writings were prohibited. A very wise man[22] said he

believed, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not

care who made the laws of a nation. The ancient legislators did not

pretend to reform the manners of the people without the help of the

poets.’

‘The grave Romans did not allow a person of character to dance! It was a

saying among them, no one dances unless he is drunk or mad.’

‘In the old English laws, we find punishments for wanton behaviour, as

touching the breasts of women, &c.—By the ancient laws of France, the

least indecency of behaviour to a free woman, as squeezing the hand,

touching the arm or breast, &c. was punishable by fire.’[23] What odd,

sour, crabbed notions must have prevailed in those days! Not squeeze a

lady’s hand! No—a much more agreeable latitude of behaviour is allowed

at present: we are as much improved in our notions of gallantry as of

liberty. The polite reader will not suspect me of a design to hold up

the shocking manners of our ancestors as models of imitation in the

present day; I only mention them to shew what a wide difference there

may be in the notions of decency and propriety at different times!

If a stranger, on entering a large town, London for example, should be

struck with that immense number of prostitutes, ‘who elbow us aside in

all our crowded streets,’ and not well knowing how to account for this

enormous abuse, should apply to a disciple of the modern school for some

explanation of it, he would probably be told with great gravity, _That

it was a necessary consequence of the progress of population, and the

superior power of that principle over the increase in the means of

subsistence_.—If Mr. Malthus, contented to follow in the track of common

sense, and not smitten with the love of dangerous novelty, had

endeavoured to trace the torrent of vice and dissipation which threatens

to bear down every principle of virtue and decency among us to the chief

sources pointed out by other writers, to the particular institutions of

society, to the prevalence of luxury, the inequality of conditions, the

facility of gratifying the passions from the power of offering

temptation, and inducements to accept it, the disproportion between the

passions excited in individuals, and their situation in life, to books,

to education, the progress of arts, the influence of neighbouring

example, &c. these are all causes, which, as they are arbitrary and

variable, seem as if they could be counteracted or modified by other

causes; they are the work of man, and what is the work of man it seems

in the power of man to confirm or alter. We see distinctly the source of

the grievance, and try to remedy it: hope remains, the will acts with

double energy, the spirit of virtue is not broken. Our vices grow out of

other vices, out of our own passions, prejudices, folly, and weakness:

there is nothing in this to make us proud of them, or to reconcile us to

them; even though we may despair, we are not confounded. We still have

the theory of virtue left: we are not obliged to give up the distinction

between good and evil even in imagination: there is some little good

which we may at least wish to do. Man in this case retains the character

of a free agent; he stands chargeable with his own conduct, and a sense

of the consequences of his own presumption or blindness may arouse in

him feelings that may in some measure counteract their worst effects; he

may regret what he cannot help: the life, the pulse, the spring of

morality is not dead in him; his moral sense is not quite extinguished.

But our author has chosen to stagger the minds of his readers by

representing vice and misery as the necessary consequences of an

abstract principle, of a fundamental law of our nature, on which nothing

can be effected by the human will. This principle follows us wherever we

go; if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there:

whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. O

rather for that warning voice, that once cried aloud, _Insensés qui vous

plaignez, sans cesse de la nature, apprenez que tous vos maux vous

viennent de vous!_ As however I deny the sufficiency of our author’s

all-pervading principle, I may be required to point out more

particularly what I conceive to be the real and determining causes of

the decay of manners. I do not know that I can mention any that do not

come under the heads already alluded to, but if I must give a short

answer, I should say,—Great towns, great schools, dress, and novels.

These things are not regulated exactly by the size of the earth, and yet

must be allowed to have some influence on manners. To instance only the

two last. Is it to be wondered at that a young raw ignorant girl, who is

sent up from the country as a milliner’s or mantua-maker’s apprentice,

and stowed into a room with eight or ten others, who snatch every moment

they can spare from caps and bonnets, and sit up half the night to read

all the novels they can get, and as soon they have finished one, send

for another, whose heart, in the course of half a year, has been pierced

through with twenty beaux on paper, who has been courted, seduced, run

away with, married and put to bed under all the fine names that the

imagination can invent to as many fine gentlemen, who has sighed and

wept with so many heroes and heroines that her tears and sighs have at

last caused in her a defluction of the brain, and a palpitation of the

heart at the sight of every man, whose fancy is love-sick, and her head

quite turned, should be unable to resist the first coxcomb of real flesh

and blood, who in shining boots and a velvet collar accosts her in the

shape of a lover, but who has no thoughts of marrying her, because if he

were to take this imprudent step, he must give up his shining boots and

velvet collar, and the respect they procure him in the world? Zaleucus

ordained that no woman should dress herself gorgeously, unless she was a

prostitute. If I were a law-giver, and chose to meddle in such matters,

I would ordain that no woman should expose her shape publicly, unless

she were a prostitute.—The female form is more proper for child-bearing,

than for public exhibition; this secret analogy, when coupled with

modesty and reserve, is however its greatest charm. The strange

fancy-dresses, the perverse disguises, the counterfeit shapes, the stiff

stays, and enormous hoops worn by the women in the time of the Spectator

gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. The greedy eye and rash hand

of licentiousness were repressed. The senses were never satisfied in an

instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling handkerchief,

and the desires might wander for ever round the circumference of a

quilted petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a damask

stomacher. There was room for years of patient perseverance, for a

thousand thoughts, fancies, conjectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There

seemed no end to difficulties and delays: to overcome so many obstacles

was the work of ages. A _wife_ had then some meaning in it: it was an

angel concealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. The transition

from a mistress in masquerade to a wife in wedding sheets was worth

venturing for: now it is nothing, and we hear no more of faithful

courtships, and romantic loves. A woman can be _but_ undressed.—The

young ladies we at present see with the thin muslin vest drawn tight

round the slender waist, and following with nice exactness the

undulations of the shape downwards, disclosing each full swell, each coy

recess, obtruding on the eye each opening charm, the play of the

muscles, the working of the thighs, and by the help of a walk, of which

every step seems a gird, and which keeps the limbs strained to the

utmost point, displaying all those graceful involutions of person, and

all those powers of fascinating motion, of which the female form is

susceptible—these moving pictures of lust and nakedness, against which

the greasy imaginations of grooms and porters may rub themselves,

running the gauntlet of the saucy looks and indecent sarcasms of the

boys in the street, staring at every ugly fellow, leering at every

handsome man, and throwing out a lure for every fool (true Spartan

girls, who if they were metamorphosed into any thing in the manner of

Ovid, it would certainly be into valerian!) are the very same, whose

mothers or grand-mothers buried themselves under a pile of clothes,

whose timid steps hardly touched the ground, whose eyes were constantly

averted from the rude gaze of the men, and who almost blushed at their

own shadows. ‘Of such we in romances read.’ It does not require any

great spirit of divination to perceive that this change in appearance

must imply some change in manners. Is this change then owing entirely to

the increased pressure of the principle of population, or have not

French fashions, French milliners, and French dancing-masters had some

hand in producing it?[24]—Mr. Malthus inveighs with great severity

against squalid poverty, and the vices produced by filth and rags. I

allow the justice of his remarks, and think that the condition of the

poor in this respect is one of the chief nuisances of society. After

giving the poor a scrubbing with a coarse towel in the manner he has

done, it would not have been amiss if he had taken a clean white

clerical pocket-handkerchief, and applied it to wipe off the rouge from

the cheeks of painted prostitution, or thrown it as a covering over the

polished neck and ivory shoulders of ladies of high quality. The bishop

of London would have praised the attempt. Mr. Malthus might have

distinguished between the involuntary rents, and the unlucky loop-holes

which sometimes appear in a poor girl’s petticoat, and the elegant

dishabille and studied nakedness of high life. The dirt that sticks to a

wench’s face in cleaning a saucepan is I think likely to have less

effect on the character than the red paste daubed on the cheeks before a

looking-glass, to give _animation_ to the eyes. The contempt which dirt

and poverty excite must destroy all moral sensibility. Must not the

glare of fashion and the perpetual intoxication of personal vanity have

the same effect? The poor grovel in disagreeable sensations, the rich

wanton in voluptuous ones. The passions are not more likely to be

inflamed by stale porter, the screams of a fiddle, and the clattering of

a hornpipe at a hop in St. Giles’s, than by the elegant liqueurs, the

soft sounds of the clarionet and hautboy, and the languishing movements

of walses, allemandes, and minuets _de la cour_ at a ball in St.

James’s. A fair, or an opera may equally turn the head of any silly girl

that goes to one. Of the two, a tune on the salt-box would be got over

sooner than Narcissus and the Graces. The tawdry prints to be seen in

garrets, and the ballads sung at the corners of streets do not much

improve the morals of the people: but I put it to the conscience of our

sentimental divine, whether the Wanton Wife of Bath, or the tall captain

with his arm round the chambermaid’s waist, or Jemmy Jessamy lolling on

the sofa with his mistress, may be expected to produce more accidents

than those luscious collections of the poets, or those grave

scripture-pieces, or classical _chef-d’œuvres_ of Venus and Adonis, of

Leda with her Swan, Nymphs, Fawns, and Satyrs, which gentlemen of

fortune keep in their houses for the instruction of their wives and

daughters. Mr. Malthus is convinced that no young woman brought up in

nastiness and vulgarity, however virtuous she may seem, can be good for

any thing at twenty: I confess I have the same cynical opinion of those,

who have the good fortune to be brought up in the obscene refinements of

fashionable life.

I never fell in love but once; and then it was with a girl who always

wore her handkerchief pinned tight round her neck, with a fair face,

gentle eyes, a soft smile, and cool auburn locks. I mention this,

because it may in some measure account for my temperate, tractable

notions of this passion, compared with Mr. Malthus’s. It was not a

raging heat, a fever in the veins: but it was like a vision, a dream,

like thoughts of childhood, an everlasting hope, a distant joy, a

heaven, a world that might be. The dream is still left, and sometimes

comes confusedly over me in solitude and silence, and mingles with the

softness of the sky, and veils my eyes from mortal grossness. After all,

Mr. Malthus may be right in his opinion of human nature. Though my

notions of love have been thus aerial and refined, I do not know that

this was any advantage to me, or that I might not have done better with

a few of our author’s ungovernable transports, and sensual oozings.

Perhaps the workings of the heart are best expressed by a gloating

countenance, by mawkish sentiments and lively gestures. Cupid often

perches on broad shoulders, or on the brawny calf of a leg, a settlement

is better than a love-letter, and in love not minds, but bodies and

fortunes meet. I have therefore half a mind to retract all that I have

said, and prove to Mr. Malthus that love is not even so intellectual a

passion as he sometimes admits it to be, but altogether gross and

corporal.

I have thus attempted to answer the different points of Mr. Malthus’s

argument, and give a truer account of the various principles that

actuate human nature. There is but one advantage that I can conceive of

as resulting from the admission of his mechanical theory on the subject,

which is that it would be the most effectual recipe for indifference

that has yet been found out. No one need give himself any farther

trouble about the progress of vice, or the extension of misery. The

office of moral censor, that troublesome, uneasy office which every one

is so ready to set up in his own breast, and which I verily believe is

the occasion of more unhappiness than any one cause else, would be at an

end. The professor’s chair of morality would become vacant, and no one

would have more cause than I to rejoice at the breaking up for the

holidays; for I have plagued myself a good deal about the distinctions

of right and wrong. The pilot might let go the helm, and leave the

vessel to drift carelessly before the stream. When we are once convinced

that the degree of virtue and happiness can no more be influenced by

human wisdom than the ebbing and flowing of the tide, it must be idle to

give ourselves any more concern about them. The wise man might then

enjoy an Epicurean languor and repose, without being conscious of the

neglect of duty. Mr. Malthus’s system is one, ‘in which the wicked cease

from troubling, and in which the weary are at rest.’ To persons of an

irritable and nervous disposition, who are fond of kicking against the

pricks, who have tasted of the bitterness of the knowledge of good and

evil, and to whom whatever is amiss in others sticks not merely like a

burr, but like a pitch-plaister, the advantage of such a system is

incalculable.—

Happy are they, who live in the dream of their own existence, and see

all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope,

not by knowledge; to whom the guiding-star of their youth still shines

from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They

have not been ‘hurt by the archers,’ nor has the iron entered their

souls. They live in the midst of arrows, and of death, unconscious of

harm. The evil thing comes not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass

unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. Their keen perceptions do not

catch at hidden mischiefs, nor cling to every folly. The example of vice

does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus.

Evil impressions fall off from them, like drops of water. The yoke of

life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them.

They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever about them.

EXTRACTS FROM THE ESSAY ON POPULATION

WITH A COMMENTARY, AND NOTES

I intended to have added another Letter on the principle of population

as affecting the laws of property, and the condition of the poor. But I

found it impossible to combat some of Mr. Malthus’s opinions without

bringing vouchers for them. I might otherwise seem to be combating the

chimeras of my own brain. There are some instances of perverse reasoning

so gross and mischievous, that without seeing the confidence with which

they are insisted on, it seems a waste of time to contradict them. The

reader may perhaps have had something of this feeling already. By

throwing the remainder of the work into the form of Extracts with notes

I shall at least avoid the imputation of ascribing to Mr. Malthus

singularities he never dreamt of, and have an opportunity of remarking

upon some incidental passages, which appeared to me liable to objection

in the perusal. My remarks will be confined almost entirely to the two

last books of the work.

‘M. Condorcet’s _Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progres de

l’esprit humain_, was written, it is said, under the pressure of that

cruel proscription which terminated in his death. If he had no hopes of

its being seen during his life, and of its interesting France in his

favour, it is a singular instance of the attachment of a man to

principles, which every day’s experience was, so fatally for himself,

contradicting. To see the human mind, in one of the most enlightened

nations of the world, debased by such a fermentation of disgusting

passions, of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge, ambition, madness, and

folly, as would have disgraced the most savage nations in the most

barbarous age, must have been such a tremendous shock to his ideas of

the necessary and inevitable progress of the human mind, that nothing

but the firmest conviction of the truth of his principles, in spite of

all appearances, could have withstood.’

Mr. Malthus in his pick-thank way, here takes occasion to sneer at

Condorcet for his attachment to principles, which, he asserts, every

day’s experience was contradicting. As this of mine is not a pick-thank

work, I must take the liberty of observing, as I have never read M.

Condorcet’s work, that if his ideas of the future progress of the human

mind were the same as those of other writers on the subject, that

debasement of character, and that mass of disgusting passions, which

developed themselves in the events to which Mr. Malthus here alludes,

were the strongest confirmation of the necessity of getting rid of those

institutions which had thus degraded the human character, and under

which such passions had been fostered: for to say that the progress of

the human mind, in spite of those institutions, was necessary and

inevitable, or that there were no such passions as fear, cruelty,

malice, revenge, &c. belonging to the character generated by the old

system in France (in which an immediate change could not be expected

without a miracle) would have been such a contradiction to common sense,

and to all their own favourite schemes of reform, as no madman in the

height of revolutionary madness was ever guilty of. All that could ever

be pretended by the advocates of reform was that there were capacities

for improvement in the mind, which had hitherto notwithstanding the

advantages of knowledge been thwarted by human institutions. The

contradiction rests therefore not with Condorcet, but with our author.

The same objection has been often made, and often refuted. But there are

some reasoners who care little how often a fallacy has been exposed, if

they know there are people who are still inclined to listen to it.

‘This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work

which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily wants, therefore,

that detail and application, which can alone prove the truth of any

theory.’ [This remark I cannot admit. I do not think for instance that

any detail or application is necessary to prove the truth of Mr.

Malthus’s general principle of the disproportion between the power of

increase in population, and in the productions of the earth, or to shew

the bad consequences of an unrestricted increase of population.] ‘A few

observations will be sufficient to shew how completely this theory is

contradicted, when it is applied to the real and not to an imaginary

state of things.’ [The _contre-sens_ implied in this expression is not a

slip of the pen, but a fixed principle in Mr. Malthus’s mind.] He has a

very satisfactory method of answering all theories relating to any

imaginary alterations or improvements in the condition of mankind, by

shewing what would be the consequences of a certain state of society, if

no such state of society really existed, but if every thing remained

just as it is at present. He thinks it sound sense and true philosophy

to judge of a theory which is confessedly imaginary or has never been

realized by comparing it ‘with the real and not with an imaginary state

of things.’ That is, he does not adopt the necessarian maxim that men

will be always the same while the circumstances continue, but he insists

upon it that they will be always the same, whether the circumstances are

the same or not. Some instances have already appeared of this in the

foregoing work. The following passage may serve as another instance.

After supposing Mr. Godwin’s system of equality to be realized to its

utmost extent, and the most perfect form of society established, he

exclaims, ‘this would indeed be a happy state; but that it is merely an

imaginary state with scarcely a feature near the _truth_, the reader, I

am afraid, is already too well convinced.’ Mr. Godwin himself was I

apprehend very well convinced that this imaginary state was very

different from the truth or from the present state of things, when he

wrote his book to shew how much better the one _would be_ than the other

_is_. He then goes on, ‘Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All

cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established

administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with

force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of

contention would be perpetual,’ &c. If there were no established

administration of property, while men continued as selfish as they are

at present, (which is I suppose what Mr. Malthus means by applying the

theory _to the real state of things_‘) the consequences here mentioned

would no doubt follow. But it is supposed that there is no established

administration of property, because the necessity for it has ceased or

because selfishness is not triumphant, but vanquished. This is the

supposition. Mr. Malthus however persists, that were there no

established administration of property, ‘every man would be obliged to

guard with force his little store since selfishness would still be as

triumphant as ever.’ This is contrary to all the received rules of

reasoning. He then proceeds to examine, how long Mr. Godwin’s theory if

once realized might be expected to last, and how soon the present vices

of men would discompose this _perfect_ form of society, concluding very

wisely that ‘a theory that will not admit of application cannot possibly

be just.’ True: if a man tells you that a triangle has certain

properties, he is bound to make good this theory with respect to a

triangle, but not with respect to a circle.—The outcry which Mr. Malthus

here makes about experience is without any meaning. It is evident that

we cannot make this word a rule in all cases whatever. For instance, if

a man who is in the habit of drinking a bottle of brandy every day of

his life and consequently enjoys but an indifferent state of health, is

advised by his physician to leave off this practice, and told that _on

this condition_ he may recover his health and appetite, it would not be

considered as a proof of any great wisdom in the man, if he were to

answer this reasoning of his physician by applying it to the real, and

not to an imaginary state of things, or by saying, ‘The consequences you

promise me from submitting to your regimen are indeed very desirable;

but I cannot expect any such consequences from it: I have always been in

very bad health from the habit I have constantly been in of drinking

brandy; and it would be contrary to the experience of my whole life to

suppose, that I should receive any benefit from leaving it off.’ In like

manner, I conceive that it is not from any great depth of philosophy,

but from the strength of his attachment to the good things of this life,

that Mr. Malthus makes so many ill-judged appeals to experience. He is

afraid of launching into the empty regions of abstraction, he stands

shivering on the brink; or if he ventures a little way, soon turns back

again, frightened out of his wits, and muttering something about

population. His imagination cannot sustain for a moment the idea of any

real improvement or elevation in the human character, but instantly

drops down into the filth of vice and misery, out of which it had just

crawled. His attempts at philosophy put me in mind of the exploits of

those citizens who set out on a Sunday morning to take an excursion into

the country, resolved to taste the fresh air, and not be confined for

ever to the same spot, but who get no farther than Paddington, White

Conduit-house, or Bagnigge-wells, unable to leave the smoke, the noise

and dust, to which they have so long been used! Mr. Malthus is a perfect

_cockney_ in matters of philosophy.

M. Condorcet, allowing that there must in all stages of society be a

number of individuals who have no other resource than their industry, or

that ‘there exists a necessary cause of inequality, of dependence and

even of misery,[25] which menaces without ceasing the most numerous and

active class of the community,’ proposes to establish a fund, which

should assure to the old an assistance, produced in part _by their own

former savings_, and partly by the savings of others, who die before

they reap the benefit of it; and that this fund might extend to women

and children, who had lost their husbands or fathers, and afford a

capital to young beginners, sufficient for the developement of their

industry. To those who have not fathomed all the depths and shoals of

the principle of population, this plan seems feasible enough. Mr.

Malthus’s cautious reserved humanity, his anxious concern about the

support of the aged, the infirm, the widow, and the orphan, his wish to

give every encouragement to industry, and above all, his regard for the

rights and independence of his fellows, lead him to see nothing but

difficulties and objections in the way of such a plan.

‘Such establishments may appear very promising upon paper; but when

applied to real life, they will be found to be absolutely nugatory. M.

Condorcet allows, that a class of people which maintains itself entirely

by industry is necessary to every state. Why does he allow this? No

other reason can well be assigned, than because he conceives, that the

labour necessary to procure subsistence for an extended population, will

not be performed without the goad of necessity. If by establishments,

upon the plans that have been mentioned, this spur to industry be

removed; if the idle and negligent be placed upon the same footing with

regard to their credit, and the future support of their wives and

families, as the active and industrious, can we expect to see men exert

that animated activity in bettering their condition, which now forms the

master-spring of publick prosperity. If an inquisition were to be

established to examine the claims of each individual, and to determine

whether he had, or had not, exerted himself to the utmost, and to grant

or refuse assistance accordingly, this would be little else than a

repetition upon a larger scale, of the English poor laws, and would be

completely destructive of the true principles of liberty and equality.’

This passage only shews the shyness of our author’s benevolence. He will

hear of no short-cuts or obvious expedients for bettering the condition

of the poor. All his benefits are extracted by the Cæsarean

operation.—In the first place, he contradicts himself. He first supposes

that labour cannot be performed without the _goad of necessity_, and

then affirms that it is _the prospect of bettering their condition_,

that makes men exert themselves, and forms the master-spring of public

prosperity. But why is it necessary that the idle and negligent should

be put upon the same footing with the industrious, with respect to their

credit, the support of their families, &c.? As to the first of these, it

is proposed to be only temporary, to serve as a beginning, and if a

proper use is not made of it, the goad of necessity, to which Mr.

Malthus is so ready to resort on all occasions, will soon begin to do

its office. As to the second object, the support of a surviving family,

in case of accidents, did Mr. Malthus never hear of any distress

produced in this way, but in consequence of the idleness and negligence

of the deceased? Is not a poor family necessarily reduced to distress by

the death of the husband, let his industry and sobriety have been never

so great, and even reduced to greater distress in proportion to his

industry, as they must miss his help the more? Besides, it is not likely

that the withholding this assistance from a man’s family after his death

will be any inducement to the idle and negligent to exert themselves,

when the sight of the actual distress in which their families are

involved by their ill conduct has no effect upon them. I see no

objection to proportioning the allowance to the old, or to those who

have had time to make a provision for themselves, to the contributions

they have really made to the fund in a given length of time. This would

be a sufficient test of the validity of their pretensions, as they could

not contribute largely, without proportionably straitening themselves,

and the idle and profligate are not very apt to part with their present

gains to provide for any speculative uncertainties or future difficulty.

(Mr. Malthus may measure the support allotted to their families in the

same way.) While the distinction of the idle and industrious continued,

and while it was necessary to encourage the one and discountenance the

other, I do not understand what objection there can be to this mode, or

how it would trench upon the true principles of liberty and equality.

True equality supposes equal merit and virtue. But Mr. Malthus is

alarmed at this scheme, because, he says, it is little else than a

repetition on a larger scale of the English poor laws. If the English

poor laws are formed upon this principle, I should, I confess, be very

sorry to see them abolished.

‘Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for a family, almost

every man would have one; and were the rising generation free from the

“killing frost” of misery, population must increase with unusual

rapidity.’

This is an utter falsification of the argument, as I have already shewn.

Every man could not be sure of a comfortable provision for a family,

unless this provision existed, and I see no reason why the rising

generation should not be free from the killing frost of misery, at least

while they can. To argue that our enlightened posterity will feel

‘secure that the general benevolence will supply every deficiency,’ is

to suppose them strangely unacquainted with the principles of Mr.

Malthus’s Essay.

‘The period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence

has long since arrived.’ p. 357.

This I must deny. That the period of the utmost degree of populousness

would have arrived long ago, if nothing had prevented it, I am very

ready to grant. But that it has ever actually arrived, is another

question. Because population would have arrived at its greatest possible

or desirable height long before our time, if it had not been kept back

by any artificial and arbitrary checks, is that any reason why it should

never attain that height, or should not now be suffered to go on, though

those checks have always operated to keep it back much more than was

necessary, viz. below the level not only of the possible, but of the

_actual_ means of subsistence or produce of the earth? As to the period

when the world is likely to maintain the greatest possible number of

inhabitants in the greatest possible comfort, I have no notion that it

will ever arrive at all. If however it should ever arrive, it must be in

consequence either of a gradual or immediate complete improvement in the

state of society. If this improvement is gradual, the increase in

population will be so too, and will not reach its farthest limit till a

considerably remote period; if the improvement is sudden and rapid,

still it must be some time before the operation of the new system of

things will have overcome all obstacles, and completely peopled the

earth. So that in either case the event seems a good way off. The danger

of arriving at this point does not therefore appear to be ‘immediate or

imminent,’ but doubtful and distant.

Mr. Malthus in his examination of Condorcet’s arguments, in favour of

the indefinite prolongation of human life, (one of those absurdities

against which no good reason can be given, but that it shocks all common

sense) shews considerable ingenuity, mixed up with a great deal of that

minute verbal logic, to which he seems to have accustomed his mind, and

which is perpetually leading him into erroneous methods of reasoning,

even when he happens to be right in his conclusions. As in the following

passages.

‘Variations from different causes are essentially distinct from a

regular and unretrograde increase. The average duration of human life

will, to a certain degree, vary, from healthy or unhealthy climates,

from wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious manners,

and other causes; but it may be fairly doubted, whether there has been

really the smallest perceptible advance in the natural duration of human

life, since first we had any authentic history of man. The prejudices of

all ages have, indeed, been directly contrary to this supposition.’

Now this statement is very unsatisfactory, to say the least. For the

only reason that can be given why the causes here mentioned, on which

Mr. M. allows that the duration of human life depends, have not produced

a regular and permanent effect _must be_, that they themselves have

neither been regular nor permanent. The mere fact, therefore, of the

variableness in the length of human life proves nothing but the

variableness of those moral and artificial causes, which are supposed to

have some influence on our physical constitution. But Condorcet supposes

a regular advance to be made in these causes, and that an indefinite

advance in some of them (as the knowledge of medicine for instance) is

probable, will hardly be disputed. The question (in this point of view)

of the necessary duration of human life is not properly a question of

fact, or history, but depends on a comparison of the present

circumstances of mankind with their past circumstances, and on the

probability that may thence appear of preventing or counteracting those

maladies and passions which are most unfavourable to long life. That our

reason may sometimes get the start of our experience is what no one can

deny. Thus when the art of printing was first discovered it required no

great stretch of thought to perceive that knowledge and learning would

soon become more generally diffused than they had hitherto been, though

till this event no perceptible or regular progress had ever been made.

Those who reason otherwise are a kind of stereographic reasoners who

take things in the lump without being able to analyse or connect their

different principles. Experience is but the alphabet of reason. With

respect to the general shortness of human life compared with what it was

in the first ages of mankind, this fact seems rather against Mr.

Malthus, for if there is no certain date, no settled period to human

life, beyond which it cannot hold out, but that it has varied from a

thousand to a hundred years, so far there is no reason why we should not

tread back our steps, or even go beyond the point from which we set out.

There is no fixed limit; the present length of human life is not

evidently a general law of nature. The mere naked fact of its never

exceeding a certain length at present is just as decisive against its

ever having been longer, as it is against its ever being longer in

future. Mr. Malthus argues about human life, as Hume argues about

miracles.

‘It will be said, perhaps, that the reason why plants and animals cannot

increase indefinitely in size, is, that they would fall by their own

weight. I answer, how do we know this but from experience? from

experience of the degree of strength with which these bodies are formed.

I know that a carnation, long before it reached the size of a cabbage,

would not be supported by its stalk; but I only know this from my

experience of the weakness, and want of tenacity in the materials of a

carnation stalk. There are many substances in nature, of the same size,

that would support as large a head as a cabbage.

‘The reasons of the mortality of plants are at present perfectly unknown

to us. No man can say why such a plant is annual, another biennial, and

another endures for ages. The whole affair in all these cases, in

plants, animals, and in the human race, is an affair of experience; and

I only conclude that man is mortal, because the invariable experience of

all ages has proved the mortality of those materials of which his

visible body is made.

‘What can we reason but from what we know.’

This is making use of words without ideas. It is endeavouring to

confound two things essentially distinct, because the same lax

expression may be applied to them both. It is an attempt to deprive men

of their understanding, and leave them nothing but the use of their

senses, by a trick of language. Does it follow because all our knowledge

may be traced in some way to something which may be called _experience_,

that all our conclusions are nothing but an affair of memory? Does Mr.

Malthus know of only one sort of experience? Is there not a blind and a

rational experience? Is it not one thing merely to know a fact, or a

number of facts, and another to know the _reason_ of them? Or if our

philosopher is determined to intrench himself behind a word, is there

not a knowledge founded on the experience of certain positive results,

(which often extends no further than those results) and a knowledge

founded on the experience of certain general principles or laws, to

which all particular effects are subject? Mr. Malthus seems to insinuate

that the knowledge of the general law or principle adds nothing to the

knowledge of the fact, because both are equally an affair of experience.

He might as well assert that a ligature of iron would not strengthen a

deal plank, because they are both held together by the same law of

cohesion. The fact expresses nothing more than the actual co-existence

of certain things in certain circumstances, and while all those

circumstances continue, no doubt the same consequences will follow. But

we know that they are hardly ever the same, and the question is, which

of them is necessary to produce the effect talked of. This the _reason_

points out, that is, it points out a relation between certain things,

which has been found to hold not merely in the given circumstances, but

in all others, which is properly the relation of cause and effect. Our

idea of cause and effect is not derived from our immediate but from our

_comparative_ experience: it is only by taking our experience to pieces,

by seeing what things are, or are not necessarily connected together in

different circumstances, that we learn to reason with clearness and

confidence on the succession of events.

The succession of events is not the same thing as the succession of

cause and effect. By assigning a reason for a thing, I mean then being

able to refer it to a general rule or principle collected from and

proved by an infinite number of collateral instances, and confirming the

particular fact or instance to which it is applied. It is drawing

together the different ramifications of our experience, and winding them

round a particular bundle of things, and tying them fast together. Thus

suppose we have never seen a carnation of the size of a cabbage: does it

follow that we never shall, or that there can be no such thing? We might

say, I know no _reason_ why a flower of a certain shape, colour, &c.

should not reach a certain size, but that it has never been so within my

knowledge. This might however be owing to the soil, culture, or a

thousand circumstances, which are not invariable.—But the moment the

reason is given (supposing it to be a good one) namely, the connection

between the contexture and weight, (though this reason is also derived

indirectly from the general fund of our experience) there is an end at

once of the question. To suppose a flower to grow to a greater height

than it could support from the slenderness of the stalk would be to

suppose what never happened not only with respect to that particular

flower, the carnation, but with respect to any other flower, or plant,

or animal, or any other body whatever. We know that climate has such an

effect that what are plants with us, in the tropical climates become

large trees: but the necessary proportion between the size or weight of

the plant, and the strength of the stalk that is to support it, is what

no change of soil or climate can supersede, unless we could supersede

the law of gravitation itself. The mere experimental or historical proof

is here then buttressed up by the general rule, or reason of the

thing.—I have always seen a stone fall to the ground; I remember a house

always to have stood where it does; a hill has never stirred from the

place where I first saw it. Is the inference to be drawn from these

different cases equally certain? Am I to conclude that the house will

last as long as the mountain, because I have the same positive evidence

of their permanence? No: because though I have never seen any alteration

in that particular house, I have seen other houses pulled down and built

up; and besides, from the size of the objects, the shape and nature of

the materials, I know that one of them may be very easily destroyed,

whereas nothing but some great convulsion in nature is ever likely to

destroy the other or remove it from its place. Our particular experience

is only to be depended on, as it is explained and confirmed by analogy

to other cases, viz. by a number of other facts of the same kind, or by

general observation. Secondly, the aggregate of our experience with

respect to any given class of events is constantly over-ruled by the

_reason of the case_, viz. by our knowledge of cause and effect, by the

intelligible, explicit connections of things, and by considering whether

the principles concerned in the production of a series of events,

(forming a body of facts, or the concrete mass of our experience) are

resolvable into a simple law of nature operating universally,

unchangeably, without ever being suspended for a moment, (as for

instance, the law of gravitation which holds equally of all bodies in

all cases, and can never be separated from our reasonings upon them) or

whether the event has been owing to a combination of mixed causes, which

do not always act alike and with equal force, or the effect of which

depends upon circumstances, which we know may be altered, (as in the

case of soils, climates, methods of culture,[26] &c. to return to the

former example). Suppose a rock to have stood for ages on the summit of

a mountain. Am I sure that it will stand there always? Yes, if nothing

happens to prevent it. But can I be sure that nothing will ever remove

it, because nothing has ever done so hitherto? On the contrary, I know

that if a man points a cannon against it, it will be shattered to pieces

in an instant, though it has stood there for ages, and though there is

not at present the least appearance of a change in it. Here then my

experience is of no avail against my reason. In one sense of the word,

it is all thrown away, and goes for nothing. To judge rationally, I must

take other circumstances into the account, the effects of gunpowder, &c.

The resistance made by the rock will depend upon its hardness, not upon

the length of time it had stood there. Our experience then is not one

thing, or any number of things, taken absolutely or blindly by

themselves, but a vast collection of facts, and what is of infinitely

more importance, of rules, founded upon those facts, bearing one upon

another, and perpetually modified by circumstances. It is not upon any

single fact or class of facts, or on any single rule, but on the

combination of all these, and the manner in which they balance and

control one another, that our decisions must ultimately rest. It is from

this rational and abstracted experience that we obtain any certain

results, and infer from the altered relation of causes and events, that

things will happen which never happened before. The future is contained

in the past, only as it grows out of the same powers in nature, but

acting in different situations, and producing different practical

results by invariable laws. To apply all this to the question. If it is

allowed that the improvements in physic have an influence on the

duration of human life, and that these improvements may go on

indefinitely, I do not think Mr. Malthus’s answer a conclusive one that

no considerable progress will ever be made in this respect, because none

has hitherto been made. If the improvements in science have not hitherto

been regular and permanent, it cannot be expected that any advantages

depending on them should have been so: nor does the past history of

mankind in this instance furnish a rule for our future conjectures,

inasmuch as in all that relates to the permanence and general diffusion

of knowledge, a new turn has been given to the question (as before

observed) by the invention of printing. This single circumstance, which

was matter of mere accident, may be said in many respects to have given

a new aspect to human affairs; to say that it has not yet produced the

effects predicted from it, when it has had no time to produce them, is

like saying, that the repeated blows of a battering-ram will not break

down a stone-wall, because for the two or three first blows it does not

begin to move. The true question is, whether the cause is adequate to

the effect ascribed to it, that is, whether its operation is of a

sufficiently general and powerful nature to produce a correspondent

general change in the circumstances of mankind. I think it will hardly

be denied that printing may be applied with great success as an

instrument for the propagation of vice: may it not then be made use of

to give currency to the principles of virtue? At any rate, to deny that

it is a means of diffusing and embodying knowledge is to deny that such

a contrivance exists at all, or that books will be more generally read,

or less liable to be lost from the facility with which they are

multiplied. While therefore Mr. Malthus allows certain moral habits, and

the state of physical knowledge in a great measure to determine the

length of human life, he cannot object on any allowed principles of

philosophy to M. Condorcet’s employing these causes as intermediate

links in a chain of argument to establish the probability of the gradual

approach of mankind—to a state of immortality. The error does not lie in

M. Condorcet’s general principles of reasoning, but in the wrong

application of them; though I do not know that I could detect the error

better than Mr. Malthus has done. What I have endeavoured to shew in

these hasty remarks is that the admission of the rule laid down by our

author, that in our calculations of the future, we are to attend to

nothing but the general state of the fact hitherto, without giving any

weight to the actual change of collateral circumstances, or the

existence of any new cause which may influence the state of that fact,

would overturn every principle, not only of sound philosophy, but of the

most obvious common sense.[27] I dissent equally from M. Condorcet’s

paradoxical speculations and from Mr. Malthus’s paradoxical answers to

them. It would be unfair not to add that Mr. Malthus has made one good

distinction on the subject, between an unlimited and an indefinite

improvement. It is the old argument of the Heap, and is here stated with

considerable effect, and novelty of appearance. The conclusion of Mr.

Malthus’s argument on this idle question is a sensible and pleasant

account of the matter. After all, I do not quite dislike a man who

quotes Bickerstaff so well.

‘It does not, however, by any means, seem impossible, that by an

attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to that

among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect could be

communicated may be a matter of doubt: but size, strength, beauty,

complexion, and perhaps even longevity, are in a degree transmissible.

The error does not seem to lie, in supposing a small degree of

improvement possible, but in not discriminating between a small

improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and an improvement really

unlimited. As the human race, however, could not be improved in this

way, without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not

probable, that an attention to breed should ever become general; indeed,

I know of no well-directed attempts of the kind, except in the ancient

family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in

whitening the skins, and increasing the height of their race by prudent

marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud the

milk-maid, by which some very capital defects in the constitutions of

the family were corrected.’

Mr. Malthus afterwards adds, ‘When paradoxes of this kind are advanced

by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to convince them of

their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they conceive to be a mark of

the reach and size of their own understandings, of the extent and

comprehensiveness of their views; they will look upon this neglect

merely as an indication of poverty, and narrowness, in the mental

exertions of their contemporaries; and only think, that the world is not

yet prepared to receive their sublime truths.’—This is said _bitingly_

enough. For my own part, I conceive that the world is neither prepared

to receive, nor reject, nor answer them, nor decide any thing about them

but that they are contrary to all our notions of things, which, till we

know more about the matter, is perhaps a sufficient answer.

‘Mr. Godwin at the conclusion of the third chapter of his eighth book,

speaking of population, says, “There is a principle in human society, by

which population is perpetually kept down to the level of the means of

subsistence. Thus, among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we

never find, through the lapse of ages, that population has so increased

as to render necessary the cultivation of the earth.” This principle,

which Mr. Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and occult cause, and

which he does not attempt to investigate, has appeared to be the

grinding law of necessity—misery, and the fear of misery.’

There is a want of clearness here. The cause which Mr. Malthus thus

explains so accurately has still something dark and mysterious about it.

With respect to the savage tribes Mr. Malthus states in another place,

that it is not owing to the backwardness of population that agriculture

has never become necessary, but to the want of agriculture that

population has never increased among them. The passage is worth quoting.

‘It is not, therefore,’ he says, ‘as Lord Kaimes imagines, that the

American tribes have never increased sufficiently to render the pastoral

or agricultural state necessary to them; but, from some cause or other,’

[Mr. Malthus also deals in occult causes] ‘they have not adopted in any

great degree these more plentiful modes of procuring subsistence, and

therefore, cannot have increased so as to have become populous. If

hunger alone could have prompted the savage tribes of America to such a

change in their habits, I do not conceive that there would have been a

single nation of hunters and fishers remaining; but it is evident, that

some fortunate train of circumstances, in addition to this stimulus, is

necessary for this purpose; and it is undoubtedly probable, that these

arts of obtaining food, will be first invented and improved in those

spots that are best suited to them, and where the natural fertility of

the situation,’ [Is not the soil of America sufficiently fertile?] ‘by

allowing a greater number of people to subsist together, would give the

fairest chance to the inventive powers of the human mind.’—Here then we

see ‘the grinding law of necessity’ converted into a ‘fortunate train of

circumstances,’ so that we have a fact arising from a _necessary cause_,

and that necessary cause depending on an _accident_. The population is

kept down to the level of the means of subsistence, but not to _what it

is_, by the law of necessity; since there are ways and means of raising

that level, and the population along with it. Notwithstanding all the

misery, and all the fear of misery, which Mr. Malthus describes as thus

operating to keep population down to its proper level, he is altogether

unwilling to lighten their pressure, or to extend the benefits of that

fortunate train of circumstances and of those more plentiful modes of

obtaining food beyond their present necessary limits. Nothing can exceed

his jealousy on this point. He is apprehensive lest some speculative

philosopher should take it into his head ‘to exterminate the inhabitants

of the greatest part of Asia and Africa’ on a principle of humanity. He

proposes rather ‘to civilize and direct the industry of the various

tribes of Tartars and Negroes, as a work of considerable time, and as

having little chance of success.’ He looks with an enlightened concern

at the encroachments daily made by the thriving population of the

colonies on the deserts and uncultivated plains of North America,

grieving to see the few scattered inhabitants driven ‘from their

assigned and native dwelling-place,’ and foreseeing that by this means

the whole population of that vast continent will be some time or other

completely choaked up! It is, I know, a painful object to Mr. Malthus (I

cannot tell how it happens) to see plenty, comfort, civilisation and

numerous swarms of people succeed to want, ignorance, famine, misery,

and desolation. Those who are the well-wishers of the happiness of

mankind (among which number I reckon Mr. Malthus one) are always

diverted from their projects by their own delicacy and scruples. Those

who wish to enslave or destroy them never boggle at difficulties, or

stand upon ceremony!

Mr. Malthus says that the principle, by which population is perpetually

kept down to a certain level is the grinding law of necessity—misery and

the fear of misery. This may be true of the savage tribes there spoken

of, but if he means to apply it generally, ‘it is not in any degree near

the truth.’ At this rate, all those who do not formally set about

propagating their species ought to be restrained by want or the fear of

it. Is this the fact? Misery or the fear of misery may be the check to

population among the poor, but it cannot be the check to it among the

rich. Yet we do not find that the rich, any more than the poor,

regularly marry and get children. If this were the case, the rich would

long ago have multiplied themselves into beggars. They would all have

descendants, and those descendants would have others, till the world

would not have room for such a number of poor gentlemen. All their

wealth would be turned into rags, and they would be glad of a crust of

bread. The world would be one great work-house.[28] There must therefore

be some other principle which checks population among the higher

classes, and makes them stop short within many degrees of actual

poverty, besides ‘misery and the fear of misery.’ They do not even come

within sight of misery: the fact is that they are as unwilling to

descend from the highest pitch of luxury as the poor are to sink into

the lowest state of want.—Mr. Malthus by asserting in this careless

manner that population can only be checked by misery or the fear of

misery, gains a main point. He has always a certain quantity of misery

_in bank_, as you must put so much salt in your porridge, and so many

poor devils standing on the brink of wretchedness, as a sort of

out-guard or forlorn hope, to ward off the evils of population from the

society at large. Thus the enemy is sure to be defeated, before it can

make any impression on the body of the community. This would be very

well if we had to deal with an external, and not with an internal enemy.

But is it the poor then only, who are subject to this disease of

population? Are the rich quite proof against the evils of this

all-pervading principle, this inevitable law of nature? If the account

which Mr. Malthus gives of that principle were true, its ravages could

no more be checked by devoting a certain class of the community to glut

‘its ravenous maw,’ than you could keep the plague out of a house by

placing some one at the door to catch it. Either misery and the dread of

misery are not absolutely necessary to keep population within due

bounds, or nothing short of the general spread of misery and poverty

through the whole community could save us from it. Mr. Malthus tries to

shut the gates of mercy on mankind by an ill-natured manœuvre! From the

little trouble our author gives himself about the application of his

arithmetical and geometrical ratios to the rich, and his confidence in

the method of inoculating the poor only by way of prevention, one would

suppose that the former had no concern in the affair: that ‘they neither

marry nor are given in marriage’; but leaving the vulgar business of

procreation to their inferiors, only look on to see that they do not

overstock the world. Why no, says Mr. Malthus, I have always insisted on

_vice_ as one of the necessary checks to population; and though in the

upper ranks of life, the restraints on marriage cannot be said to be

imposed by misery or the fear of misery, yet it cannot be denied that

these restraints lead to a great deal of vice and profligacy, which

answer the purpose just as well.—There is one merit I shall not deny to

Mr. Malthus, which is, that he has adapted his remedies with great skill

and judgment to the different tempers, habits, and circumstances of his

patients. In his division of the evils of human life, he has allotted to

the poor _all_ the misery, and to the rich _as much vice as they

please_! These last will I daresay be very well satisfied with this

distribution.—These remarks sufficiently shew that we cannot apologize

for all the misery there is in the world by saying, that nothing else

can put a stop to the evils of population; nor for all the vice, by

saying that it is the alternative of misery. It cannot be pretended,

that no one would ever indulge in vicious gratifications, but from the

apprehension of reducing himself to want by having a family.—‘But he

cannot maintain them in a certain style.’—True: vice is then a very

convenient auxiliary to pride, vanity, luxury, artificial distinctions,

&c. but it is not a resource against want. I once knew an instance of a

gentleman and lady who had a very romantic passion for each other, but

who could not afford to marry because they could only muster seven

thousand pounds between them. Were they not to be pitied? What could

they do in this case? Why, the lady no doubt would behave with all the

wonted fortitude of her sex on the occasion: but the poor man must

certainly be driven into vicious courses. Oh! no: I had forgot he was a

clergyman; and his cloth would not admit of any such thing. Vice does

not therefore seem to be _always_ a necessary consequence of the

obstacles to marriage. Moral restraint is always practicable, where the

opinion of the world renders it necessary. At all events, I conceive

that either one or the other of Mr. Malthus’s remedies may be dispensed

with: they are not _both_ necessary. By his own account, (as formerly

seen) extreme poverty is a very ineffectual bar to population; and as to

vice, if it could be administered in doses, proportioned to the

occasion, so much and no more, it might be an excellent cure; but the

misfortune is, that when it once begins, there is no end of it. To

change my metaphor, it takes the bit in its mouth, and sets off at a

glorious rate, without the least spur from necessity, always keeping as

much a-head of the occasion as Mr. Malthus’s geometrical series keeps

a-head of his arithmetical one. Some persons may perhaps argue, that

there is a natural connection between vice and misery, inasmuch as

without the temptation of want among the poor, the vices of the rich

would lack proper objects to exercise themselves upon: so that, there

being no one to offer temptation to, and no one having any very great

temptations to offer, people would be forced to marry among their

_equals_, unless the trifling consideration of not being able to provide

immediately for a large family should induce them to moderate their

passions for a while. This is an argument which I shall not controvert:

the disturbing that beautiful harmony and dependence which at present

subsists between vice and misery would certainly lead us back in a great

measure to all the evils which Mr. Malthus anticipates as arising out of

a state of excessive virtue and happiness, and the most perfect form of

society.

I shall here quote at large Mr. Malthus’s account of the origin of the

distinctions of property as necessarily arising from the pressure of

population on the means of subsistence, and from that principle solely.

I shall mark what I think the most noticeable parts in italics, and make

some observations at the end.

‘It may be curious to observe in the case that we have been supposing,

how some of the principal laws, which at present govern civilized

society, would be successively dictated by the most imperious necessity.

As man, according to Mr. Godwin, is the creature of the impressions to

which he is subject, the goadings of want could not continue long before

some violations of public or private stock would necessarily take place.

As these violations increased in number and extent, _the more active and

comprehensive intellects of the society would soon perceive_, that while

population was fast increasing, the yearly produce of the country would

shortly begin to diminish. The urgency of the case would suggest the

necessity of some immediate measures being taken for the general safety.

Some kind of convention would then be called, and the dangerous

situation of the country stated in the strongest terms. _It would be

observed, that while they lived in the midst of plenty it was of little

consequence who laboured the least, or who possessed the least, as every

man was perfectly willing and ready to supply the wants of his

neighbour. But that the question was no longer whether one man should

give to another that which he did not use himself; but whether he should

give to his neighbour the food which was absolutely necessary to his own

existence. It would be represented that the number of those who were in

want very greatly exceeded the number and means of those who should

supply them_; that these pressing wants, which from the state of the

produce of the country, could not all be gratified, had occasioned some

flagrant violations of justice; that these violations had already

checked the increase of food, and would, if they were not by some means

or other prevented, throw the whole community into confusion: that

imperious necessity seemed to dictate, that a yearly increase of produce

should, if possible, be obtained at all events; that in order to effect

this first great and indispensable purpose it would be advisable to make

a more complete division of land, and to secure every man’s property

against violation by the most powerful sanctions.

‘It might be urged perhaps, by some objectors, that as the fertility of

the land increased, and various accidents occurred, the shares of some

men might be much more than sufficient for their support; and that when

the reign of self-love was once established, _they would not distribute

their surplus produce without some compensation in return_. It would be

observed in answer, that this was an inconvenience greatly to be

lamented; but that it was an evil which would bear no comparison to the

black train of distresses which would inevitably be occasioned by the

insecurity of property; _that the quantity of food which one man could

consume, was necessarily limited by the narrow capacity of the human

stomach; that it was not certainly probable that he should throw away

the rest; and if he exchanged his surplus produce for the labour of

others, this would be better than that these others should absolutely

starve._

‘It seems highly probable therefore, that an administration of property

_not very different from that which prevails in civilized states at

present_ would be established as the best though inadequate remedy for

the evils which were pressing on the society.

‘The next subject which would come under discussion, intimately

connected with the preceding, is the commerce of the sexes. It would be

urged by those who had turned their attention to the _true cause of the

difficulties under which the community laboured, that while every man

felt secure that all his children would be well provided for by general

benevolence, the powers of the earth would be absolutely inadequate to

produce food for the population which would inevitably ensue_; that even

if the whole attention and labour of the society were directed to this

sole point, and if by the most perfect security of property, and every

other encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible

increase of produce were yearly obtained; yet still the increase of food

would by no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase of

population; that some check to population therefore was imperiously

called for; that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be to make

every man provide for his own children; that this would operate in some

respect as a measure and a guide in the increase of population, as it

might be expected that no man would bring beings into the world for whom

he could not find the means of support; that where this notwithstanding

was the case, it seemed necessary for the example of others, that the

disgrace and inconvenience attending such a conduct should fall upon

that individual who had thus inconsiderately plunged himself and his

innocent children into want and misery.

‘The institution of marriage, or at least of some express or implied

obligation on every man to support his own children, seems to be the

natural result of these reasonings in a community under the difficulties

that we have supposed.

‘When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property,

and the institution of marriage were once established, inequality of

conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were born after the

division of property would come _into a world already possessed_. If

their parents from having too large a family were unable to give them

sufficient for their support, what could they do in a world where every

thing was appropriated? We have seen the fatal effects that would result

to society if every man had a _valid claim to an equal share of the

produce of the earth._ The members of a family which was grown too large

for the original division of land appropriated to it, _could not then

demand a part of the surplus produce of others as a debt of justice. It

has appeared that from the inevitable laws of human nature some human

beings will be exposed to want. These are the unhappy persons who in the

great lottery of life have drawn a blank. The number of these persons

would soon exceed the ability of the surplus produce to supply. Moral

merit is a very difficult criterion except in extreme cases. The owners

of surplus produce would in general seek some more obvious mark of

distinction; and it seems to be both natural and just, that except upon

particular occasions their choice should fall upon those who were able,

and professed themselves willing to exert their strength in procuring a

further surplus produce, which would at once benefit the community, and

enable the proprietors to afford assistance to greater numbers. All who

were in want of food would be urged by imperious necessity to offer

their labour in exchange for this article, so absolutely necessary to

existence. The fund appropriated to the maintenance of labour would be

the aggregate quantity of food possessed by the owners of land beyond

their own consumption. When the demands upon this fund were great and

numerous it would naturally be divided into very small shares. Labour

would be ill paid. Men would offer to work for a bare subsistence; and

the rearing of families would be checked by sickness and misery. On the

contrary, when this fund was increasing fast; when it was great in

proportion to the number of claimants, it would be divided in much

larger shares. No man would exchange his labour without receiving an

ample quantity of food in return. Labourers would live in ease and

comfort, and would consequently be able to rear a numerous and vigorous

offspring._

‘_On the state of this fund the happiness or the degree of misery,

prevailing among the lower classes of people in every known state, at

present chiefly depends; and on this happiness or degree of misery

depends principally the increase, stationariness, or decrease of

population._

‘_And thus it appears, that a society constituted according to the most

beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its

moving principle instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition

in all its members corrected by reason, not force, would from the

inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man,

or of human institutions, degenerate in a very short period into a

society constructed upon a plan not essentially different from that

which prevails in every known state at present; a society divided into a

class of proprietors and a class of labourers, and with self-love for

the mainspring of the great machine_; we may, therefore, venture to

pronounce with certainty, that if Mr. Godwin’s system of society were

established in its utmost perfection, instead of myriads of centuries,

not thirty years could elapse before its utter destruction from the

simple principle of population.’

Not to insist on the absurdity, with which Mr. Malthus seems to be

enamoured, of believing that the change here predicted would be the

consequence of the inevitable laws of nature, not of any inherent

depravity in the human mind, when it is evident that the whole mischief

originates in the folly and headstrong passions of the individuals

composing this extraordinary society, all the members of which are

actuated by the purest motives of reason and virtue, I shall at once

suppose a state of society not indeed perfect, but equal, and with

self-love, and a little common sense, instead of benevolence and perfect

wisdom, for its moving principles; and see whether it would not be

possible for such a state of practical equality, admitting neither

poverty nor riches, to last more than ‘thirty years, before its _utter

destruction from the simple principle of population_.’ The question is,

if I understand it rightly, how that principle _alone_ (I do not enter

into the general structure, foundations, or purposes of civil society, I

propose to examine the question only as a branch of political economy,

or as it relates to the physical sustenance of mankind, which is the

point of view in which Mr. Malthus has treated it) how I say that

principle imperiously requires, that there should be one class of the

community, ready to perish of want except as they are kept from it by

severe and unremitting exertion, and another class living in ease and

luxury for no other purpose than to keep the good things of this life

from the first class, because if they were admitted to a share of them

they would be immediately subjected to greater want and hardships than

ever. It is to be remembered that Mr. Malthus here pretends to bring

forward a new theory of property; to have added the key-stone to the

arch of political society, which, he says, was in danger of falling

without it; to enforce the rights of the rich, and set aside the claims

of the poor as false and unfounded; and by shewing how the distinctions

of property are immediately connected with the physical nature and very

existence of mankind in a way that had not been supposed before, to

point out the necessity of arming the law with new rigour, and steeling

the heart with fresh obduracy to second the decisions of his pragmatical

philosophy. The laws of England recognize the right of the poor man to

live by his labour; Mr. Malthus denies this right, and holds it up to

ridicule. The question is, which of them we shall believe. I shall

therefore examine the subject freely, having so good an authority on my

side.

All that I can find Mr. Malthus has discovered is, that it would be

necessary in the progress of society, in order to stave off the evils of

population, to make a regulation, that every man should be obliged to

work for a subsistence, and to provide for his own children. A great

matter truly! But having allowed to Mr. Malthus that these two

regulations would be _necessary_ in the common course of things, I

cannot at the same time help thinking that they would also be

_sufficient_—to avert the approach of famine, which is the point at

issue. I can easily understand if every man had a valid claim to an

equal share of the produce of the earth, that this abstract unqualified

right would lead to great inconveniences—but not when that abstract

right is clogged with the condition, that he should work for his share

of it. I can also admit that I can have no claim to the surplus produce

of another without some compensation in return. This would certainly be

hard. But it does not appear (upon the face of the argument) how I

should therefore have no claim to the produce of my own industry; or how

any other person has a right to force me to work for him without making

me what compensation I think fit. _He_ has a right to his estate, _I_

have a right to my labour. As to any produce, whether surplus or not,

which he may raise from it, he has a right to keep it to himself; as to

that which I raise for him, it seems to be a subject of voluntary

agreement. Again, if a man who is as industrious as myself, and equally

reaps the benefit of his industry chuses to have the additional solace

of a wife and family, as he has all the _fun_, I see no reason why he

should not have all the trouble; it is neither fair nor equal that I

should make a drudge of myself, or be put to inconvenience for the sake

of his amusements. Let us see then how the argument stands in this stage

of it. The reason which appeared for not allowing to every man a valid

claim to an equal share of the produce of the earth was, that the

admission of such a claim would only be an excuse for idleness. The

extravagant, the worthless, and indolent would thus prey upon the honest

and laborious part of the community. (We are supposing a case where

every evil disposition and original depravity had _not_ been completely

eradicated by reason and philosophy.) Even if no such characters

existed, they would hardly fail to be produced by having such fine

encouragement given them. On the other hand, if every one was at liberty

to saddle his neighbour or the community with as many children as he

pleased, there would either be no sufficient check to the inordinate

increase of population, or at least any one person who got the start in

the race of matrimony would have it in his power to deprive the others

of their right to the surplus produce of their labour by claiming it for

his family. It is necessary then to prevent the imposition of any one’s

fastening himself and children on another for support, that there should

be a certain _appropriation of the common stock_; that is, that each

man’s claim upon it should be in proportion to the share he had in

increasing it. The next consideration is whether with this hold upon

him, you would not be able to make him effectually exert himself, and at

the same time prevent him from having more children than he could

maintain, the same all-powerful stimulus of self-interest equally

counteracting his indolence and his indiscretion. Mr. Malthus says that

the true cause of the difficulties under which the community would

labour, would be the excessive tendency to population, arising from the

security felt by every man that his children would be well provided for

by the general benevolence: by taking away this security then, and

imposing the task of maintaining them upon himself, you remove the only

cause of the unavoidable tendency of population to excess, and of all

the confusion that would ensue, by making his selfishness and his

indolence operate as direct checks on his sensual propensities. He would

be tied to his good behaviour as effectually as a country fellow is at

present by being bound in a penalty of twenty pounds to the parish for

every bastard child that he gets. If every man’s earnings were in

proportion to his exertions, if his share of the necessaries, the

comforts, or even the superfluities of life were derived from the

produce of his own toil, or ingenuity, or determined by equitable

_compensation_, I cannot conceive how there could be any greater

security for regularity of conduct and a general spirit of industry in

the several members of the community, as far as was consistent with

health and the real enjoyment of life. If these principles are not

sufficient to ensure the good order of society in such circumstances, I

should like to know what are the principles by which it is enforced at

present. They are nothing more than the regular connection between

industry and its reward, and the additional charge or labour to which a

man necessarily subjects himself by being encumbered with a family. The

only difference is in the proportion between the reward, and the

exertion, or the rate at which the payment of labour is fixed. So far

then we see no very pressing symptoms of the dissolution of the society,

or of any violent departure from this system of decent equality, from

the sole principle of population. Yet we have not hitherto got (in the

regular course of the argument) so far as the distinction of a class of

labourers, and a class of proprietors. It may be urged perhaps that

nothing but extreme want or misery can furnish a stimulus sufficiently

strong to produce ‘the labour necessary for the support of an extended

population,’ or counteract the principle of population. But Mr. Malthus

himself admits that ‘the most constant and best directed efforts of

industry are to be found among a class of people above the class of the

wretchedly poor,’ among those who have something to lose, and something

to gain, and who, happen what will, cannot be worse off than they are.

He also admits that it is among this middling class of people, that we

are to look for most instances of self-denial, prudence, and a competent

resistance to the principle of population. I do not therefore understand

either the weight or consistency of the charge which he brings against

Paine of having fallen into the most fundamental errors respecting the

principles of government by confounding the affairs of Europe with those

of America. If the people in America are not forced to labour (and there

are no people more industrious) by extreme poverty, if they are not

forced to be prudent (and their prudence is I believe equal to their

industry) by the scantiness of the soil, or the unequal distribution of

its produce, no matter whether the state is old or new, whether the

population is increasing or stationary, the example proves equally in

all cases that wretchedness is not the _sine qua non_ of industry, and

that the way to hinder people from taking _desperate_ steps is not to

involve them in despair. The current of our daily life, the springs of

our activity or fortitude, may be supplied as well from hope as fear,

from ‘cheerful and confident thoughts’ as the apparition of famine

stalking just behind us. The merchant attends to his business, settles

his accounts, and answers his correspondents as diligently and

punctually as the shop-keeper. The shop-keeper minds his customers, and

puffs off his goods, tells more lies, is a greater drudge, and gets less

for his pains than the merchant. The shoeblack piques himself upon

giving the last polish to a gentleman’s shoes, and gets a penny for his

trouble. In all these cases, it is not strictly the proportion between

the exertion and the object, neither hope nor fear in the abstract, that

determines the degree of our exertions, but the balance of our hopes and

fears, the _difference_ that it will make to us in our situation whether

we exert ourselves to the utmost or not, and the impossibility of

turning our labour to any better account that habitually regulates our

conduct.[29] We all do the best for ourselves that we can. This is at

least a general rule.—But let us suppose, though I do not think Mr.

Malthus has thrown any new or striking light on the way, in which such a

change would be brought about, that it is found necessary to make a

regular division of the land, and that a class of proprietors and a

class of labourers is consequently established. Let us see in this case

what proportion of the surplus produce of the ground might be supposed

to fall to the share of the labourer, or whether if any thing more was

allowed him than what was just enough to keep him alive and enable him

to stagger through the tasks of the day, both rich and poor (but

especially the latter) would not suffer grievously from all such impious

and inhuman attempts, as our author afterwards calls them, to reverse

the laws of nature, or decrees of Providence (which you please) ‘by

which some human beings are inevitably exposed to want.’ I shall argue

the question solely on the ground stated by Mr. Malthus. I shall suppose

that every proprietor has an absolute right to his property, and to the

_whole_ produce of his own exertions. There are two other questions to

be considered, namely, whether the right to the labour of others and to

the produce of their labour attaches to the possession of the soil,

secondly, if that is not the case, to what proportion of the produce of

the ground the labourer is naturally entitled by his exertions. Mr.

Malthus infers that from the establishment of the two fundamental laws,

security of property, and the institution of marriage, inequality of

conditions must necessarily follow. I confess I do not see this

necessary consequence. I would ask, upon what plea Mr. Malthus succeeded

in establishing these two fundamental laws, but because they were

necessary and competent to stimulate the exertions and restrain the

passions of the community at large, that is, to maintain a general

practical equality, to regulate each person’s indulgences according to

their industry, to lay an even tax upon every man, and thus prevent the

return of fraud, violence, confusion, want and misery. Grant that the

most fatal effects would result to society, if every man had a valid

claim to _an equal share_ of the produce of the earth; it by no means

follows that the same fatal effects would result to society from

allowing to every man a valid claim to a share of the produce of the

earth _proportioned_ to his labour. Yet I doubt whether any great

inequality could subsist, while each man had this valid claim. It is one

thing to have a right to the produce of your own exertions, and another

to have a right to the produce of the earth, that is, of the labour of

others. It is so far from being fair to apply the same reasoning to

these two things, that the evils which would be the necessary

consequences of the one, cannot possibly result from the other. The one

is a direct contradiction to the other. It is on this distinction in

fact, that all property and all society is originally founded. By making

it equally the interest of each individual to exert himself, you in all

probability secure an equal degree of industry and comfort in each

individual. At least, a society formed upon this plan would have as fair

a chance of realising all the advantages of which it was capable, with

as few deviations from the original direction and design, as a society,

where only a less degree of equality was _possible_, would have of

coming up to its original idea. Industry and regularity of behaviour

must gain ground, where these habits were enforced by the general

example of the whole society, and where the sacrifice to be made was

less, and the reward more certain. I might appeal to the history of all

countries in proof of this. Industry flourishes most in those countries,

where there is the greatest equality of conditions, and where in

consequence instances of extreme distress can rarely occur. The

excessive depression of the lower class of the community can only (by

taking away the spring of hope, and making it nearly impossible for them

to fall lower,) dishearten industry, and make them regardless of

consequences. It cannot be laid down as an axiom, that you animate

industry, in proportion as you take away its reward. It may be said that

the poor will not go through extreme hardships but from the fear of

starving. I know no reason why such hardships are necessary but because

one man is obliged to do the work of several.—These general observations

are not set aside by supposing the right of property to be established.

All that I can understand by a right of property is a right in any one

to cultivate a piece of land, be it more or less, and a right at the

same time to prevent any one else from cultivating it, or reaping the

produce. This, in whatever way a man comes by it, is the utmost extent

of this right. ‘Those who were born after the division of property,’

says Mr. Malthus, ‘would come into _a world already possessed_.’ [How

the whole world should come to be possessed immediately after the

division of property I do not understand.] ‘If their parents, from

having too large a family, were unable to give them sufficient for their

support, what could they do in a world, where every thing was

appropriated?’ [Just now _the world_, and at present, _every thing in

it_ is appropriated.] ‘We have seen the fatal effects that would result

to society, if every man had a valid claim to an equal share of the

produce of the earth.’ [This has been answered.] ‘The members of a

family which was grown too large for the original division of land

appropriated to it could not then demand a part of the _surplus produce

of others_ as a debt of justice.’ [Certainly not. They would have no

right to it, because one man would have no right to another man’s

property; but that right, as far as relates to the surplus produce, is

not backed by the necessity of the case, as Mr. Malthus would lead us to

suppose, or because every thing is already appropriated.] ‘It has

appeared that, from the inevitable laws of human nature, some beings

will be exposed to want.’ [That is the question.] ‘The number of those

persons would soon exceed the ability of the _surplus produce_ to

supply.’ I believe so, if they depended on the surplus produce of the

labour of the rich to supply them. But the long and the short of it is

that these laborious landholders, these owners of surplus produce,

finding that their own exertions could not supply all their own wants,

and at the same time keep pace with their benevolence to those unhappy

persons, who in the great lottery of life had drawn a blank, would call

to their aid such of these as professed themselves able and willing to

exert their strength in procuring a _further surplus produce_, which

would enable the proprietors to afford assistance to greater numbers,

that is, out of the produce of their own labour, not out of that of the

proprietors. To hear Mr. Malthus talk, one would suppose that the rich

were really a very hard-working, ill-used people, who are not suffered

to enjoy the earnings of their honest industry in quiet by a set of

troublesome, unsatisfied, luxurious, idle people called _the poor_. Or

one might suppose that a landed estate was a machine that did its own

work; or that it was like a large plum-cake, which the owner might at

once cut up into slices, and either eat them himself, or give them away

to others, just as he pleased. In this case I grant that the poor might

be said to depend entirely upon the bounty or _surplus produce_ of the

rich; and as they would have no trouble in procuring their share but

merely that of asking for it, their demands would no doubt be a little

unreasonable, and in short, if they were complied with, the estate, the

surplus produce, or the plumb-cake (call it which you will) would soon

be gone. The question would no longer be ‘whether one man should give to

another that which he did not use himself: but whether he should give to

his neighbour the food which was absolutely necessary to his own

existence.’ But I cannot admit that they would be reduced to any such

necessity merely from allowing to the labourer as much of the additional

produce of the ground as he himself had really _added_ to it. I repeat

that I do not see how a man’s reaping the produce, and no more than the

produce of his industry, can operate as an inducement to idleness, or to

the excessive multiplication of children, when notwithstanding all his

industry it is impossible he should provide for them without either

diminishing his own comforts, or if the population is already full,

plunging them and himself into want and misery. This addition to the

argument is like a foil to a sword—it prevents any dangerous

consequences. If I say to a number of people, that they may each of them

have as much of a heap of corn as they desire, the whole of it would

very soon be bespoke, but if I tell them that they may each of them have

as much as they can _carry away_ themselves, there might be enough to

load them all, and I might have plenty left for my own consumption. The

ability and the willingness of a man to labour, (when these are made the

general foundation of his claim to the produce of the earth) at once set

bounds to his own rapacious demands, and effectually limit the

population.—If Mr. Malthus had shewn that nothing but extreme misery can

excite to industry or check population, he would then have shewn the

necessity of such a state. But if it has appeared in various ways that

there is no connection between these things, or that if there is, it is

directly contrary to what Mr. Malthus supposes it, then he has failed in

his attempt to regulate the price of labour by the principle of

population, or to prove that this should be fixed so low, as only just

to keep the labourer from starving. Certainly any advance in the price

of labour, or a more equal distribution of the produce of the earth

would enable a greater number of persons to live in comfort, and would

increase population; but it is the height of absurdity, as I have shewn

over and over again, to suppose that it would lead to an excessive or

unrestricted increase; as if by making people acquainted with comfort

and decency, you were teaching them to fall in love with misery. This is

the real jut and bearing of the question. The author of the Essay, to

assist his argument, transposes the question. He represents the

labouring class of the community as a set of useless, supernumerary

paupers, living on charity, or on the labour of the industrious

proprietor. If this representation had any foundation, I should be ready

to admit that these interlopers had no claim on any part of _the surplus

produce of others as a debt of justice_. They must owe every thing to

favour, and would be entirely at the mercy of their benefactors. Every

reader must perceive, how little this account is in any degree near the

truth. The case is not that of a person both willing and able to labour

for himself, and imparting freely to another, who had done nothing to

deserve it, a part of the surplus produce of the soil, but of a person

bargaining with another to do all his work for him, and allowing him as

a bribe part of the produce of his own labour in return. It is not

therefore a question of right any more than it is a question of

expediency, but a question of power on one side, and of necessity on the

other. On the degree of power, or on that of the necessity, and on

nothing else, will the price of labour depend. Mr. Malthus somewhere

talks of a man’s having no right to subsistence when his labour will not

_fairly_ purchase it. This word _fairness_ conveys to my ears no meaning

but that of the struggle between power and want, just spoken of. ‘A

man,’ he says, ‘born into a world already possessed, if the society do

not want his labour, has no claim of _right_ to the smallest portion of

food.’ This is, as if the question was of an individual, pestering a

laborious community for a job, when they do not want his assistance, and

not of the laborious part of the community demanding a small portion of

food or the means of subsistence out of the surplus produce of their

labour as _a fair compensation_ for their trouble! I sometimes think

that abstruse subjects are best illustrated by familiar examples, and I

shall accordingly give one. Suppose I have got possession of an island

which I either took from somebody else, or was the first to occupy. But

no matter how I came by it, I am in possession of it, and that is

enough. Suppose then I see another person coming towards it either in a

canoe (these questions are always first decided in a state very nearly

approaching a state of nature) or swimming from some other island as I

conceive either with intent to drive me from it, or to defraud me of the

produce of my labour. Now even allowing that I had more than enough for

myself, that part of my surplus produce was devoured by fowls or wild

beasts, or that I threw it for sport into the sea, yet I should contend

that I have a right, a strict right in one sense of the word, to take

out a long pole, and push this unfair intruder from the shore, and try

to sink his boat or himself in the water to get rid of him, and defend

my own _right_. But suppose that instead of his coming to me, I go to

him, and persuade him to return with me; and that when I have got him

home, I want to set him to work to do either part or the whole of my

business for me. In this case I should conceive that he is at liberty

either to work or refuse working just as he thinks proper, to work on

what terms he thinks proper, to receive only a small part, or the half,

or more than half the produce as he pleases; or if I do not chuse to

agree to his terms, I must do my work myself. What possible right have I

over him? His right to his liberty is just as good as my right to my

property. It is an excellent _cheveux-de-fris_, and if he is as idle as

I am lazy, he will make his market of it. I say then that this original

right continues in all stages of society, unless where it has been

specifically given up; and acts as a counterpoise to the insolence of

property. If indeed the poor will work for the rich at a certain rate,

they are not bound to employ others who demand higher wages, or a

greater number than they want: but as it is plain that they must either

work themselves, or get others to work for them, over whom they have no

right whatever, I contend that the mass of the labouring community have

always a right to _strike_, to demand what wages they please; the least

that they can demand is enough to support them and their families; and

the real contest will be between the aversion of the rich to labour, and

of the poor to famine. This seems to be the philosophy of the question.

It is also the spirit of the laws of England, which have left a

provision for the poor; wisely considering, no doubt, that they who

received their all from the labour of others were bound to provide out

of their superfluities for the necessities of such as were in want. If

it be said that this principle will lead to extreme abuse in practice, I

answer, No, for there is hardly any one, who will live in dependence, or

on casualties, if he can help it. The check to the abuse is sufficiently

provided in the miserable precariousness and disgusting nature of the

remedy. But if from the extreme inequality of conditions, that is, from

one part of the community having been able to engross all the advantages

of society to themselves, so that they can trample on the others at

pleasure, the poor are reduced so low in intellect and feeling as to be

indifferent to every consideration of the kind, neither will they be

restrained from following their inclinations by Mr. Malthus’s grinding

law of necessity, by the abolition of the poor laws, or by the prospect

of seeing their children starving at the doors of the rich. It is not by

their own fault alone that they have fallen into this degradation; those

who have brought them into it ought to be answerable for some of the

consequences. The way to obviate those consequences is not by

obstinately increasing the pressure, but by lessening it. It is not my

business to inquire how a society formed upon the simple plan

above-mentioned might be supposed to degenerate in consequence of the

different passions, follies, vices, and circumstances of mankind, into a

state of excessive inequality and wretchedness: it is sufficient for my

purpose to have shewn, that such a change was not rendered necessary by

the sole principle of population, or that it would not be absolutely

impossible for a state of actual equality to last ‘thirty years’ without

producing the total overthrow and destruction of the society. Equality

produces no such maddening effects on the principle of population, nor

is it a thing, any approaches to which must be fatal to human happiness,

and are universally to be dreaded. The connection therefore between that

degree of inequality, which terminates in extreme vice and misery, and

the necessary restraints on population, is not so obvious or

indissoluble, as to give Mr. Malthus a right to ‘qualify’ the luxuries

of the rich, and the distresses of the poor as the inevitable

consequences of the fundamental laws of nature, and as necessary to the

very existence of society. I shall here take the liberty of quoting the

two following passages from Mr. Malthus’s Essay, which seem exactly to

confirm my ideas on the subject, only better expressed, and stated in a

much neater manner. ‘In most countries, among the lower classes of

people, there appears to be something like a standard of wretchedness, a

point below which, they will not continue to marry and propagate their

species. This standard is different in different countries, and is

formed by various concurring circumstances of soil, climate, government,

degree of knowledge, and civilization, &c. The principal circumstances

which contribute to raise it, are, liberty, security of property, the

spread of knowledge, and _a taste for the conveniences and the comforts

of life_. Those which contribute principally to lower it are despotism

and ignorance.’ For what purpose did Mr. Malthus write his book? ‘In an

attempt to better the condition of the lower classes of society, our

object should be to raise this standard as high as possible, by

cultivating a spirit of independence, a decent pride, and a taste for

cleanliness and comfort among the poor. These habits would be best

inculcated by a system of general education and, when strongly fixed,

would be _the most powerful means of preventing their marrying with the

prospect of being obliged to forfeit such advantages; and would

consequently raise them nearer to the middle classes of society_.’ Yet

Mr. Malthus elsewhere attempts to prove that the pressure of population

on the means of subsistence can only be kept back by a system of terror

and famine, as the pressure of a crowd is only kept back by the

soldiers’ bayonets. I have thus endeavoured to answer the _play of

words_, by which Mr. Malthus undertakes to prove that the rich have an

absolute right to the disposal of the whole of the surplus produce of

_the labour of others_. After this preparation, I shall venture to trust

the reader’s imagination with the passages, in which he tries to put

down private charity, and to prove the right of the rich (whenever they

conveniently can) to starve the poor. They are very pretty passages.

‘There is one right, which man has generally been thought to possess,

which I am confident he neither does, nor can, possess, a right to

subsistence when his labour will not _fairly_ purchase it. Our laws

indeed say, that he has this right, and bind the society to furnish

employment and food to those who cannot get them in the regular market;

but in so doing, they attempt to reverse the laws of nature; and it is,

in consequence, to be expected, not only that they should fail in their

object, but that the poor who were intended to be benefited, should

suffer most cruelly from this inhuman deceit which is practised upon

them.

‘A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get

subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the

society do not want his labour, has no claim of _right_ to the smallest

portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At

nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to

be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he do not work upon

the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make

room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same

favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with

numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the

plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness

of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in

every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who

are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been

taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in

counteracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great

mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have

plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers,

humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.’

This is a very brilliant description, and a pleasing allegory. Our

author luxuriates in the dearth of nature: he cannot contain his

triumph: he frolics with his subject in the gaiety of his heart, and his

tongue grows wanton in praise of famine. But let us examine it not as a

display of imagination, but as a piece of reasoning. In the first place,

I cannot admit the assertion that ‘at nature’s mighty feast there is no

vacant cover for the poor man.’ There are plenty of vacant covers but

that the guests at the head of the table have seized upon all those at

the lower end, before the table was full. Or if there were no vacant

cover, it would be no great matter, he only asks for the crumbs which

fall from rich men’s tables, and the bones which they throw to their

dogs. ‘She (nature) tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her

own orders, if he do not work on the compassion of some of the guests.’

When I see a poor old man, who after a life of unceasing labour is

obliged at last to beg his bread, driven from the door of the rich man

by a surly porter, and half a dozen sleek well-fed dogs, kept for the

pleasure of their master or mistress, jumping up from the fireside, or

bouncing out of their warm kennels upon him, I am, according to Mr.

Malthus, in the whole of this scene, to fancy nature presiding in person

and executing her own orders against this unwelcome intruder, who as he

is bent fairly double with hard labour, and can no longer get employment

in the regular market, has no claim of _right_ (as our author

emphatically expresses it) to the smallest portion of food, and in fact

has no business to be where he is. The preference which is often given

to the inferior animals over the human species by the institutions and

customs of society is bad enough. But Mr. Malthus wishes to go farther.

By the institutions of society a rich man is at liberty to give his

superabundance either to the poor or to his dogs. Mr. Malthus will not

allow him this liberty, but says that by the laws of nature he is bound

to give it to his dogs, because if we suffer the poor to work upon our

compassion at all, this will only embolden their importunity, ‘and the

order and harmony that before reigned at nature’s feast will be

disturbed and changed into want and confusion.’ This might probably be

the consequence, if the rich, or the chief guests had provided the

entertainment for themselves; or if nature, like a liberal hostess, had

kindly provided it for them, at her own proper cost and expence, without

any obligations to the poor. It might be necessary in this case for

those who had either provided the feast, or been expressly invited to

it, to keep a pretty strict hand over those idle and disorderly persons,

to whose importunity there was no end. But the question really is, not

whether all those should be supplied who press forward into the hall

without having contributed any thing to the plenty that abounds, but

whether after the different guests have contributed largely, each of

them having brought his share and more than his share, the proprietors

of the mansion have a right to turn them all out again, and only leave a

few scraps or coarse bits to be flung to them out of the windows, or

handed to them outside the door. Or whether if every man was allowed to

eat the _mess_ which he had brought with him in quiet, he would

immediately go out, and bring in half a dozen more, so that he would

have nothing left for himself, and the hall would be instantly

overcrowded. This statement is, I believe, considerably nearer the truth

than Mr. Malthus’s. And if so, we can have little difficulty in deciding

whether there is any ground for Mr. Malthus’s apprehensions of the

danger of raising the condition of the poor, or relieving the distresses

to which, in their present unnatural and unnecessary state of

degradation, they are unavoidably subject. ‘The spectacle of misery and

dependence’ never arises from the scantiness of the provision, or from

the nearly equal shares, in which it is divided, giving encouragement to

a greater number of applicants; for those helpless intruders, against

whom Mr. Malthus issues such strict orders, namely the _rising

generation_, never come into the world till they are sent for, and it is

not likely that those who find themselves warm in their seats with every

thing comfortable about them and nothing to complain of, should when

there is really no room for fresh comers, send for more people to shove

them out of their places, and eat the victuals out of their mouths. ‘The

Abbé Raynal has said that, “Avant toutes les loix sociales l’homme avoit

le droit de subsister.” He might with just as much propriety have said,

that before the institution of social laws, every man had a right to

live a hundred years. Undoubtedly he had then, and has still, a good

right to live a hundred years, nay a thousand _if he can_, without

interfering with _the right of others to live_; but the affair, in both

cases, is principally an affair of power, not of right. Social laws very

greatly increase this power, by enabling a much greater number to

subsist than could subsist without them, and so far very greatly enlarge

_le droit de subsister_; but neither before nor after the institution of

social laws, could _an unlimited number subsist_; and before, as well as

since, he who ceased to have _the power_, ceased to have _the right_.’

In this passage Mr. Malthus ‘sharpens his understanding upon his flinty

heart.’ The logic is smart and lively and unembarrassed: it is not

encumbered with any of the awkward feelings of humanity. After all, he

misses his aim. For his argument proves that the right of subsistence or

one man’s right to live is only limited by its interfering with the

right of others to live: that is, that a man has then only no right to

live, when there is nothing for him to live upon; in which case the

question becomes an affair of power, not of right. But it is not the

question whether the proprietor should starve himself in order that the

labourer may live; but whether the proprietor has a right to live in

extravagance and luxury, while the labourer is starving. As to his

absolute right to the produce of the soil, that is to say, of the labour

of others, we have seen that he has no such right either to the whole of

the surplus produce, or to _as much of it as he pleases_. With respect

then to the share of the produce which the labourer has a right to

demand, ‘it is not likely that he should exchange his labour, without

receiving a _sufficient_ quantity of food in return,’ to enable him to

live, unless the right of the proprietor to exact the labour of others

on what terms he chuses, is seconded by a kind of power, which has very

little connection with the power of the earth to bring forth no more

produce. As to the right of the rich, in a moral point of view, wantonly

to starve the poor, it is I think best to say nothing about it. Social

institutions, on which our author lays great stress as enlarging the

power of subsistence and the right along with it, do not deny relief to

the poor. For this very reason Mr. Malthus wishes to shoulder them

aside, in order to make room for certain regulations of his own, more

agreeable to _the laws of nature and the principle of population_. A

little farther on he says, ‘As a previous step even to any considerable

alteration in the present system, which would _contract_ or stop the

increase of the relief to be given, it appears to me that we are bound

in justice and honour ‘_formally to disclaim the right of the poor to

support_.’ It would be more modest in Mr. Malthus to let them _disclaim_

it for themselves. But it appears that the reason for _contracting_ the

relief afforded them by the present system, and denying the right

altogether, is that there is no subsistence for an unlimited number. As

to the point at which it may be prudent or proper for the rich to

withhold assistance from the poor, I shall not enquire into it. But I

shall dispute Mr. Malthus’s right to thrust the poor man out of

existence because there is no room for him ‘at nature’s mighty feast,’

till he can give some better reason for it than that there is not room

for an _unlimited number_!—The maintainance of the needy poor is a tax

on the inequality of conditions and the luxuries of the rich, which they

could not enjoy but in consequence of that general depression of the

lower classes which continually subjects them to difficulties and want.

It is a _douceur_ to keep them quiet, and prevent them from enforcing

those more solid, and important claims, not interfering with the right

of property, but a direct consequence of the right of personal freedom,

and of their right to set their own price on their own exertions, which

would raise them above the reach of want, and enable them to maintain

their own _poor_. But they cannot do this without a general combination

of the labouring part of the community; and if any thing of this kind

were to be attempted, the legislature we know would instantly interfere

to prevent it. I know indeed that the legislature assumes a right to

prevent combinations of the poor to keep themselves above want, though

they _disclaim_ any right to meddle with monopolies of corn, or other

combinations _in the regular course of trade_, by which the rich and

thriving endeavour to grind the poor. But though the men of property

have thus retained the legislature on their side, Mr. Malthus does not

think this practical security sufficient: he thinks it absolutely

necessary to recur to first principles; and that they may see how well

qualified he is to act as chamber counsel in the business, he makes them

a present of his Essay, written expressly for the purpose, and

containing a new institute of the laws of nature, and a complete theory

of population, in which it is clearly proved that the poor have no right

to live any longer than the rich will let them. In this work which those

to whom it is addressed should have bound in morocco, and constantly

lying by them as a text-book to refer to in all cases of difficulty, it

is shewn that there is no injustice in forcing the poorer classes to

work almost for nothing, because they have no right to the produce of

their labour, and no inhumanity in denying them assistance when they

happen to be in want, because they ought not to be encouraged in

idleness. Thus armed with ‘metaphysical aid,’ and conscience-proof, the

rich will I should think be able very successfully to resist the unjust

claims of the poor—to a subsistence!

Neither the fundamental laws of property then, nor the principle of

population seem to imply the necessity of any great inequality of

conditions. They do not even require the distinction of rich and poor,

much less do they imply the right of the rich to starve the poor. What

shews that there must be some radical defect in our author’s reasoning

is, that a substantial equality does really prevail in several

countries, where the right of property is established, and where the

_principle of population_ has been known to exist for a great length of

time. Property may certainly be made a handle for power; and that power

may, and does almost constantly lead to abuse, I mean to want and

wretchedness. But neither the power nor the abuse is any part of the

original right; and the original end and design of the right itself,

namely to procure a sufficient supply for the actual population, and to

prevent an unlimited increase of population, is just as well, or indeed

much better answered _without_, than _with_ the abuse.—But perhaps we

have mistaken Mr. Malthus all this while. Perhaps he only wishes to

secure to the rich their original right, which is to reserve a certain

share of the produce for their own use; and to prevent their being

driven out of house and home by the poor, under pretence of population.

He seems to say in one place, that the fund appropriated to the

maintenance of labour is the aggregate quantity of food possessed by the

owners of land beyond what is necessary for their own immediate

consumption. He says this, or something like it. In this case, it is

evident, that ‘no man would be forced to exchange his labour without

receiving an ample quantity of food in return.’ At this rate the

labourer would be as rich, only not so idle as the proprietor. The only

difference between them would be that one of them would get his share

for nothing, and the other would be obliged to work for it. It would in

fact be a common fund divided equally between the rich and poor, or more

properly speaking, between the sleeping and the acting partners in this

joint-concern. If so, I do not see what the poor could have to complain

of, as, if they were ever in want, it must be owing to their own

idleness, extravagance, and imprudence, and they would deserve to be

punished. Now Mr. Malthus is ready to prove with a pair of compasses

that this is always the state of the case. The poor are always just as

well off as the rich, if it is not their own fault, and the want in

which they are sometimes plunged is not owing to an unequal division of

the shares among as many as can possibly subsist, but to the folly of

pushing population beyond the verge of subsistence. By this means there

is nothing left for those who come last, who have consequently no right

to be where they are, because there is nothing for them. ‘The quantity

of food’ (says Mr. Malthus) ‘which one man can consume is necessarily

limited by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; it is not certainly

probable that he should throw away the rest; and if he exchange his

surplus produce for the labour of others, this is better than that these

others should absolutely starve.’ Here then we see the necessary limits

of the inequality of conditions, or of the almost imperceptible

difference in the advantages which the rich have over the poor. But is

there really then no difference between being gorged and _not_ being

starved, between eating venison and turtle-soup, and drinking three

bottles of wine a-day, and living on crusts of bread and water? Is it

physically impossible that one man should eat more than does him good,

or that another should not get his full share? But it may be asked, what

advantage can it be to the rich to consume more than they want? None.

But the food which is thus misapplied, might be of great use to the

poor. Is there no such thing as waste in great houses, which must

considerably diminish the disproportion between the quantity of food,

and the narrow capacity of the human stomach? When I consider that the

rich are neither a bit taller, nor stouter, nor born with larger

stomachs than other men, it does indeed seem at first sight a little

extraordinary that they should make such havoc in the world as they do.

But the wonder vanishes the instant we recollect that crowd of

dependents always dangling about them, who intercept the surplus produce

long before it can reach the labourer, and who instead of dividing his

toil with the husbandman, or sharing in other tasks not less useful or

necessary are maintained by the distresses and hardships of the poor. A

rich man has not only himself and his family to keep, but he has to keep

his gentlemen, his valet, his butler, his cook, his coachman, his groom,

his horses, his hounds, his ornamental gardener, his architect, his

upholsterer, his jeweller, his silversmith, his man’s-mercer, and

haberdasher, his pimps, parasites, and players, his poets, painters, and

musicians, not to mention a hundred more, who are of no service on the

face of the earth, nor have any mortal thing to do—but to tend upon his

person, to dress his hair, to brush his clothes, or air his shirt, to

run on his errands, to do his jobs, to manage his affairs, to please his

taste, to pamper his appetites, to study his humours, to follow his

steps, to fawn and cringe and bow and smile as he directs. All these

persons depend entirely on the bounty of their patron; and though they

do nothing to increase the produce of the ground, they do not devour it

the less eagerly, and it may be supposed that they make a good gap in

it. In the mean time, the productive labourer, and hard-working mechanic

are straitened in their circumstances, and doomed to unremitting toil

and drudgery, that these hangers-on of the rich may live at their ease,

or contribute only to the vanity and convenience of their employers.

This as I understand it is the pinch of the grievance.—The rich man has

not only to supply his own wants, but the wants of those who depend upon

him, and who do nothing to support either him or themselves. He is

something in the situation of a balance-master, who undertakes to

support twenty men, some on his head, some on his shoulders, and others

suspended from different parts of his body: his own weight is nothing:

it is the weight of those who hang upon him that makes the rich man a

burthen to the poor. I see a little old emaciated man riding on a poney

along the street, and a stout healthy, well looking man riding behind

him at some distance, who follows him like his puppet, who turns as he

turns, and whenever he passes him touches his hat in a respectful

manner. What is the meaning of this? It is a nobleman, and his servant.

The man is as well-fed, as comfortably clothed, and as well-mounted as

his master: what makes all the difference is, that there are thirty or

forty gradations of society between them, each looking up with envy, or

down with contempt on the other, as they have more or less power over

the necessaries and conveniences of life not for themselves, but others,

and so can hire the respect of a certain number of dependents. So little

can we judge of the state of society in the mechanical way pointed out

by Mr. Malthus. But it is time to proceed with my author.

‘As Mr. Godwin seems disposed to understand, and candidly to admit the

truth of, the principal argument in the essay, I feel the more

mortified, that he should think it a fair inference from my positions,

that the political superintendents of a community are bound to exercise

a paternal vigilance and care over the two great means of advantage and

safety to mankind, misery and vice; and that no evil is more to be

dreaded than that we should have too little of them in the world, to

confine the principle of population within its proper sphere.’ [This I

think a fair statement of the argument.] ‘I am at a loss to conceive

what class of evils Mr. Godwin imagines is yet behind, which these

salutary checks are to prevent.’ [It is not Mr. Godwin’s business, but

our author’s to find out such a class of evils.] ‘For my own part, I

know of no stronger or more general terms than vice and misery; and the

sole question is, respecting a greater or less degree of them. The only

reason why I object to Mr. Godwin’s system, is, my full conviction that

an attempt to execute it, would very greatly increase the quantity of

vice and misery in society.’

Be it so. But still Mr. Malthus thinks a less degree of them necessary

to prevent a greater; and it therefore seems a fair inference from his

positions to say, that the greatest care ought to be taken, not to

diminish the necessary quantity. He approves much of the things in his

own mind, but he does not like to hear them called by their names in a

disrespectful way. He does not like the odium attached to them.

‘Mr. Godwin observes, that he should naturally be disposed to pronounce

that man strangely indifferent to schemes of extraordinary improvement

in society, who made it a conclusive argument against them, that, when

they were realized, they might peradventure be of no permanence and

duration. And yet, what is morality, individual or political, according

to Mr. Godwin’s own definition of it, but a calculation of

consequences?’ [This, I must say, is a very _abortive_ kind of

argument]. ‘Is the physician the patron of pain, who advises his patient

to bear a present evil, rather than betake himself to a remedy, which,

though it might give momentary relief, would afterwards greatly

aggravate all the symptoms?’ [The real case is of a physician, who tells

his patient he must not get well, and endeavours to keep him from doing

so, because if he were once in perfect health, he would be subject to

more violent returns of his disorder]. ‘Is the moralist to be called an

enemy to pleasure, because he recommends to a young man just entering

into life, not to ruin his health and patrimony in a few years, by an

excess of present gratifications, but to economize his enjoyments, that

he may spread them over a longer period?’ [Our Essayist would advise the

young man to neglect his affairs, and ruin his health, because by a

contrary method his estate would increase so that he would not be able

to manage it, and it would be thrown into complete and total disorder,

at the same time that his improved health and spirits would urge him to

plunge into much greater excesses, than, if his constitution were

debilitated in time, he would be capable of committing]. ‘Of Mr.

Godwin’s system, according to the present arguments by which it is

supported, it is not enough to say, _peradventure_ it will be of no

permanence: but we can pronounce _with certainty_ that it will be of no

permanence: and under such circumstances an attempt to execute it would

unquestionably be a great political immorality.’ According to the

_present_ arguments against it, this has not appeared to be the case.

‘The permission of infanticide is bad enough, and cannot but have a bad

effect on the moral sensibility of a nation; but I cannot conceive any

thing much more detestable, or shocking to the feelings, than any direct

regulation of this kind, although sanctioned by the names of Plato and

Aristotle.’ Mr. Malthus in this passage very properly gives way to his

feelings, which are, in my opinion, a much better test of morality than

a calculation of consequences. At the same time, he would himself make a

law to starve the children of the poor, because their parents are not

able to maintain them. Mr. Malthus’s humanity is of the _intermittent_

sort. The mention of the Chinese, of Plato or Aristotle, has a great

effect in bringing the fit on: at the mention of population or the

poor-laws it vanishes in an instant, and ‘he is himself again.’—I hope I

shall sometimes be allowed to appeal to my feelings against Mr.

Malthus’s authority, as he dissents from that of Plato and Aristotle on

the same _unphilosophical_ plea, and to look upon those arguments as

narrow and superficial, which pay no regard to ‘the moral sensibility of

a nation’; the more so as the system of morality prevailing at present

is built upon the natural affections and common feelings and habitual

prejudices of mankind, not, as Mr. Malthus pretends, on pure reason, or

a dry calculation of consequences. Our author’s plan is addressed

neither to the _head_, nor _heart_. It retains the common sympathies of

our nature only to shock and insult them, and engrafts the vices of a

bad heart on a perverted understanding.

Mr. Malthus defies Mr. Godwin to point out a method, by which it is

possible ‘to limit the number of children to each prolific marriage.’

According to his theory, there seems no way but by having a constable in

the room, and converting bed-chambers into a kind of lock-up

houses.—Speaking of the possibility of delaying the gratification of the

passion between the sexes, he says,

‘If the whole effect were to depend merely on a sense of duty,

considering the powerful antagonist that is to be contended with, in the

present case, I confess that I should absolutely despair. At the same

time, I am strongly of opinion that a sense of duty, superadded to a

sense of interest, would by no means be without its effect. There are

many noble and disinterested spirits, who, though aware of the

inconveniences which they may bring upon themselves by the indulgence of

an early and virtuous passion, feel a kind of repugnance to listen to

the dictates of mere worldly prudence, and a pride in rejecting these

low considerations. There is a kind of romantic gallantry in sacrificing

all for love, naturally fascinating to a young mind; and, to say the

truth, if all is to be sacrificed, I do not know, in what better cause

it can be done. But if a strong sense of duty could, in these instances,

be added to prudential suggestions, the whole question might wear a

different colour. In delaying the gratification of passion, from a sense

of duty, the most disinterested spirit, the most delicate honour, might

be satisfied. The romantic pride might take a different direction, and

the dictates of worldly prudence might be followed with the cheerful

consciousness of making a virtuous sacrifice.’

I am happy to learn that Mr. Malthus has been able to reconcile the

sense of duty and interest with the gratification of his favourite

passion. By preaching the virtue of celibacy with such success to

others, he found it no longer necessary to practise it himself. He is

not the first philosopher who extracted the flames of love out of ice.

We read of such a one in Hudibras. I should be sorry to scandalize the

modest reader; but really whenever I think of our author’s escape from

the consequences of his own doctrine in a wife, it puts me in mind of

St. Francis’s triumph over his desires,

‘Which after in enjoyment quenching,

He hung a garland on his engine.’

This St. Francis was as great an adept as our author in the cold-sweat

of the passions.

There is no end of Mr. Malthus’s paradoxes. I come now to his attempts

to prove that in proportion as you raise the wages of the poor, you take

away their livelihood.

‘Suppose, that by a subscription of the rich, the eighteen-pence, or two

shillings, which men earn now, were made up five shillings, it might be

imagined, perhaps, that they would then be able to live comfortably, and

have a piece of meat every day for their dinner. But this would be a

very false conclusion. The transfer of three additional shillings a day

to each labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country.

There is not at present enough for all to have a moderate share. What

would then be the consequence? The competition among the buyers in the

market of meat, would rapidly raise the price from eight pence or nine

pence, to two or three shillings in the pound, and the commodity would

not be divided among many more than it is at present. When an article is

scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that can shew the most

valid patent, that is, he that offers the most money, becomes the

possessor. When subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of

people, it is of little consequence, whether the lowest members of the

society possess two shillings or five. They must, at all events, be

reduced to live upon the hardest fare, and in the smallest quantity.’

Again, some pages after he says, ‘The question is, how far wealth has a

tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor. It is a

self-evident proposition that any general advance in the price of

labour, the stock of provisions remaining the same, can only be a

nominal advance, as it must shortly be followed by a _proportional_ rise

in provisions. The increase in the price of labour which we have

supposed, would have no permanent effect therefore in giving to the

labouring poor a greater command over the necessaries of life.’

On these two passages which explain the drift of our author’s reasonings

pretty clearly, I shall remark, first, that wealth is nothing but the

power of securing to yourself the fruits of the earth, or commanding the

labour of others. The more equal distribution of wealth, or the throwing

a greater quantity of money (_bona fide_) into the hands of the poor

must therefore enable them to procure either a greater share of

provisions or of the labour of others, or both. This I hold to be an

axiom, as far as I can comprehend the subject. But Mr. Malthus says that

if the wages of the poor were raised to double or treble what they are

at present, this in the first place would not increase the quantity of

meat in the market, nor the share which the labourer would have of it,

because any advance in the price of labour must be followed by a

_proportional_ rise in provisions. This word is equivocal. To make out

the argument, the rise ought to be not only proportional but equal to

the rise of wages, which it evidently would not be. But Mr. Malthus is

willing to exclude the possibility of bettering the condition of the

poor, even in theory, by an _equivoque_, or any thing else. But to put

an end to this miserable quackery, I would ask, whether if the rich were

to divide their incomes with the poor, the latter would be any the

richer for it. To say in this case, that the good things of the world

would not be shared more equally among them, is flat nonsense. But any

approach to a more equal division of wealth must lessen the difference

between the rich and the poor _proportionally_. It is true that the

lowest members of the community will still live upon the hardest fare,

and in the smallest quantity: but their fare will be less hard and in

larger quantities than it used to be, _in proportion_ to the advance in

the price of labour.

‘It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot

by means of money, raise the condition of a poor man, and enable him to

live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing

others in the same class. If I retrench the quantity of food consumed in

my house, and give him what I have cut off, I then benefit him without

depressing any but myself and family, who perhaps may be well able to

bear it. If I turn up a piece of uncultivated land, and give him the

produce, I then benefit both him and all the members of society, because

what he before consumed is thrown into the common stock, and, probably,

some of the new produce with it. But if I only give him money, supposing

the produce of the country to remain the same, I give him a title to a

larger share of that produce than formerly, which share he cannot

receive without diminishing the shares of others. It is evident, that

this effect in individual instances must be so small as to be totally

imperceptible; but still it must exist, as many other effects do, which,

like some of the insects that people the air, elude our grosser

perceptions.’

It will be sufficient to ask in answer to this passage, whether when I

give away my money to another, I do not necessarily retrench the

quantity of food or other things consumed in my own house, and give him

what I have cut off. I give him a title to a larger share of the common

produce by diminishing _my own_ share. It does not matter to the

community whether he or I spend the money: the only difference that it

makes is between ourselves.—Mr. Malthus seems to have a notion that the

rich are never the worse for their charities.

‘Supposing the quantity of food in any country, to remain the same for

many years together, it is evident, that this food must be divided

according to the value of each man’s patent, or the sum of money which

he can afford to spend in this commodity so universally in request. It

is a demonstrative truth, therefore, that the patents of one set of men

could not be increased in value, without diminishing the value of the

patents of some other set of men.’

At any rate, then, the poor would be enabled to contend with the rich.

The increased value of the patents of the poor would necessarily

diminish the value of the patents of the rich. In order to out-bid them,

they must make some other sacrifices, which they will not always be

willing to do. Food to the rich is in a great measure an article of

luxury: to the poor it is a necessary; and the one, about which they are

chiefly concerned. Many a _petit-maître_, and ape of fashion goes

without his dinner to pay for his coat, or go to the play, ‘where he

picks clean teeth,’ &c.

‘No person, I believe, will venture to doubt, that, if we were to give

three additional shillings a day to every labouring man in the kingdom,

as I before supposed, in order that he might have meat for his dinner,

the price of meat would rise in the most rapid and unexampled manner.’

Mr. Malthus here creeps on. He first spoke of a number of individuals as

having a certain sum given them. He now includes every labouring man in

the kingdom. Because if we were to give five shillings a day to five

hundred thousand men, the remaining five hundred thousand might be the

worse for it, therefore he would have us suppose that the same or

greater mischiefs would follow from giving the same sum to the whole

number, or in fact from doing away that very inequality, which was the

only source of the mischief. To suppose that we can allow five shillings

a-day to five hundred, or ten hundred thousand people without

retrenching from our own superfluities, or that we can distribute our

own patents among others without diminishing our own number, is one of

those perversities which I shall not attempt to answer. If the labourer

with his three shillings extra is only able to purchase an ounce of

meat, this will be an advantage to him. Let the rise be what it will,

the rich man will evidently be less able to out-bid him than he is at

present, and the rise can only be in proportion to his capacity to

out-bid him. Besides, it is not to be supposed that his additional gains

would all be laid out in meat, but in articles of trade, &c. which would

be rendered cheaper by the neglect of the rich, or in proportion to the

run upon provisions. To assert generally that increasing the wages of

the poor does not give them a greater command over the necessaries of

life, is as much as to say that if they were forced to work for nothing,

and could get nothing to eat, this would lower the markets, and they

would be much better off than they were before. It would be looked upon

as an insult, rather than a consolation, to tell them that they ought to

be contented with the cheapness of provisions, and to consider that

allowing them any thing for their labour, would only raise the price of

meat by enabling them to buy some of it to satisfy their hunger.

How things being cheap or dear, or how there being much or little to

spare, proves that that much, or little will not be divided according to

the ability of different people to pay for it, is beyond my

comprehension. It is ridiculous. It is saying that the money of a poor

man will not _pass_, even when he has it. If the poor in consequence of

having more money, or being richer could not draw to themselves a

greater portion of food, there could be no room for competition, nor for

an increase in the price or the demand.

‘The poor who were assisted by their parishes had no reason whatever to

complain of the high price of grain; because it was the excessiveness of

this price, and this alone, which, by enforcing such a saving, left a

greater quantity of corn, for the consumption of the lowest classes,

which corn, the parish allowances enabled them to command.’ [Yet Mr.

Malthus has just tried to persuade us, that the increased price of

provisions, occasioned by the competition of the poor, does not enforce

any retrenchment of the superfluities of the higher classes, or leave a

greater quantity of corn, for the consumption of the lower classes.]

‘The greatest sufferers in the scarcity were undoubtedly the classes

immediately above the poor; and these were in the most marked manner

depressed by the excessive bounties given to those below them.’ [It is

better that these classes should be depressed than those below them,

because they can bear it better. Is it an argument that because the

pressure of a scarcity does not fall directly upon those who can bear it

best, viz. the very rich, that it should therefore fall upon those, who

can bear it least, viz. on the very poor? Unless Mr. Malthus can

contrive to starve some one, he thinks he does nothing.] ‘This

distribution by giving to the poorer classes a command of food, so much

greater than their degree of skill and industry entitled them to, in the

actual circumstances of the country, diminished, exactly in the same

proportion, that command over the necessaries of life, which the classes

above them, by their superior skill and industry, would naturally

possess.’ [Is a man then to starve on account of his want of skill? To

tack industry to skill as if the lowest classes did not work the hardest

is impudence indeed.] ‘And it may be a question, whether the degree of

assistance which the poor received, and which prevented them from

resorting to the use of those substitutes, which, in every other

country, on such occasions, the great law of necessity teaches, was not

more than overbalanced by the severity of the pressure on so large a

body of people from the extreme high prices, and the permanent evil

which must result from forcing so many persons on the parish, who before

thought themselves almost out of the reach of want.’

It is a contradiction to say, that the poor were forced on the parish by

the assistance they received from it. If they were to be denied this

assistance from a tender regard for their morals and independence, it is

a pity that the same disinterested motives, joined to the ‘severe

pressure’ of the high prices on the classes above the poor, did not

induce some of _them_ to condescend to the use of those cheap and

wholesome substitutes recommended by Mr. Malthus, by which means they

would have saved their own pockets, and not have ‘forced so many persons

on the parish.’

‘If we were to double the fortunes of all those who possess above a

hundred a year, the effect on the price of grain would be slow and

inconsiderable; but if we were to double the price of labour throughout

the kingdom, the effect, in raising the price of grain, would be rapid

and great.’

I do not see the harm of this rise. It would be in consequence of, and

would denote the number of bellies that were filled that had not been

filled before. Mr. Malthus in this passage seems to prefer a little evil

to a great good.

‘The parish rates and the prodigious sum expended in voluntary charity,

must have had a most powerful effect in raising the price of the

necessaries of life, if any reliance can be placed on the clearest

general principles, confirmed as much as possible by appearances. A man

with a family, has received, _to my knowledge_, fourteen shillings a

week from the parish.’ [Shocking to be sure.] ‘His common earnings were

ten shillings a week, and his weekly _revenue_, therefore, twenty-four.

Before the scarcity, he had been in the habit of purchasing a bushel of

flour a week with eight shillings perhaps, and consequently had two

shillings out of his ten, to spare for other necessaries. During the

scarcity, he was enabled to purchase the same quantity at nearly three

times the price. He paid twenty-two shillings for his bushel of flour,

and had, as before, two shillings remaining for other wants.’ [Good: but

does Mr. Malthus deny that the scarcity would of itself have raised the

price of wheat? And in that case if the labourer had had no addition to

his ‘weekly revenue,’ instead of having the large sum of two shillings

at the end of the week to lay out in other necessaries, he would have

had nothing. Perhaps Mr. Malthus is ready to prove, that half a bushel

of corn will go farther with a poor family in a time of scarcity than a

whole one, because they would husband it more carefully.] ‘Such

instances could not possibly have been universal, without raising the

price of wheat much higher than it really was during any part of the

dearth. But similar instances were by no means infrequent, and _the

system itself, of measuring the relief given by the price of grain, was

general_.’

I cannot conceive of any better rule. But the gentleman is alarmed at

the _voluntary_ contributions extorted from the rich. After all, I do

not see how the rich would suffer by their great charity, if, as our

author says, the poor got nothing by it. I would ask, were the rich ever

in danger of starving in the late scarcity, and were not the poor in

danger of it, and would they not have starved, but for the assistance

given to them? Is it better that the poor should starve than that the

rich should be at the expence of relieving them? Or if the pressure in

scarce times falls on the middle classes, have they to complain, that

they, in whom ‘life and death may always be said to contend for

victory,’ are still just kept alive, or that the sleek and pampered

continue to fatten on the distresses of others? The false feeling which

runs through all Mr. Malthus’s reasonings on this subject is, that the

upper classes cannot be expected to retrench any of their superfluities,

to lie at the mercy of the seasons, or to contribute any thing to the

general necessity, but that the whole burthen of a scarcity ought to

fall on those whom Mr. Malthus calls ‘the least fortunate members of the

community,’ on those who are most used to distress, and in whom the

transition is easy and natural from poverty to famine! ‘They lay heavy

burthens on the poor and needy, which they will not touch with one of

their fingers.’ Would it not be worth our author’s while to comment on

this text, and shew how little it has been understood?—I remember to

have heard of but one instance of a real, effectual, and judicious

determination in the rich to retrench idle and superfluous waste and

expence, some years ago at a time when the poor were _in want of bread_.

It originated in a great and noble family, where seventy or eighty

servants were kept, and where twenty or thirty guests of the first

distinction ‘fared sumptuously every day.’ These humane and enlightened

persons, struck with the difference between their own good fortune, and

the necessities of others, came to a resolution that the pieces of bread

which they left at dinner should neither be thrown nor given away, but

that the bread-baskets should be divided into little compartments with

each person’s name affixed to them, where he could conveniently put the

piece of bread which he left, and have it _saved_ till the next day.

This humane example was much talked of in the neighbourhood, and soon

after followed by several of the gentry, who got their bread-baskets

divided into little compartments with the different names affixed, and

eat the pieces of bread which they left one day, the day after—so that

the poor were thus placed completely out of the reach of want!

Mr. Malthus next talks about the embarrassments of commerce, returning

cheapness, &c. Now I do not see, according to his doctrine, what

cheapness has to do with the question. He says, every thing depends on

the quantity of provisions in the country, and that this being given,

all the rest follows as a matter of course. What then does it signify

whether you call a piece of paper one pound or two if you can get a

proportionable quantity of food for your money?

‘If instead of giving the temporary assistance of parish allowances,

which might be withdrawn on the first fall of price, we had raised

universally the wages of labour, it is evident, that the obstacles to a

diminution of the circulation, and to returning cheapness, would have

been still further increased; and the high price of labour would have

become permanent, without any advantage whatever to the labourer,’—or

disadvantage to the proprietor.

‘There is no one that more ardently desires to see a real advance in the

price of labour than myself; but the attempt to effect this object by

forcibly raising the nominal price, which was practised to a certain

degree, and recommended almost universally during the late scarcities,

every thinking man must reprobate as puerile and ineffectual.’

‘The price of labour, when left to find its natural level, is a most

important political barometer, expressing the relation between the

supply of provisions, and the demand for them; between the quantity to

be consumed, and the number of consumers; and taken on the average,

independently of accidental circumstances, it further expresses,

clearly, the wants of the society respecting population; that is,

whatever may be the number of children to a marriage necessary to

maintain exactly the present population, the price of labour will be

just sufficient to support this number, or be above it, or below it,

according to the state of the real funds for the maintainance of labour,

whether stationary, progressive, or retrograde. Instead, however, of

considering it in this light, we consider it as something which we may

raise or depress at pleasure, something which depends principally upon

his majesty’s justices of the peace. When an advance in the price of

provisions already expresses that the demand is too great for the

supply, in order to put the labourer in the same condition as before, we

raise the price of labour, that is, we increase the demand, and are then

much surprised that the price of provisions continues rising. In this,

we act much in the same manner, as if, when the quicksilver in the

common weather-glass stood at _stormy_, we were to raise it by some

forcible pressure to _settled fair_, and then be greatly astonished that

it continued raining.’

This is certainly a most excellent illustration. As to the argument

itself, it is all false and hollow. With respect to the rise in the

price of provisions consequent on the rise of wages, I am not I confess

at all concerned about it, so that the labourer is still enabled to

purchase the same _necessary_ quantity as before. All that is wanted is

that the one should keep pace with the other. What the natural level of

the price of labour is, otherwise than as it is regulated by the

positive institutions of society, or as I have before stated, by the

power of one set of men, and the wants of another is—like many other

things in this book of Mr. Malthus’s—what I do not understand. If we are

to believe him, the whole is a trick. There is a pretence of sacrificing

something for the relief of the poor in hard times, and then the next

thing is to render that relief ineffectual, by out-bidding them, by

lowering the value of money, by creating artificial wealth, and other

methods. If then the rich are so entirely masters of the price of labour

that they can render it real or nominal as they please, and take good

care never to lose by it in the end, I should like to know how this most

important political barometer has any relation to real plenty or want:

how it expresses any thing more than the will of the rich and great; or

the miserable pittance they are willing to allow out of the support of

their own extravagant and ostentatious establishments to the

maintainance of the mass of the people. It does indeed express the

relation between the supply of provisions, and the demand for them, &c.

supposing that a certain number of people are to consume four or five

times as much (either in quantity or quality) as the others: and that

this proportion is unalterable and one of the laws of nature. It further

expresses the wants of the society respecting population, while this

division continues, or that degree of poverty beyond which it is

impossible for people to subsist at all. The object in a scarcity is not

however to stop the ordinary process of population, but to alleviate the

distresses of those already in existence, by a more equal distribution

of the real funds for the maintainance of labour. By these funds Mr.

Malthus means any arbitrary division of the produce of the ground, which

the rich find it convenient to make, and which the poor are forced to

take up with as better than nothing. But the real funds for the

maintenance of labour are the produce of labour. According to Mr.

Malthus, they are not the produce itself, but what happens to be left of

it, as the husks only and not the corn are given to the swine.

‘The number of servants out of place, and of manufacturers wanting

employment during the late scarcities, were melancholy proofs of the

truth of these reasonings. If a general rise in the wages of labour had

taken place proportioned to the price of provisions, none but farmers

and a few gentlemen could have afforded to employ the same number of

workmen as before. Additional crowds of servants and manufacturers would

have been turned off; and those who were thus thrown out of employment,

would, of course, have no other refuge than the parish. In the natural

order of things, a scarcity must tend to lower, instead of to raise, the

price of labour.’

This natural order has been already explained to mean a very artificial

order. Our ingenious author is a great admirer of moral analogies. He

sticks to the old proverb, those that have little shall have less. ‘The

most laborious and deserving part of the community’ are to bear the

brunt of all distress, _ordinary and extraordinary_. He will not suffer

the positive regulations of society, which carry inequality of

conditions as far almost as it can go in common cases, to relax a little

in their favour in extreme cases, so as not to push them quite out of

existence. I know no reason why in the natural order of things a

scarcity should tend to lower, instead of raising the price of labour;

but upon that common principle that the weakest are to go to the wall.

The rich forsooth are a privileged class, out of the reach of fortune,

‘whose solid virtue the shot of accident or dart of change can neither

graze nor pierce.’ In the rest of this passage, Mr. Malthus quarrels

with his own favourite system, with those capricious and arbitrary

institutions, in consequence of which those who ministered only to the

vanity and artificial wants of the rich will in times of difficulty be

turned adrift and reduced to want, or else saddled as an additional

weight on the common labourer, who had enough to do to support them and

their employers under the most favourable circumstances.

GENERAL ANSWER.—I wish Mr. Malthus to state explicitly whether he means

that the rise in the price of labour should be nominal or real. He has

shifted his ground four or five times on the subject in the course of

the chapter, now supposing it to be a mere non-entity, and now fraught

with the most terrible consequences, famine, and God knows what. But it

seems to me, that if nominal, it must be nugatory, and therefore

innocent; and that if real, it must be proportionably beneficial. For if

real, it must throw a greater quantity of the necessaries or comforts of

life into the hands of those who most want them, and take them from

those who are oppressed with their superfluities. For suppose the

quantity of food and the quantity of money to be fixed, given quantities

(unless we suppose both, there is no reasoning about the matter) and

that an additional price is given for labour: let us suppose farther

that this raises the price of provisions. It is evident in this case,

that the rich having less money to give, and being obliged to give more

for their former luxuries, will be obliged to retrench somewhere. This

must be either in provisions, or other things. First, they may retrench

in the article of provisions. This will evidently leave a greater plenty

for others, who stand very much in need of them; and their additional

wages will be laid out in supplying themselves with what they could not

otherwise have obtained. Secondly, they may retrench in articles of

furniture, dress, houses, &c. and there will consequently be less demand

for these things. Well then, in the first place, with regard to

provisions, the poor will be no worse off in this respect than if there

had been no advance in the price, for it is not to be supposed that if

the rich are so attached to the luxuries of the belly as notwithstanding

the increased price to buy the same quantity as ever, that they would

have bought less, if the price had continued lower. They would have

engrossed the markets at all events. On the other hand, they must

retrench their expences in other things, in superfluities of different

kinds, which will thus fall into the hands of the poor, who having been

excluded from the meat-market can only lay out their additional wages in

providing themselves with household conveniences, good clothes, tables,

chairs, &c. What should they do with their money? It is supposed that

they cannot get a morsel of meat with it: and it is not be expected that

they should throw it away. Sooner than do this, they might spend it in

buying smart buckles for their shoes, or garters and ribbons for their

sweethearts. The labour of the mechanic, inasmuch as it is not wanted by

the great, will go to enrich the lower classes. The less they are

employed by the rich, in consequence of ‘a more equal distribution of

the money of the society,’ the better able they will be to employ one

another. The farmer’s servant will employ the mechanic with the same

money with which the farmer or his landlord would have employed him: if

he has the same wages as before, he will have as much to do, or if his

wages are doubled, and he has only half as much to do, this will be a

proportionable relief to him on the score of labour, and would be no

prejudice to his earnings as he would get the same wages for doing half

as much work. But there is no occasion to suppose any such slackness in

the demand for labour. The proportion between the money, the productive

and mechanical labour in the community, would remain the same: and the

rise in the wages of the labouring manufacturer and mechanic to be real

and effectual ought to be paid out of the profits of the master and

proprietor. In this case, the demand would be the same: and it would

evidently be his interest to employ the same number of men that he did

before, as though he would get less by each of them, he must get more,

the more hands he employs, as long as the demand continues.[30] If

however our rich men and manufacturers should grow sulky upon the

occasion, and take it into their heads to hoard their money in order to

spite the poor, thus driving them altogether out of employ, I conceive

the best use that can be made of this hoarded wealth would be to

transfer it to the poor’s fund, for the relief of those who are willing

to work, but not to starve. On the whole, and in every view of the

subject it appears to me that any addition to the price of labour must

as far as it goes, be an advantage to the labourer, and that the more

general and permanent it is, the greater will be the benefit to the

labouring class of the community. The rise of wages would certainly take

from the pomp and luxury of the rich, and it would as certainly and in

the same proportion add to the comforts of the poor. I am not here

recommending such a change. I only contend that it would follow the

distribution of wealth; and that it is absurd to say that the poorer a

man is, the richer he will be.

Mr. Malthus’s acuteness amounts to a species of second-sight, whenever

there is a question of famine. Thus he demonstrates that this must be

the necessary consequence of fixing a maximum in a time of scarcity. Now

I do not see this necessary consequence, because if it were fixed at a

certain height above the common price in proportion to the deficiency,

this would check the too rapid consumption. Or even without supposing

this, as it would be necessary to have some kind of law or order of the

police to enforce the observance of a maximum, and make the farmers and

dealers bring their corn to market, the quantities in which it was

brought forward might be regulated in the same way as the price.

Besides, I do not believe that people would starve themselves with their

eyes open, whether the police interfered or not. As to the epithets of

illiberal, unjust, and narrow policy which some people may apply to such

a measure, I would ask them whether fixing the assize of bread in London

is not just the same thing. But corn-factors, forestallers and regraters

are a set of people whose liberal notions place them above the law, who

ought not to be looked upon in the same light with every little scurvy

knavish bread and biscuit baker, nor cramped in their generous exertions

to economize the public resources, and save the poor from famine at the

latter end of the year—by starving them in the beginning. With respect

to the parallel which Mr. Malthus attempts to establish between fixing a

maximum, and raising the price of labour, I am so unfortunate as not to

perceive it. He sometimes argues against raising the price of labour

because it would give the poor no greater command over the provisions

than before; he here talks as if it would enable them to devour every

thing before them. I think neither of these suppositions is true. The

high price of corn in proportion to other things will always make people

unwilling to lay out more in that way than they can help, and will

consequently diminish the consumption. As to famine, people will look

many ways, before they submit to it.

‘Independently of any considerations respecting a year of deficient

crops, it is evident, that an increase of population, without a

proportional increase of food, must lower the value of each man’s

_earnings_. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller

quantities, and consequently, a day’s labour will purchase a smaller

quantity of provisions.’

Why of earnings more than property? Mr. Malthus would have this

considered as an elementary or philosophical work. Yet he looks only at

the flattering side of his subject. A day’s labour will purchase a less

quantity of provisions, but a day’s idleness will purchase the same. In

this case idleness and industry are plaintiff and defendant; and the

verdict is in favour of idleness, and industry is not only cast, but

pays the costs.—It is all very well.

‘The quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses, upon a part of the

society, that cannot in general be considered as the most valuable

part,’ [or in other houses on footmen, &c. who are not the most

respectable kind of paupers] ‘diminishes the shares that would otherwise

belong to more industrious and more worthy members, and thus in the same

measure, forces more to become dependent.

‘Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still remains among

the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this

spirit.’ [Is it the man who reduces me to beggary, or he who affords me

relief, that lowers my condition and breaks my spirit?] ‘They have

succeeded in part; but had they succeeded as completely as might have

been expected, their pernicious tendency would not have been so long

concealed.’

It would have been discovered sooner, if Mr. Malthus had read Mr.

Wallace’s book sooner.

‘The parish laws of England _appear_ to have contributed to raise the

price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.’ [Our

author’s demonstrations are delusive appearances. What must his

_appearances_ be? Shall we take them for demonstrations?] ‘They have

therefore contributed to impoverish that class of people whose only

possession is their labour. It is also difficult to suppose, that they

have not powerfully contributed to generate that carelessness and want

of frugality observable among the poor, so contrary to the disposition

generally to be remarked among petty tradesmen and small farmers. The

labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from

hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention; and

they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of

saving, they seldom exercise it; but all that they earn beyond their

present necessities, goes, generally speaking, to the alehouse. The poor

laws may, therefore, be said to diminish both the power, and the will,

to save, among the common people, and thus to weaken one of the

strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and consequently to

happiness.’

This passage is remarkable. It may be asked in the first place, whether

the parish laws are not equally open to petty tradesmen and small

farmers, as to the poor. If so, they cannot account for the difference

observable between them. I shall therefore, as far as this very striking

contrast goes, put the poor laws out of the question; and say that the

difference in their behaviour can arise from nothing but the difference

in their situations, from the greater hardships imposed on the labouring

part of the community, from their different prospects in life, and the

little estimation in which they are held. Mr. Malthus accounts for the

carelessness and laziness of the poor from their casting a sheep’s-eye

at the work-house. No: they are to be accounted for from that poverty

and depression which makes the work-house a temptation to them. We

cannot say of those who are seduced by the prospect of a

work-house—‘Alas from what height fallen!’ Mr. Malthus proposes to

remove this dazzling object out of their way; to make them indulge in

larger views of things by setting before them the prospect of their

wives and children starving, in case of any accident to themselves, and

to stimulate their industry by lowering their wages. The poor live from

hand to mouth, because, in general, they have no hopes of living in any

other way. They seldom think of the future, because they are afraid to

think of it. Their present wants employ their whole attention. This is

their misfortune. Others have better luck. They have no time to think of

wind-falls. Mr. Malthus may take his glass of wine after dinner, and his

afternoon’s nap, when, having got the Essay on Population out of his

head, queen Mab ‘comes to him with a tythe-pig’s tail, tickling the

parson as he lies asleep:—then dreams he of another benefice.’ The poor

cannot indulge in such pleasing speculations. If what they earn beyond

their immediate necessities goes to the alehouse, it is because the

severe labour they undergo requires some relaxation, because they are

willing to forget the _work-house_, their old age, and the prospect of

their wives and children starving, and to drown care in a mug of ale, in

noise, and mirth, and laughter, and old ditties, and coarse jokes, and

hot disputes; and in that sense of short-lived comfort, independence and

good-fellowship, which is necessary to relieve the hurt mind and jaded

body. But all these, when our author’s system is once established,

‘shall no more impart,

‘An hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart.’

No human patience can submit to everlasting toil and self-denial. The

prospect of mere physical comfort is not a match for continued physical

suffering: and the lower classes of the people have no other motives to

animate them to bear up against the ills of life, in habits of moral

reflection, in the pursuits and example of the rich, or in the real

respect and credit attached to their own good behaviour. You reduce them

almost to the condition of brutes, and then grudge them their coarse

enjoyments: you make machines of them, and then expect from them

firmness, resolution, the love of independence, the fruits of an erect

and manly spirit. Mr. Malthus, like the Sphinx, destroys his victims by

the help of riddles; and makes a snare of impossibilities. As to the

workmen and mechanics in manufacturing towns (to say nothing of the

closeness and unwholesomeness of their occupations, which would go a

good way in accounting for ‘their drunkenness and dissipation’) the

noise and turbulence in which they live, and their being crowded

together as they are must unfit them for enjoying the quiet and

stillness of domestic life: they are glad to escape from the contempt

which their ‘squalid appearance’ excites in the well-dressed mob who

walk the streets, and hide their greasy clothes and smutched faces in

the nearest pot-house; and to say the truth, with respect to those of

them who are married, the hard features, the disjointed shapes, the

coarse limbs, the carking countenances, and ill-humour of their wives,

occasioned by the fretful wants of a set of squalling children, cannot

be supposed to prove so attractive to them, as ‘the symmetry of person,

the vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper, the affectionate

kindness of feeling, the imagination, and the wit’ which in Mr.

Malthus’s opinion constitute the charm of the sex. After all, are the

higher classes a bit better than their inferiors? Are drinking and

dissipation confined to the poor? As Mr. Malthus ingenuously observes,

‘Our Doctors Commons and the lives that many married men [of the better

sort] are known to lead sufficiently prove the reverse of this.’ I

believe it will hardly be proposed to make moral merit a rule for the

division of the good things of fortune. The only difference in the vices

of the rich and the poor is, that the rich can _afford_ theirs better.

Nevertheless they set up for censors and reformers of the morals of the

poor. I remember to have seen a red-faced swag-bellied bishop (such

another as Father Paul in the Duenna) who could drink his two bottles of

wine without being affected, belch out a severe reprimand against a poor

labouring man, who was staggering home after drinking a quart of small

beer. As to our author’s plan of _starving_ the poor out of their vices,

I must say (all circumstances considered) that I think it, in the first

place, an impudent proposal, because their executioners are no better

than themselves; in the second place, a silly proposal, because, if not

literally followed up, it must evidently defeat itself; in the third

place, a malignant proposal, because if it were strictly put in

practice, it could only produce despair and sullen insensibility among

the poor, and destroy all traces of justice or humanity among the rich;

in the fourth place, a lying proposal, because it is contrary to Mr.

Malthus’s own reasonings, who in many places has shewn that the only way

to improve the condition of the poor is not by urging them to extremity,

but by raising them above want, by inspiring them with a respect for

themselves, and a taste for the comforts and decencies of life by

sharing in them.

‘That the poor (says Mr. Malthus) employed in manufactures consider

parish assistance as a _reason_ why they may spend all the wages which

they earn, and enjoy themselves while they can, _appears to be evident_,

from the number of families that upon the failure of any great

manufactory, immediately fall upon the parish.’ This is an assumption of

the question. Our author here confounds the fact and the reason

together. It appears evident that the manufacturer often spends his

earnings as he gets them, but not that he does so in the hope that his

family may go to the parish after his death. ‘A man who might not be

deterred from going to the alehouse from the consideration that on his

death or sickness he should leave his wife and family upon the parish,

might yet hesitate in thus dissipating his earnings if he were assured

that in either of these cases _his family must starve_, or be left to

the support of casual bounty.’ Now it has appeared that his conduct is

regulated by motives and circumstances which have nothing to do with

what happens to his wife and children after his death. It may therefore

be questioned whether the catastrophe proposed by Mr. Malthus would have

the desired effect. But certainly it could not have this effect as long

as there was a dependence on casual bounty: and to stop up this resource

it would be absolutely necessary to call in the aid of the magistrate to

prevent the indiscreet and unavailing interference of private charity,

and execute the sentence of the law of nature and the law of God on his

wife and hapless progeny, justly doomed to starve for the neglect of

their parent. What effect this would have on the ‘moral sensibility of

the nation’ I leave to Mr. Malthus to determine with his well-known

penetration and humanity. ‘The suffering a poor family to perish of want

is bad enough: but I cannot conceive of any thing much more detestable

or shocking to the feelings than any direct regulation of this kind, by

whatever name it is sanctioned.’ Mr. Malthus may perhaps object that I

have quoted him unfairly; and applied to the _organizing the starving of

a family_ what he applied to the direct regulation of _infanticide_,—a

very different thing! Unfortunately, I have not sufficient delicacy of

_verbal_ feeling to be able to find out the difference.—Now I recollect,

however, what shocked Mr. Malthus so much in speaking of infanticide was

the supposition that the parents were to be forced to destroy their own

children, when they thought they could not maintain them; according to

our author’s mode of starving a family, the society are only to stand by

and prevent others from affording them assistance. Here we see there is

not that direct violation of the parental affection which, says Mr.

Malthus, is the principal aggravation of the other case. He explains the

grounds of this distinction in another part of his work. ‘If,’ says he,

‘the parents desert their child, _they_ ought to be answerable for the

crime. The infant is, comparatively speaking, of no value to the

society,[31] as others will immediately supply its place. Its principal

value is on account of its being the object of one of the most

delightful passions in human nature—parental affection. But if this

value be disregarded by those who are _alone_ in a capacity to feel it,

the _society_ cannot be called upon to put itself in their place and has

no further business in its protection,’ than just to see that its

parents do not ill-use, or kill or eat it. Nothing can be plainer than

the inference from these premises. The society, which is bound to

prevent or punish the least barbarity in parents towards their children,

because they are to them an object of a very delightful passion, may

exercise any barbarity it pleases on them itself, because it is not in a

capacity to feel this affection towards them. It is not only not called

upon to put itself in their place, but is bound to prevent others from

doing so, and thus reversing the laws of nature, by which ‘the child is

confided exclusively to its parents.’ It is only, says our author, by

extinguishing every spark of humanity in the breasts of the community

towards the children of others, that the ties of parental affection can

ever exist in their full force, or be expected ‘to remain in the state

in which nature has left them.’ Mr. Malthus may therefore in his zeal

for the growth of parental affection, and the entire suppression of

common humanity as subversive of it, very consistently brand every

attempt of the society to make the parents accomplices in starving their

children, as the greatest injustice, though we may very heroically

proceed to starve them ourselves, repeating after this high-priest of

nature, Their blood be upon us and upon _our_ children! This is the best

account I can give of the fundamental distinction which Mr. Malthus

makes between the impropriety and inhumanity of _destroying children_ by

law, and the propriety and humanity of _starving_ a family by law. But I

shall recur to the same subject presently, when I come to the detail of

his plan.

Mr. Malthus devotes the first and second chapters of his fourth book to

an inquiry into our obligations to regulate the sexual passion by

considerations of prudence, &c. into the general capacity of human

nature to act from rational motives, and the good effects which would

result from such a conduct. He begins his third chapter in the following

manner.

‘He who publishes a moral code, or system of duties, however firmly he

may be convinced of the strong obligation on each individual strictly to

conform to it, has never the folly to imagine that it will be

universally or even generally practised. But this is no valid objection

against the publication of the code. If it were, the same objection

would always have applied; we should be totally without general rules;

and to the vices of mankind arising from temptation, would be added a

much longer list, than we have at present, of vices from ignorance.’

[This is well said, and ’tis a kind of good deed to say well.] ‘Judging

merely from the light of nature, if we feel convinced of the misery

arising from a redundant population, on the one hand, and of the evils

and unhappiness, particularly to the female sex, arising from

promiscuous intercourse, on the other, I do not see how it is possible

for any person, who acknowledges the principle of utility as the great

foundation of morals, to escape the conclusion that moral restraint,

till we are in a condition to support a family, is the strict line of

duty; and when revelation is taken into the question, this duty

undoubtedly receives very powerful confirmation. At the same time, I

believe that few of my readers can be less sanguine in their

expectations of any great change in the general conduct of men on this

subject than I am; and the chief reason, why, in the last chapter, I

allowed myself to suppose the universal prevalence of this virtue, was,

that I might endeavour to remove any imputation on the goodness of the

Deity, by shewing that the evils arising from the principle of

population were exactly of the same nature as the generality of other

evils which excite fewer complaints, that they were increased by human

ignorance and indolence, and diminished by human knowledge and virtue;

and on the supposition, that each individual strictly fulfilled his

duty, would be almost totally removed; and this, without any general

diminution of those sources of pleasure, arising from the regulated

indulgence of the passions, which have been justly considered as the

principal ingredients of human happiness.’

Mr. Malthus here appears in the double character of a politician and

divine. Sir Hugh Evans says, ‘I like not when a ’omans has a great

peard.’ I must say, I do not like to see a philosopher in a cassock. He

has you at an unfair advantage, and it is a hundred to one but he will

make use of it. When he is pressed hard, or sees his arguments in danger

of being cut off, he puts them into the false belly of theology. It is

like hunting an otter: you do not know where to have him.—What our

author says of moral systems is certainly true: neither the preaching of

St. Paul, nor probably his own has been able to put an end to that

pious, courtly race of men, who strive equally to serve God and mammon.

Mr. Malthus in the last chapter took an opportunity of paying his court

to the former: the leaf is no sooner turned, than he begins to insinuate

himself into the good graces of the latter, by disclaiming the sincerity

of his late professions. In the passage just quoted, Mr. Malthus not

only tells you that he had endeavoured to give a more favourable account

of the expectations of mankind and their capacity for virtue and

happiness than he believes has any foundation in human nature; but he at

the same time lets you into his motive for so doing, viz. his wish to

remove any imputation on the divine goodness, which purpose, it seems,

would not have been so well answered by the real statement of the fact.

Having thus decently paid his compliments to his profession, and

justified the goodness of God from _the ideal capacity of man for

virtue_ he next proceeds to prove the wisdom of human institutions by

his _real incapacity_ for it. He was yesterday engaged to whitewash

Providence: to day he is retained on the other side of the question,

which he assures his clients shall not suffer through any anxiety of his

about consistency. This seems to be playing at fast and loose both with

religion and morality. Mr. Malthus has indeed set apart the preceding

chapter to shew that ‘the evils arising from the principle of population

are exactly of the same nature as the generality of other evils which

excite fewer complaints, that they were increased by human ignorance and

indolence, and diminished by human knowledge and virtue.’ But I do not

know what right he had to do this, seeing that it is the express object

of his work to shew that the evils of population are unlike all other

evils, neither generated by human folly, nor to be removed or palliated

by human wisdom, but by vice and misery alone: that they are _sui

generis_, and not to be reasoned upon, like any thing else. Neither do I

understand how the evils of population can be said to excite more

complaints than other evils, when Mr. Malthus tells us that till his

time nobody had thought of tracing them to their true source, but

erroneously ascribed them to human institutions, vice, folly, &c. Mr.

Malthus himself was the first who proved them to be irremediable and

inherent in the constitution of nature, and thus brought an imputation

upon Providence. To remove this imputation he supposes them to admit of

a remedy: then again lest any one should take him at his word and be for

applying this remedy, he says they admit of no such remedy; and that it

was all an idle supposition of his own without any foundation, a

harmless picture drawn to illustrate the _imaginary_ goodness of

Providence.

‘If it will answer any purpose of illustration, I see no harm in drawing

the picture of a society in which each individual is supposed strictly

to fulfil his duties: nor does a writer appear to be justly liable to

the imputation of being visionary, unless he makes such universal or

general obedience necessary to the practical utility of his system, and

to that degree of moderate and partial improvement, which is all that

can rationally be expected from the most complete knowledge of our

duties.

‘But in this respect, there is an essential difference between that

improved state of society which I have supposed in the last chapter, and

most of the other speculations on this subject. The improvement there

supposed, if we ever should make approaches towards it, is to be

effected in the way in which we have been in the habit of seeing all the

greatest improvements effected, by a direct application to the interest

and happiness of each individual. It is not required of us to act from

motives, to which we are unaccustomed; to pursue a general good, which

we may not distinctly comprehend, or the effect of which may be weakened

by distance or diffusion.’

Is there not such a virtue as patriotism? To what class of motives would

our author refer this feeling? The way in which Mr. Malthus wishes to

effect his improvement in the virtue and happiness of mankind, is one in

which no such improvement has hitherto been effected. But I see Mr.

Malthus’s object. He is only anxious, lest any one should attempt to

rear the fabric of human excellence on any other basis than that of vice

and misery. So that we begin with this solid and necessary foundation,

he does not care to what height the building is carried. So that we set

out on our journey of reform through the gate at which Mr. Malthus is

sitting at the receipt of custom, (whether it faces the road or not) it

gives him little concern what direction we take, or how far we go

afterwards, or whether we ever reach our promised destination.

‘The duty of each individual is express and intelligible to the humblest

capacity. It is merely that he is not to bring beings into the world for

whom he cannot find the means of support. When once this subject is

cleared from the obscurity thrown over it by parochial laws and _private

benevolence_, every man must feel the strongest conviction of such an

obligation. If he cannot support his children, they must _starve_; and

if he marry in the face of a fair probability that he shall not be able

to support his children, he is guilty of all the evils which he thus

brings upon himself, his wife, and his offspring. It is clearly his

interest, and will tend greatly to promote his happiness to defer

marrying, till, by industry and economy, he is in a capacity to support

the children, that he may reasonably expect from his marriage and as he

cannot in the mean time, gratify his passions, without violating _an

express command of God_, and running a great risk of injuring himself,

or some of his fellow creatures, considerations of his own interest and

happiness will dictate to him the strongest obligation to moral

restraint.

‘However powerful may be the impulses of passion _they are generally in

some degree modified by reason_. And it does not seem entirely visionary

to suppose, that if the true and permanent cause of poverty were clearly

explained,’ [This I take to be that the rich have more than the poor]

‘and forcibly brought home to each man’s bosom, it would have some, and

perhaps not an inconsiderable, influence on his conduct; at least, the

experiment has never yet been fairly tried.’

It is astonishing, what a propensity Mr. Malthus has to try experiments,

if there is any mischief to be done by them. He has a perfect horror of

experiments that are to be tried on the higher qualities of our nature,

from which any great, unmixed, and general good is to be expected. But

in proportion as the end is low, and the means base, he acquires

confidence, his tremours forsake him, and he approaches boldly to the

task with nerves of iron. His humanity is of a singular cast. What is

grand and elevated, seems to be his aversion. Pure benefits are of too

cloying a quality to please his taste. He is willing to improve the

morals of the people by extirpating the common feelings of mankind, and

will submit to the introduction of a greater degree of plenty and

comfort, provided it is prefaced by famine.

His ardour is kindled not so much in proportion to the difficulty, as to

the disgusting nature of the task. He is a kind of sentimental nightman,

an amateur chimney-sweeper, a patriotic Jack-ketch. The spirit of

adventure is roused in him only by the prospect of dirty roads, and

narrow, crooked paths. He never flinches where there is any evil to be

done, that good may come of it! His present plan is an admirable one of

the kind—_Omne tulit punctum_—it comprises both extremes of vice and

misery. The poor are to make a formal surrender of their right to

private charity or parish assistance, that the rich may be able to lay

out all their money on their vices.

‘Till these erroneous ideas have been corrected, and the language of

_nature_ and reason has been generally heard on the subject of

population, instead of the language of error and prejudice, it cannot be

said that any fair experiment has been made with the understandings of

the common people; and we cannot justly accuse them of improvidence and

want of industry, till they act as they do now, after it has been

brought home to their comprehensions, that they are themselves the cause

of their own poverty; that the means of redress are in their own hands,

and _in the hands of no other persons whatever; that the society in

which they live, and the government which presides over it, are totally

without power in this respect_; and however ardently they may desire to

relieve them, and whatever attempts they may make to do so, they are

really and truly unable to execute what they benevolently wish, but

unjustly promise; that when the wages of labour will not maintain a

family, it is an incontrovertible sign that _their king and country do

not want more subjects_, or at least that _they cannot support them_;

that if they marry in this case, so far from fulfilling a duty to

society, they are throwing a useless burden on it, at the same time that

they are plunging themselves into distress; and that they are acting

directly contrary to the will of God, and bringing down upon themselves

various diseases, which might all, or in a great part, have been

avoided, if they had attended to the repeated admonitions which he

gives, by the general laws of nature, to every being capable of

reason.’[32]

The erroneous ideas of which Mr. Malthus here complains as prevailing in

the minds of the common people, to the prejudice of the language of

reason and nature, are, as he states just before, that their poverty and

distress are _in part_ owing to their not getting more for their labour,

to the slowness with which the parish assist them, to the avarice of the

rich, and to the institutions of society, or to fortune which has

assigned them a place so beset with difficulties and dependence! No,

poverty is owing to none of these causes, but it is owing entirely to

_itself_. Mr. Burke has said, that people will not be argued into

slavery. Our author attempts more than this. He tries to persuade them

out of their senses, and to argue them into slavery and famine besides.

There is a distinction which it is sometimes dangerous to insist on in

common life; but which it is necessary to attend to in matters of

reasoning, and that is the distinction between truth and falsehood. For

instance, Mr. Malthus asserts, that the means of remedying their

complaints are in the hands of the poor, and in the hands of no other

persons whatever. Now this is not true. It is not true that the society

in which they live and the government which presides over it are

_totally_ without power in this respect. It is not true that however

ardently they may wish to relieve them, they are utterly unable to

execute their benevolent intentions. It is not an incontrovertible sign

that their king and country do not want more subjects, and that they

cannot support them, when the common wages of labour will not maintain a

family. As Mr. Malthus’s positions exist no where but in the Essay of

Population, they will hardly support those weighty practical conclusions

which he wishes to build upon them. Some persons may perhaps be at a

loss to understand what Mr. Malthus can mean by his assertions. The

following may be some clue to what in itself has very much the

appearance of irony.

‘Among the other prejudices which have prevailed on the subject of

population, it has been generally thought, that while there is either

waste among the rich, or land remaining uncultivated in any country, the

complaint for want of food cannot be justly founded, or, at least, that

the pressure of distress upon the poor is to be attributed to the

ill-conduct of the higher classes of society, and the bad management of

the land. The real effect, however, of these two circumstances, is

merely to narrow the limit of the actual population; but they have

little or no influence on what may be called the average pressure of

distress on the poorer members of society. If our ancestors had been so

frugal and industrious, and had transmitted such habits to their

posterity, that nothing superfluous was now consumed by the higher

classes, no horses were used for pleasure, and no land was left

uncultivated, a striking difference would appear in the state of the

actual population; but probably none whatever, in the state of the lower

classes of people, with respect to the price of labour, and the facility

of supporting a family. The waste among the rich and the horses kept for

pleasure, have indeed a little the effect of the consumption of grain in

distilleries, noticed before with regard to China. On the supposition

that the food consumed in this manner may be withdrawn on the occasion

of a scarcity, and be applied to the relief of the poor, they operate,

certainly, as far as they go, like granaries which are only opened at

the time that they are most wanted, and must therefore tend rather to

benefit than injure the lower classes of society.

‘With regard to uncultivated land, it is evident that its effect upon

the poor is neither to injure, nor to benefit them. The sudden

cultivation of it, will indeed tend to improve their condition for a

time, and the neglect of lands before cultivated, will certainly make

their situation worse for a certain period; but when no changes of this

kind are going forward, the effect of uncultivated land on the lower

classes, operates merely like the possession of a smaller territory.’

After what has been said in various parts of these observations, I might

leave these passages to the contempt of the reader. But Mr. Malthus

shall not complain of my remissness. I will give him heaped measure. I

say then that the argument here employed leads to a direct absurdity:

for it would justify any degree of neglect, or waste, or wanton abuse

that can be imagined. If thirty-nine out of the forty counties in

England were laid waste to-morrow, this would be no evil, according to

Mr. Malthus, because it would not increase the average pressure of

distress in the remaining one. If half the corn that is grown every

year, besides what is already employed in supplying the waste of the

rich, were regularly sent off by waggon-loads, and thrown into the sea,

there would be still no harm done. A _striking_ difference would

undoubtedly appear in the number of poor people, but probably none

whatever in the state of those who had not been starved. If double the

number of horses were kept for pleasure, and only half the number of

poor were kept alive, these latter would have no reason to complain,

because they would be as well, or better off than ever; and if a limited

number are tolerably well provided for, this is all that can ever be

expected, because by the laws of nature it is impossible to provide for

an unlimited number. To say nothing of those immense granaries and

boundless resources which are thus formed in the uncultivated parts of

the earth, or which might be created at any time of extraordinary

distress by employing in the service of man what had hitherto been

providently reserved for the beasts.

While there is waste among the rich, or neglect of lands, or while the

breed of horses is encouraged so as to put a stop to the breed of men, I

deny that the distresses of the poor, or the restraints on population

are the necessary effects of the laws of nature, or of the unavoidable

disproportion between the increase of mankind and the capacity of the

earth to produce food for a greater number. But Mr. Malthus has his

usual resource. Though the distresses of the poor were actually relieved

as they might be, and though the unnecessary checks to population were

taken off, yet the time would come when these wants could no longer be

supplied, and when the restraints on population would become necessary,

from the inability of the earth to yield any more, and from the whole

produce being applied to the best advantage. This is undoubtedly true:

but I do not think it a reason that we are not to put off the evil as

long as we can, or that we are not to attempt any improvement, because

we cannot go on for ever improving. Death is certain, and ‘will come

when it will come.’ Is that a reason why I should take poison? There is

in all Mr. Malthus’s arguments on this subject the same _twist_ that

there was in the Irish servant, who was told to call his master early,

and waked him two hours before the time to tell him how much longer he

had to sleep. Mr. Malthus would have insisted on his getting up and

dressing himself in the middle of the night.

Mr. Malthus allows, that ‘the object of those who really wish to better

the condition of the poor must be to raise the relative proportion

between the price of labour, and the price of provisions.’ Almost in the

next paragraph, however, he adds, that if we are really serious in this

object, ‘we must explain to them the true nature of their situation, and

shew them that _the withholding the supplies of labour is the only

possible way of raising its real price_.’ I cannot help thinking, to use

his own words, that our author’s ‘benevolence to the poor must be either

childish play, or hypocrisy: that it must be either to amuse himself, or

to pacify the minds of the common people with a mere shew of attention

to their wants.’ He proceeds to instruct the poor in their true

situation in a chapter which requires a few comments.

‘The pressure of distress on the lower classes of people, with the habit

of attributing this distress to their rulers, appears to me to be the

rock of defence, the castle, the guardian spirit, of despotism. It

affords to the tyrant the fatal and unanswerable plea of _necessity_.’

[That is Mr. Malthus’s plea.] ‘While any dissatisfied man of talents has

power to persuade the lower classes of people, that all their poverty

and distress arise solely from the iniquity of the government, though

perhaps the greatest part of what they suffer is totally unconnected

with this cause, it is evident that the seeds of fresh discontents, and

fresh revolutions, are continually sowing.’

That is, the way to prevent revolutions, and at the same time to produce

lasting reforms is to persuade the people that all the evils which they

suffer, or which the government may chuse to inflict upon them are their

own fault. The way to put governments upon their good behaviour is to

give them a licence to do as much mischief as they please, without being

answerable for it.

‘Of the tendency of mobs to produce tyranny, we may not be long without

an example in this country. _As a friend to freedom, and an enemy to

large standing armies_, it is with extreme reluctance that I am

compelled to acknowledge, that, had it not been for the organized force

in the country, the distresses of the people during the late scarcities,

encouraged by the extreme ignorance and folly of many among the higher

classes, might have driven them to commit the most dreadful outrages,

and ultimately to involve the country in all the horrors of famine.’

Does Mr. Malthus think that this hint will dispose the government to

keep up their large standing armies, or to mitigate the distresses of

the people? I wonder, if Blifil had happened to be an author, whether he

might not have written such a book as this.

‘Should such periods often recur, a recurrence which we have too much

reason to apprehend from the present state of the country, the prospect

which opens to our view is melancholy in the extreme. The English

constitution will be seen hastening with rapid strides to the

_Euthanasia_ foretold by Hume; unless its progress be interrupted by

some popular commotion; and this alternative presents a picture still

more appalling to the imagination. If political discontents were blended

with the cries of hunger, and a revolution were to take place by the

instrumentality of a mob, clamouring for want of food, the consequences

would be unceasing change and unceasing carnage, the bloody career of

which, nothing but the establishment of some complete despotism could

arrest.’

The gentleman seems greatly alarmed at his own predictions. He points

out to government the dangers arising from mobs; and shews that these

again arise from discontent, and repining against the good order of

society. The way proposed to cure them of this discontent, and these

false notions of society is to break asunder at once the link of

humanity which binds the poor to the rich, to reduce them to extremity,

to cut off all hope, all over-weening expectation, all mutual kindness

and good offices, by exploding the very idea of the rights of the poor,

or the duties of the rich, and thus to tame them so effectually and

systematically, that we shall be in no danger from mobs, revolutions, or

military despotism, but shall conclude with a happy Euthanasia!

‘To say that our conduct is not to be regulated by circumstances, is to

betray an ignorance of the most _solid_ and incontrovertible principles

of morality.’ [An odd phrase. Solid seems to imply something fixed. We

should hardly talk of a _solid_ bridge of boats, though they might

afford tolerably safe footing.] ‘Though the admission of this principle

may sometimes afford a cloke to changes of opinion that do not result

from the purest motives; yet the admission of a contrary principle would

be productive of infinitely worse consequences. The phrase of existing

circumstances has, I believe, not unfrequently created a smile in the

English House of Commons; but the smile should have been reserved for

the application of the phrase and not have been excited by the phrase

itself.’ [He teaches us to smile by the book.] ‘A very frequent

repetition of it, has indeed, of itself, rather a suspicious air; and

its application should always be watched with the most jealous and

anxious attention; but no man ought to be judged _in limine_ for saying,

that existing circumstances had obliged him to alter his opinions and

conduct. The country gentlemen were perhaps too easily convinced that

existing circumstances called upon them to give up some of the most

valuable privileges of Englishmen; but, as far as they were really

convinced of this obligation, they acted consistently with the _clearest

rule_ of morality.’ [Begging the learned writer’s pardon, it is rather

the exception than the rule. Did Junius Brutus, when he killed his son,

act in conformity to the _clearest rule of morality_? Mr. Malthus has

not quite got rid of the leaven of his old philosophy.]

‘The degree of power to be given to the civil government, and the

measure of our submission to it, must be determined by general

expediency.’

This is saying a good deal. The rule which Mr. Malthus then lays down

for ‘a rising of the people,’ seems to be that when they are enlightened

and well off, that is, when the government is a good one, they may rebel

against it: but when they are kept in a state of ignorance and want,

then they are to blame, if they are at all refractory: they are to be

considered as the causes of that very oppression which they are

endeavouring to resist, and as giving a farther handle to that tyranny,

which their superiors are thus forced to exercise in self-defence, not

from any innate love of power, or predilection for violent measures.

‘All improvements in government must necessarily originate with persons

of some education, and these will of course be found among the people of

property. Whatever may be said of a few, it is impossible that the great

mass of the people of property should be really interested in the abuses

of government. They merely submit to them, from the fear, that an

endeavour to remove them, might be productive of greater evils. Could we

but take away this fear, reform and improvement would proceed with as

much facility, as the removal of nuisances, or the paving and lighting

the streets. Remove all apprehension from the tyranny or folly of the

people, and the tyranny of government could not stand a moment. It would

then appear in its proper deformity, without palliation, without

pretext, without protector. Naturally feeble in itself, when it was once

stripped naked, and deprived of the support of public opinion, and of

the great _plea of necessity_, it would fall without a struggle.’

This is a new view of the subject. What then, mankind are governed by

the pure love of justice! The people of property and education have no

vices or follies of their own, which blind their understandings, no

prejudices about royalty, or aristocracy, or church or state, no

attachment to party, no dependence on great men, no hopes of preferment,

no connections, no privileges, no interest in the abuses of government,

no pride, none of the _esprit de corps_, to hinder them from pronouncing

sentence on the laws, institutions, uses, and abuses of society with the

same calmness, disinterestedness, and wisdom, as they would upon

cleaning a sewer, or paving a street.

‘The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those

general declaimers, who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost

all the evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the

iniquity of governments.’

This is like those highwaymen, who attribute their ill treatment of

their victims to the resistance they make.

‘Whatever therefore may be the intention of those indiscriminate and

wholesale accusations against governments, their real effect undoubtedly

is, to add a weight of talents and principles to the prevailing power

which it never would have received otherwise.’

This is possible: but the effect of Mr. Malthus’s method would be that

they would not want the additional weight either of talents or

principle, but would laugh in your face.

‘The inference, therefore, which Mr. Paine and others have drawn against

governments from the unhappiness of the people, is palpably unfair; and

before we give a sanction to such accusations, it is a debt we owe to

truth and justice, to ascertain how much of this unhappiness arises from

the principle of population, and how much is fairly to be attributed to

government. When this distinction has been properly made, and all the

vague, indefinite, and false accusations removed, government would

remain, as it ought to be, clearly responsible for the rest. A tenfold

weight would be immediately given to the cause of the people, and every

man of principle would join in asserting and enforcing, if necessary,

their rights.’

_Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes._ Our author here wishes to delay the

question in order to give additional weight to the cause of the people.

This is something as if upon a stranger coming into a house almost

fainting with hunger and cold, we should advise him not to go near the

fire, nor take any thing to eat, for that there is a great apothecary in

the neighbourhood who sometimes calls in about that time of the day, who

will be able to tell him exactly how much of his illness proceeds from

cold, and how much from hunger, whether he should eat, or warm himself

first, and how the one would assist the other. The man might naturally

answer, I know that I am very cold and hungry: I will therefore first

sit down by the fire, and if, in the mean time, you can let me have any

thing to eat, I shall be heartily glad of it. Otherwise the advice of

the apothecary will come too late.

‘I cannot help thinking, therefore, that a knowledge generally

circulated, that the principal cause of want and unhappiness is

unconnected with government, and totally beyond its power to remove

would, instead of giving any advantage to governments, give a great

additional weight to the popular side of the question, by removing the

dangers with which, from ignorance, it is at present accompanied: and

thus tend, in a very powerful manner, to promote the cause of rational

freedom.’

The mode in which Mr. Malthus strengthens the popular side is by

disarming it of all power or pretence for resistance. Undoubtedly that

must be a strange sort of strength which is founded on impotence. The

people are only secure against the encroachments of power from their

inability to resist it. This is like clapping a man into a dungeon to

save him from the pursuit of his creditors. Mr. Malthus promotes the

cause of rational freedom, as the husband secured the virtue of his wife

in the sign of the Good Woman.

Mr. Malthus’s plan for the abolition of the poor laws is as follows:

‘I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring, that no child born

from any marriage, taking place after the expiration of a year from the

date of the law; and no illegitimate child born two years from the same

date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance. And to give a more

general knowledge of this law, and to enforce it more strongly on the

minds of the lower classes of people, the clergyman of each parish

should after the publication of banns, read a short address, stating the

strong obligation on every man to support his own children; the

impropriety, and even immorality, of marrying without a fair prospect of

being able to do this; the evils which had resulted to the poor

themselves, from the attempt which had been made to assist by public

institutions in a duty which ought to be exclusively appropriated to

parents; and the absolute necessity which had at length appeared, of

abandoning all such institutions, on account of their producing effects

totally opposite to those which were intended.

‘This would operate as a fair, distinct, and precise notice, which no

man could well mistake; and without pressing hard on any particular

individuals, would at once throw off the rising generation from that

miserable and helpless dependence upon the government and the rich, the

moral as well as physical consequences of which are almost incalculable.

‘After the public notice which I have proposed had been given, and the

system of poor laws had ceased with regard to the rising generation, if

any man chose to marry, without a prospect of being able to support a

family, he should have the most perfect liberty so to do. Though to

marry, in this case, is in my opinion clearly an immoral act, yet it is

not one which society can justly take upon itself to prevent or punish;

because the punishment provided for it by the laws of nature, falls

directly, and most severely upon the individual who commits the act, and

through him, only more remotely and feebly on the society. When nature

will govern and punish for us, it is a very miserable ambition to wish

to snatch the rod from her hands, and draw upon ourselves the odium of

executioner. To the punishment therefore of nature he should be left,

the punishment of severe want. He has erred in the face of a most clear

and precise warning, and can have no just reason to complain of any

person but himself, when he feels the consequences of his error. All

parish assistance should be most rigidly denied him: and if the hand of

private charity be stretched forth in his relief, the interests of

humanity imperiously require that it should be administered very

sparingly. He should be taught to know that the laws of nature, which

are the laws of God, had doomed him and his family to starve for

disobeying their repeated admonitions;’ [nay his family had no hand in

disobeying these admonitions] ‘that he had no claim of _right_ on

society for the smallest portion of food, beyond that which his labour

would fairly purchase; and that if he and his family were saved from

suffering the extremities of hunger, he would owe it to the pity of some

kind benefactor, to whom, therefore, he ought to be bound by the

strongest ties of gratitude.

‘If this system were pursued, we need be under no apprehensions that the

number of persons in extreme want would be beyond the power and the will

of the benevolent to supply. The sphere for the exercise of private

charity would, I am confident, be less than it is at present; and the

only difficulty would be, to restrain the hand of benevolence from

assisting those in distress in so indiscriminate a manner as to

encourage indolence and want of foresight in others.’

I am not sorry that I am at length come to this passage. It will I hope

decide the reader’s opinion of the benevolence, wisdom, piety, candour,

and disinterested simplicity of Mr. Malthus’s mind. Any comments that I

might make upon it to strengthen this impression must be faint and

feeble. I give up the task of doing justice to the moral beauties that

pervade every line of it, in despair. There are some instances of an

heroical contempt for the narrow prejudices of the world, of a perfect

refinement from the vulgar feelings of human nature, that must only

suffer by a comparison with any thing else.

Mr. Malthus prefaces his plan by saying,

‘I have reflected much on the subject of the poor laws, and hope

therefore that I shall be excused in venturing to suggest a mode of

their gradual abolition, to which I confess that at present I can see no

material objection. Of this indeed I feel nearly convinced, that should

we ever become sufficiently sensible of the wide-spreading tyranny,

dependence, indolence, and unhappiness, which they create, as seriously

to make an effort to abolish them, we shall be compelled by a sense of

justice to adopt the principle, if not the plan, which I shall mention.

It seems impossible to get rid of so extensive a system of support,

consistently with humanity, without applying ourselves directly to its

vital principle, and endeavouring to counteract that deeply-seated

cause, which occasions the rapid growth of all such establishments, and

invariably renders them inadequate to their object. As a previous step

even to any considerable alteration in the present system, which would

contract, or stop the increase of the relief to be given, it appears to

me that we are bound in justice and honour formally to disclaim the

_right_ of the poor to support.’

Now I shall not myself be so uncandid as not to confess, that I think

the poor laws bad things; and that it would be well, if they could be

got rid of, consistently with humanity and justice. This I do not think

they could in the present state of things and other circumstances

remaining as they are. The reason why I object to Mr. Malthus’s plan is

that it does not go to the root of the evil, or attack it in its

principle, but its effects. He confounds the cause with the effect. The

wide spreading tyranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappiness of which

Mr. Malthus is so sensible, are not occasioned by the increase of the

poor-rates, but these are the natural consequence of that increasing

tyranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappiness occasioned by other

causes.

Mr. Malthus desires his readers to look at the enormous proportion in

which the poor-rates have increased within the last ten years. But have

they increased in any greater proportion than the other taxes, which

rendered them necessary, and which I think were employed for much more

mischievous purposes? I would ask, what have the poor got by their

encroachments for the last ten years? Do they work less hard? Are they

better fed? Do they marry oftener, and with better prospects? Are they

grown pampered and insolent? Have they changed places with the rich?

Have they been cunning enough, by means of the poor-laws, to draw off

all their wealth and superfluities from the men of property? Have they

got so much as a quarter of an hour’s leisure, a farthing candle, or a

cheese-paring more than they had? Has not the price of provisions risen

enormously? Has not the price of labour almost stood still? Have not the

government and the rich had their way in every thing? Have they not

gratified their ambition, their pride, their obstinacy, their ruinous

extravagance? Have they not squandered the resources of the country as

they pleased? Have they not heaped up wealth on themselves, and their

dependents? Have they not multiplied sinecures, places, and pensions?

Have they not doubled the salaries of those that existed before? Has

there been any want of new creations of peers, who would thus be

impelled to beget heirs to their titles and estates, and saddle the

younger branches of their rising families, by means of their new

influence, on the country at large? Has there been any want of

contracts, of loans, of monopolies of corn, of good understanding

between the rich and the powerful to assist one another, and to fleece

the poor? Have the poor prospered? Have the rich declined? What then

have they to complain of? What ground is there for the apprehension,

that wealth is secretly changing hands, and that the whole property of

the country will shortly be absorbed in the poor’s fund? Do not the poor

create their own fund? Is not the necessity for such a fund first

occasioned by the unequal weight with which the rich press upon the

poor, and has not the increase of that fund in the last ten years been

occasioned by the additional exorbitant demands, which have been made

upon the poor and industrious, which without some assistance from the

public they could not possibly have answered? Whatever is the increase

in the nominal amount of the poor’s fund, will not the rich always be

able ultimately to throw the burthen of it on the poor themselves? But

Mr. Malthus is a man of general principles. He cares little about these

circumstantial details, and petty objections. He takes higher ground. He

deduces all his conclusions, by an infallible logic, from the laws of

God and nature. When our Essayist shall prove to me, that by these paper

bullets of the brain, by his ratios of the increase of food and the

increase of mankind, he has prevented one additional tax, or taken off

one oppressive duty, that he has made a single rich man retrench one

article at his table, that he has made him keep a dog or a horse the

less, or part with a single vice, arguing from a mathematical

admeasurement of the size of the earth, and the number of inhabitants it

can contain, he shall have my perfect leave to disclaim the right of the

poor to subsistence, and to tie them down by severe penalties to their

good behaviour on the same profound principles. But why does Mr. Malthus

practise his demonstrations on the poor only? Why are they to have a

perfect system of rights and duties prescribed to them? I do not see why

they alone should be put to live on these _metaphysical_ board-wages,

why they should be forced to submit to a course of _abstraction_; or why

it should be meat and drink to them, more than to others, to do the will

of God. Mr. Malthus’s gospel is preached only to the poor!—Even if I

approved of our author’s plan, I should object to the principle on which

it is founded. The parson of the parish, when a poor man comes to be

married—No, not so fast. The author does not say, whether the lecture he

proposes is to be read to the poor only, or to all ranks of people.

Would it not sound oddly, if when the squire, who is himself worth a

hundred thousand pounds, is going to be married to the rector’s

daughter, who is to have fifty, the curate should read them a formal

lecture on their obligation to maintain their own children, and not turn

them on the parish? Would it be necessary to go through the form of the

address, when an amorous couple of eighty presented themselves at the

altar? If the admonition were left to the parson’s own discretion, what

affronts would he not subject himself to, from his neglect of old maids,

and superannuated widows, and from his applying himself familiarly to

the little shop-keeper, or thriving mechanic? Well then let us suppose

that a very poor hard-working man comes to be married, and that the

clergyman can take the liberty with him: he is to warn him first against

fornication, and in the next place against matrimony. These are the two

greatest sins which a poor man can commit, who can neither be supposed

to keep his wife, nor his girl. Mr. Malthus, however, does not think

them equal: for he objects strongly to a country fellow’s marrying a

girl whom he has debauched, or, as the phrase is, making an honest woman

of her, as aggravating the crime, because by this means the parish will

probably have three or four children to maintain instead of one.

However, as it seems rather too late to recommend fornication or any

thing else to a man who is actually come to be married (he must be a

strange sawney who could turn back at the church-door after bringing a

pretty rosy girl to hear a lecture on the principle of population) it is

most natural to suppose that he would marry the young woman in spite of

this principle. Here then he errs in the face of a precise warning, and

should be left to the punishment of _nature_, the punishment of severe

want. When he begins to feel the consequences of his error, all parish

assistance is to be rigidly denied him, and the interests of humanity

imperiously require that all other assistance should be withheld from

him, or most sparingly administered. In the mean time to reconcile him

to this treatment, and let him see that he has nobody to complain of but

himself, the parson of the parish comes to him with the certificate of

his marriage, and a copy of the warning he had given him at the time, by

which he is taught to know that the laws of nature, which are the laws

of God, had doomed him and his family to starve for disobeying their

repeated admonitions; that he had no claim of right to the smallest

portion of food beyond what his labour would actually purchase; and that

he ought to kiss the feet and lick the dust off the shoes of him, who

gave him a reprieve from the just sentence which the laws of God and

nature had passed upon him. To make this clear to him, it would be

necessary to put the Essay on Population into his hands, to instruct him

in the nature of a geometrical and arithmetical series, in the necessary

limits to population from the size of the earth, and here would come in

Mr. Malthus’s plan of education for the poor, writing, arithmetic, the

use of the globes, &c. for the purpose of proving to them the necessity

of their being starved. It cannot be supposed that the poor man (what

with his poverty and what with being priest-ridden) should be able to

resist this body of evidence, he would open his eyes to his error, and

‘would submit to the sufferings that were absolutely irremediable with

the fortitude of a man, and the resignation of a Christian.’ He and his

family might then be sent round the parish in a starving condition,

accompanied by the constables and _quondam_ overseers of the poor, to

see that no person, blind to ‘the interests of humanity,’ practised upon

them the abominable deception of attempting to relieve their remediless

sufferings, and by the parson of the parish to point out to the

spectators the inevitable consequences of sinning against the laws of

God and man. By celebrating a number of these _Auto da fes_ yearly in

every parish, the greatest publicity would be given to the principle of

population, ‘the strict line of duty would be pointed out to every man,’

enforced by the most powerful sanctions, justice and humanity would

flourish, they would be understood to signify that the poor have no

right to live by their labour, and that the feelings of compassion and

benevolence are best shewn by denying them charity, the poor would no

longer be dependent on the rich, the rich could no longer wish to reduce

the poor into a more complete subjection to their will, all causes of

contention, of jealousy, and of irritation would have ceased between

them, the struggle would be over, each class would fulfil the task

assigned by heaven, the rich would oppress the poor without remorse, the

poor would submit to oppression with a pious gratitude and resignation,

the greatest harmony would prevail between the government and the

people, there would be no longer any seditions, tumults, complaints,

petitions, partisans of liberty, or tools of power, no grumbling, no

repining, no discontented men of talents proposing reforms, and

frivolous remedies, but we should all have the same gaiety and lightness

of heart, and the same happy spirit of resignation that a man feels when

he is seized with the plague, who thinks no more of the physician, but

knows that his disorder is without cure. The best laid schemes are

subject, however, to unlucky reverses. Some such seem to lie in the way

of that pleasing Euthanasia, and contented submission to the grinding

law of necessity, projected by Mr. Malthus. We might never reach the

philosophic temper of the inhabitants of modern Greece and Turkey in

this respect. Many little things might happen to interrupt our progress,

if we were put into ever so fair a train. For instance, the men might

perhaps be talked over by the parson, and their understandings being

convinced by the geometrical and arithmetical ratios, or at least so far

puzzled, that they would have nothing to say for themselves, they might

prepare to submit to their fate with a tolerable grace. But I am afraid

that the women might prove refractory. They never will hearken to

reason, and are much more governed by their feelings than by

calculations. While the husband was instructing his wife in the

principles of population, she might probably answer that she did not see

why her children should starve when the squire’s lady, or the parson’s

lady kept half a dozen lap-dogs, and that it was but the other day that

being at the hall, or the parsonage house, she heard Miss declare that

not one of the brood that were just littered should be drowned—It was

_so inhuman_ to kill the poor little things—Surely the children of the

poor are as good as puppy-dogs! Was it not a week ago that the rector

had a new pack of terriers sent down, and did I not hear the squire

swear a tremendous oath, that he would have Mr. Such-a-one’s fine

hunter, if it cost him a hundred guineas? Half that sum would save us

from ruin.—After this curtain-lecture, I conceive that the husband might

begin to doubt the force of the demonstrations he had read and heard,

and the next time his clerical monitor came, might pluck up courage to

question the matter with him; and as we of the male sex, though dull of

apprehension, are not slow at taking a hint, and can draw tough

inferences from it, it is not impossible but the parson might be

_gravelled_. In consequence of these accidents happening more than once,

it would be buzzed about that the laws of God and nature, on which so

many families had been doomed to starve, were not so clear as had been

pretended. This would soon get wind among the mob: and at the next grand

procession of the Penitents of famine, headed by Mr. Malthus in person,

some discontented man of talents, who could not bear the distresses of

_others_ with the fortitude of a man and the resignation of a Christian,

might undertake to question Mr. Malthus, whether the laws of nature or

of God, to which he had piously sacrificed so many victims, signified

any thing more than the limited extent of the earth, and the natural

impossibility of providing for more than a limited number of human

beings; and whether those laws could be justly put in force, to the very

letter, while the actual produce of the earth, by being better

husbanded, or more equally distributed, or given to men and not to

beasts, might maintain in comfort double the number that actually

existed, and who, not daring to demand a _fair_ proportion of the

produce of their labour, humbly crave charity, and are refused out of

regard to the interests of justice and humanity. Our philosopher, at

this critical juncture not being able to bring into the compass of a few

words all the history, metaphysics, morality and divinity, or all the

intricacies, subtleties, and callous equivocations contained in his

quarto volume, might hesitate and be confounded—his own feelings and

prejudices might add to his perplexity—his interrogator might persist in

his question—the mob might become impatient for an answer, and not

finding one to their minds, might proceed to extremities. Our

unfortunate Essayist (who by that time would have become a bishop) might

be ordered to the lamp-post, and his book committed to the flames.—I

tremble to think of what would follow:—the poor laws would be again

renewed, and the poor no longer doomed to starve by the laws of God and

nature! Some such, I apprehend, might be the consequence of attempting

to enforce the abolition of the poor-laws, the extinction of private

charity, and of instructing the poor in their metaphysical rights. In a

few years time it is probable, however, that no such consequences would

follow. In that time, if Mr. Malthus’s systematic ardour will let him

wait so long, they may be gradually crushed low enough in the scale of

existence to be ripe for the ironical benefits, and sarcastic

instruction prepared for them. Mr. Malthus says,

‘The scanty relief granted to persons in distress, the capricious and

insulting manner in which it is sometimes distributed by the overseers,

and the natural and becoming pride not yet quite extinct among the

peasantry of England, have deterred the more thinking and virtuous part

of them, from venturing on marriage, without some better prospect of

maintaining their families, than mere parish assistance. The desire of

bettering our condition and the fear of making it worse, like the _vis

medicatrix naturæ_ in physics, is the _vis medicatrix reipublicæ_ in

politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from

narrow human institutions. In spite of the prejudices in favour of

population, and the direct encouragements to marriage from the poor

laws, it operates as a preventive check to increase; and happy for this

country is it that it does so.’

If then this natural repugnance in the poor to subject themselves to the

necessity of parish relief has ceased to operate, must it not be owing

to extreme distress, or to the degradation of character, consequent upon

it? How does Mr. Malthus propose to remedy this? By subjecting them to

severe distress, and _teaching them patience under their sufferings_.

But the rational desire of bettering our condition and the fear of

making it worse is not increased by its being made worse. The standard

of our notions of decency and comfort is not raised by a familiarity

with unmitigated wretchedness, nor is the love of independence

heightened by insults, and contempt, and by a formal mockery of the

principles of justice and humanity. On the previous habits and character

of the people, it is, however, that the degree of misery incurred always

depends, as far as relates to themselves. The consequence of an

effectual abolition of the poor laws would be all the immediate misery

that would be produced, aggravated by the additional depression, and

proneness to misery in the lower classes, and a beautiful putrefaction

of all the common feelings of human nature in the higher ones. Finally,

I agree with Mr. Malthus, that, ‘if, as in Ireland and in Spain, and

many of the southern countries, the people be in so degraded a state, as

to propagate their species like brutes, it matters little, whether they

have poor laws or not. Misery in all its various forms must be the

predominant check to their increase: and with, or without poor laws, no

stretch of human ingenuity and exertion could rescue the people from the

most extreme poverty and wretchedness.’

As to the metaphysical subtleties, by which Mr. Malthus endeavours to

prove that we ought systematically to visit the sins of the father on

the children, and keep up the stock of vice and misery in the family

(from which it would follow, that the children of thieves and robbers

ought either to be hanged outright, or at least brought up in such a

manner as to ensure their following the fate of their parents) I feel

and know my own superiority on that ground so well, that it would be

ungenerous to push it farther. Mr. Malthus has a curious chapter on old

maids. He might have written one on suicides, and another on

prostitutes. As far as the question of population is concerned, they are

certainly of more service to the community, because they tempt others to

follow their example, whereas an old maid is a beacon to frighten others

into matrimony. But this, says our author, is owing to unjust prejudice.

I shall give the reader some of his arguments, as otherwise he might not

guess at them.

‘It is not enough to abolish all the positive institutions which

encourage population; but we must endeavour, at the same time, to

correct the prevailing opinions, which have the same, or perhaps even a

more powerful, effect. The matron who has reared a family of ten or

twelve children, and whose sons, perhaps, may be fighting the battles of

their country, is apt to think that society owes her much; and this

imaginary debt, society is, in general, fully inclined to acknowledge.

But if the subject be fairly considered, and the respected matron

weighed in the scales of justice against the neglected old maid, it is

possible that the matron might kick the beam. She will appear rather in

the character of a monopolist, than of a great benefactor to the state.

If she had not married and had so many children, other members of the

society might have enjoyed this satisfaction; and there is no particular

reason for supposing that her sons would fight better for their country

than the sons of other women. She has therefore rather subtracted from,

than added to, the happiness of the other part of society. The old maid,

on the contrary, has exalted others by depressing herself. Her

self-denial has made room for another marriage, without any additional

distress; and she has not, like the generality of men, in avoiding one

error, fallen into its opposite. She has really and truly contributed

more to the happiness of the rest of the society arising from the

pleasures of marriage, than if she had entered into this union herself,

and had besides portioned twenty maidens with a hundred pounds each;

whose particular happiness would have been balanced, either by an

increase in the general difficulties of rearing children and getting

employment, or by the necessity of celibacy in twenty other maidens

somewhere else. Like the truly benevolent man in an irremediable

scarcity, she has diminished her own consumption, instead of raising up

a few particular people, by pressing down the rest. On a fair

comparison, therefore, she seems to have a better founded claim to the

gratitude of society than the matron. Whether we could always completely

sympathize with the motives of her conduct, has not much to do with the

question. The particular motive which influenced the matron to marry,

was certainly not the good of her country. To refuse a proper tribute of

respect to the old maid, because she was not directly influenced in her

conduct by the desire of conferring on society a certain benefit, which,

though it must undoubtedly exist, must necessarily be so diffused as to

be invisible to her, is in the highest degree impolitic and unjust. It

is expecting a strain of virtue beyond humanity. If we never reward any

persons with our approbation, but those who are exclusively influenced

by motives of general benevolence, this powerful encouragement to do

good actions will not be very often called into exercise.’

Mr. Malthus would make an excellent superior of a convent of nuns of the

Order of Population.—The better to remove what he considers as an unjust

stigma on old maids; he has endeavoured to set one on married women. He

would persuade every one to look upon his mother as a person of bad

character. He would pass an act of bastardy on every mother’s son of us;

and prove that we come into the world without a proper license (from

him) merely to gratify the coarse, selfish, immoral propensities of our

parents. Till however he can do away the filial relation, or the respect

attached to it, or so contrive it that all men should be ‘born of a

virgin’ contrary to all our experience, it will I believe be impossible

to get rid of the unjust prejudice against old maids, or to place them

on a level with married women. Mr. Malthus has gone the wrong way to

ingratiate himself with the mothers of families: but he has not taken

his measures ill. He knows that the partiality and favours of such

persons are generally confined to run in their own low, narrow, domestic

channels. But this is not the case with those reverend persons, to whom

he pays his court. He knows that their bounty is not confined by any

such selfish limits, it flows liberally to all, and they have the best

chance of sharing in it, who endeavour to indemnify them for their

personal sacrifices, or the ridicule of the world by a succession of

little agreeable attentions, or by offering theoretical incense to their

virtue and merit.

‘It is perfectly absurd as well as unjust, that a giddy girl of sixteen

should, because she is married be considered by the forms of society as

the protector of women of thirty, should come first into the room,

should be assigned the highest place at table, and be the prominent

figure to whom the attentions of the company are more particularly

addressed.’—Not more absurd than that a child or an ideot should be a

king, or that a grave man of fifty should call a young coxcomb, My lord.

Our sophist would overturn all the established order of society with his

out-of-the-way principles.—Mr. Malthus has huddled into the same chapter

his attack on the monopoly made by the married women of the men, and his

defence of the monopoly of corn by farmers and others. It is the last

passage I shall quote, though there are many others worthy of rebuke.

‘In some conversations with labouring men during the late scarcities, I

confess that I was to the last degree disheartened, at observing their

inveterate prejudices on the subject of grain: and I felt very strongly

the almost absolute incompatibility of a government really free, with

such a degree of ignorance. The delusions are of such a nature, that, if

acted upon, they must, at all events, be repressed by force: and it is

extremely difficult to give such a power to the government as will be

sufficient at all times for this purpose, without the risk of its being

employed improperly, and endangering the liberty of the subject. And

this reflection cannot but be disheartening to every friend to freedom.

‘It is of the very utmost importance, that the gentlemen of the country,

and particularly the clergy, should not, from ignorance, aggravate the

evils of scarcity every time that it unfortunately occurs. During the

late dearths, half of the gentlemen and clergymen in the kingdom richly

deserved to have been prosecuted for sedition. After inflaming the minds

of the common people against the farmers and corn-dealers, by the manner

in which they talked of them, or preached about them, it was but a

feeble antidote to the poison which they had infused, coldly to observe,

that however the poor might be oppressed or cheated, it was their duty

to keep the peace. It was little better than Antony’s repeated

declaration, that the conspirators were all honourable men; which did

not save either their houses or their persons from the attacks of the

mob. Political economy is perhaps the only science of which it might be

said, that the ignorance of it is not merely a deprivation of good, but

produces great positive evil.’

I shall accompany this passage with an extract from the Author’s first

edition and leave it to the reader to apply the hint of Antony’s speech

to whom he thinks fit.

‘It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour universally

falls; but we well know that it frequently remains the same, while the

nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing. This is, in

effect, a real fall in the price of labour; and during this period, the

condition of the lower orders of the community must gradually grow worse

and worse. But the farmers and the capitalists are growing rich from the

real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable them to employ

a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful; and the price

of labour would consequently rise. But the want of freedom in the market

of labour, which occurs more or less in all communities, either from

parish laws, or the more general cause of the facility of combination

among the rich, and its difficulty among the poor, operates to prevent

the price of labour from rising at the natural period, and keeps it down

some time longer; perhaps, till a year of scarcity, when the clamour is

too loud, and the necessity too apparent to be resisted.

‘The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed;

and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to

the poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity; and when plenty

returns, indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints,

that the price does not again fall; when a little reflection would shew

them, that it must have risen long before, but from an unjust conspiracy

of their own.’

THE END

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Published anonymously in one volume (8vo, 424 pages) in 1825, with the

following title-page:—‘The Spirit of the Age: or Contemporary Portraits.

“To know another well were to know one’s self.” London: Printed for

Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street. 1825.’ The imprint was ‘London:

Printed by S. and R. Bentley, Dorset Street.’ A second edition (here

reproduced), with the same title-page (except that the quotation ran:

‘“To know a man well, were to know himself.” Hamlet’) and imprint, was

produced in smaller type (8vo, 408 pages) in the same year. In this

edition the essays were arranged in a different order, an addition was

made to the essay on Coleridge, and an essay on Cobbett from _Table

Talk_ (vol. i., 1821) was included. In the same year, 1825, an edition

was published in Paris (A. and W. Galignani) which included the essay on

Cobbett and an essay on Canning. The third edition, edited by the

author’s son, was published in 1858 (one volume, 8vo, 396 pages, C.

Templeman, Great Portland Street). In this edition the essays on Cobbett

and Canning were included, and the essays were arranged in an order

different from that of either the first or the second edition. The

fourth edition, edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt for Bohn’s _Standard

Library_ (1886) restored the order of the second edition, but included

the essay on Canning. In this edition Mr. Hazlitt made some alterations

in the text based upon (1) portions of the original MSS. then in his

possession, and (2) autograph notes of the author’s in a copy of the

second edition belonging to Mr. C. W. Reynell. A volume of _Essays

selected from The Spirit of the Age_, with an introduction by R. B.

Johnson, was published in 1893 (the Knickerbocker Press, G. P. Putnam’s

Sons). Five of the essays, viz.: those on Bentham, Irving, Horne Tooke,

Scott, and Eldon were originally published in Colburn’s _New Monthly

Magazine and Literary Journal_ (1824, vols. x. and xi.) in a series

entitled ‘The Spirits of the Age.’

CONTENTS

PAGE

Jeremy Bentham 189

William Godwin 200

Mr. Coleridge 212

Rev. Mr. Irving 222

The late Mr. Horne Tooke 231

Sir Walter Scott 241

Lord Byron 253

Mr. Southey 262

Mr. Wordsworth 270

Sir James Mackintosh 279

Mr. Malthus 287

Mr. Gifford 298

Mr. Jeffrey 310

Mr. Brougham—Sir F. Burdett 318

Lord Eldon—Mr. Wilberforce 325

Mr. Cobbett 334

Mr. Campbell—Mr. Crabbe 343

Mr. T. Moore—Mr. Leigh Hunt 353

Elia—Geoffrey Crayon 362

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

JEREMY BENTHAM

Mr. Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that ‘A

prophet has most honour out of his own country.’ His reputation lies at

the circumference; and the lights of his understanding are reflected,

with increasing lustre, on the other side of the globe. His name is

little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of

Chili and the mines of Mexico. He has offered constitutions for the New

World, and legislated for future times. The people of Westminster, where

he lives, hardly dream of such a person; but the Siberian savage has

received cold comfort from his lunar aspect, and may say to him with

Caliban—‘I know thee, and thy dog and thy bush!’ The tawny Indian may

hold out the hand of fellowship to him across the GREAT PACIFIC. We

believe that the Empress Catherine corresponded with him; and we know

that the Emperor Alexander called upon him, and presented him with his

miniature in a gold snuff-box, which the philosopher, to his eternal

honour, returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater man at the hustings, Lord

Rolle at Plymouth Dock; but Mr. Bentham would carry it hollow, on the

score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is, that our author’s

influence is purely intellectual. He has devoted his life to the pursuit

of abstract and general truths, and to those studies—

‘That waft a _thought_ from Indus to the Pole’—

and has never mixed himself up with personal intrigues or party

politics. He once, indeed, stuck up a hand-bill to say that he (Jeremy

Bentham) being of sound mind, was of opinion that Sir Samuel Romilly was

the most proper person to represent Westminster; but this was the whim

of the moment. Otherwise, his reasonings, if true at all, are true

everywhere alike: his speculations concern humanity at large, and are

not confined to the hundred or the bills of mortality. It is in moral as

in physical magnitude. The little is seen best near: the great appears

in its proper dimensions, only from a more commanding point of view, and

gains strength with time, and elevation from distance!

Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among

poets:—in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he is

a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house in

Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell,

reducing law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine. He scarcely

ever goes out, and sees very little company. The favoured few, who have

the privilege of the _entrée_, are always admitted one by one. He does

not like to have witnesses to his conversation. He talks a great deal,

and listens to nothing but facts. When any one calls upon him, he

invites them to take a turn round his garden with him (Mr. Bentham is an

economist of his time, and sets apart this portion of it to air and

exercise)—and there you may see the lively old man, his mind still

buoyant with thought and with the prospect of futurity, in eager

conversation with some Opposition Member, some expatriated Patriot, or

Transatlantic Adventurer, urging the extinction of Close Boroughs, or

planning a code of laws for some ‘lone island in the watery waste,’ his

walk almost amounting to a run, his tongue keeping pace with it in

shrill, cluttering accents, negligent of his person, his dress, and his

manner, intent only on his grand theme of UTILITY—or pausing, perhaps,

for want of breath and with lack-lustre eye to point out to the stranger

a stone in the wall at the end of his garden (overarched by two

beautiful cotton-trees) _Inscribed to the Prince of Poets_, which marks

the house where Milton formerly lived. To show how little the

refinements of taste or fancy enter into our author’s system, he

proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the

garden where he had breathed the air of Truth and Heaven for near half a

century into a paltry _Chrestomathic School_, and to make Milton’s house

(the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled

stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and

forwards to it with their cloven hoofs. Let us not, however, be getting

on too fast—Milton himself taught school! There is something not

altogether dissimilar between Mr. Bentham’s appearance, and the

portraits of Milton, the same silvery tone, a few dishevelled hairs, a

peevish, yet puritanical expression, an irritable temperament corrected

by habit and discipline. Or in modern times, he is something between

Franklin and Charles Fox, with the comfortable double-chin and sleek

thriving look of the one, and the quivering lip, the restless eye, and

animated acuteness of the other. His eye is quick and lively; but it

glances not from object to object, but from thought to thought. He is

evidently a man occupied with some train of fine and inward association.

He regards the people about him no more than the flies of a summer. He

meditates the coming age. He hears and sees only what suits his purpose,

or some ‘foregone conclusion’; and looks out for facts and passing

occurrences in order to put them into his logical machinery and grind

them into the dust and powder of some subtle theory, as the miller looks

out for grist to his mill! Add to this physiognomical sketch the minor

points of costume, the open shirt-collar, the single-breasted coat, the

old fashioned half-boots and ribbed stockings; and you will find in Mr.

Bentham’s general appearance a singular mixture of boyish simplicity and

of the venerableness of age. In a word, our celebrated jurist presents a

striking illustration of the difference between the _philosophical_ and

the _regal_ look; that is, between the merely abstracted and the merely

personal. There is a lack-adaisical _bonhommie_ about his whole aspect,

none of the fierceness of pride or power; an unconscious neglect of his

own person, instead of a stately assumption of superiority; a

good-humoured, placid intelligence, instead of a lynx-eyed watchfulness,

as if it wished to make others its prey, or was afraid they might turn

and rend him; he is a beneficent spirit, prying into the universe, not

lording it over it; a thoughtful spectator of the scenes of life, or

ruminator on the fate of mankind, not a painted pageant, a stupid idol

set up on its pedestal of pride for men to fall down and worship with

idiot fear and wonder at the thing themselves have made, and which,

without that fear and wonder, would in itself be nothing!

Mr. Bentham, perhaps, over-rates the importance of his own theories. He

has been heard to say (without any appearance of pride or affectation)

that ‘he should like to live the remaining years of his life, a year at

a time at the end of the next six or eight centuries, to see the effect

which his writings would by that time have had upon the world.’ Alas!

his name will hardly live so long! Nor do we think, in point of fact,

that Mr. Bentham has given any new or decided impulse to the human mind.

He cannot be looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legislation or

morals. He has not struck out any great leading principle or

parent-truth, from which a number of others might be deduced; nor has he

enriched the common and established stock of intelligence with original

observations, like pearls thrown into wine. One truth discovered is

immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance in

nature, it cannot be destroyed. But Mr. Bentham’s _forte_ is

arrangement; and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with

time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all

the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects of which he treats,

in a masterly and scientific manner; but we should find a difficulty in

adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closely

reasoned) any new element of thought, or even a new fact or

illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as _books of

reference_, as bringing down the account of intellectual inquiry to the

present period, and disposing the results in a compendious, connected,

and tangible shape; but books of reference are chiefly serviceable for

facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, and are constantly liable to

be superseded and to grow out of fashion with its progress, as the

scaffolding is thrown down as soon as the building is completed. Mr.

Bentham is not the first writer (by a great many) who has assumed the

principle of UTILITY as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral

and political reasoning:—his merit is, that he has applied this

principle more closely and literally; that he has brought all the

objections and arguments, more distinctly labelled and ticketed, under

this one head, and made a more constant and explicit reference to it at

every step of his progress, than any other writer. Perhaps the weak side

of his conclusions also is, that he has carried this single view of his

subject too far, and not made sufficient allowance for the varieties of

human nature, and the caprices and irregularities of the human will. ‘He

has not allowed for the _wind_.’ It is not that you can be said to see

his favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his

system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the

material)—but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the

whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific,

leaden mace, that he had ‘bound volatile Hermes,’ and reduced the theory

and practice of human life to a _caput mortuum_ of reason, and dull,

plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital

logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider man as a

logical animal. We fear this view of the matter will hardly hold water.

If we attend to the _moral_ man, the constitution of his mind will

scarcely be found to be built up of pure reason and a regard to

consequences: if we consider the _criminal_ man (with whom the

legislator has chiefly to do) it will be found to be still less so.

Every pleasure, says Mr. Bentham, is equally a good, and is to be taken

into the account as such in a moral estimate, whether it be the pleasure

of sense or of conscience, whether it arise from the exercise of virtue

or the perpetration of crime. We are afraid the human mind does not

readily come into this doctrine, this _ultima ratio philosophorum_,

interpreted according to the letter. Our moral sentiments are made up of

sympathies and antipathies, of sense and imagination, of understanding

and prejudice. The soul, by reason of its weakness, is an aggregating

and an exclusive principle; it clings obstinately to some things, and

violently rejects others. And it must do so, in a great measure, or it

would act contrary to its own nature. It needs helps and stages in its

progress, and ‘all appliances and means to boot,’ which can raise it to

a partial conformity to truth and good (the utmost it is capable of) and

bring it into a tolerable harmony with the universe. By aiming at too

much, by dismissing collateral aids, by extending itself to the farthest

verge of the conceivable and possible, it loses its elasticity and

vigour, its impulse and its direction. The moralist can no more do

without the intermediate use of rules and principles, without the

‘vantage ground of habit, without the levers of the understanding, than

the mechanist can discard the use of wheels and pulleys, and perform

every thing by simple motion. If the mind of man were competent to

comprehend the whole of truth and good, and act upon it at once, and

independently of all other considerations, Mr. Bentham’s plan would be a

feasible one, and _the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth_, would be the best possible ground to place morality upon. But it

is not so. In ascertaining the rules of moral conduct, we must have

regard not merely to the nature of the object, but to the capacity of

the agent, and to his fitness for apprehending or attaining it. Pleasure

is that which is so in itself: good is that which approves itself as

such on reflection, or the idea of which is a source of satisfaction.

All pleasure is not, therefore (morally speaking) equally a good; for

all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on. There are some tastes

that are sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly; and there is a

similar contradiction and anomaly in the mind and heart of man.

Again, what would become of the _Posthæc meminisse juvabit_ of the poet,

if a principle of fluctuation and reaction is not inherent in the very

constitution of our nature, or if all moral truth is a mere literal

truism? We are not, then, so much to inquire what certain things are

abstractedly or in themselves, as how they affect the mind, and to

approve or condemn them accordingly. The same object seen near strikes

us more powerfully than at a distance: things thrown into masses give a

greater blow to the imagination than when scattered and divided into

their component parts. A number of mole-hills do not make a mountain,

though a mountain is actually made up of atoms: so moral truth must

present itself under a certain aspect and from a certain point of view,

in order to produce its full and proper effect upon the mind. The laws

of the affections are as necessary as those of optics. A calculation of

consequences is no more equivalent to a sentiment, than a _seriatim_

enumeration of square yards or feet touches the fancy like the sight of

the Alps or Andes.

To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure

cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity, affect an

extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have been accused of

neglecting their duties to their friends and next-door neighbours. Well,

then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no

doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of

time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and our

affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative

faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the

universe, could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be

possible, could our hands reach as far as our thoughts and wishes, we

might then busy ourselves to advantage with the Hottentots, or hold

intimate converse with the inhabitants of the Moon; but being as we are,

our feelings evaporate in so large a space—we must draw the circle of

our affections and duties somewhat closer—the heart hovers and fixes

nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural

affection, are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as

frequently to do harm instead of good: but the present question is

whether we can, with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them?

Whether we should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the

only bar to the triumph of truth and justice? Or whether benevolence,

constructed upon a logical scale, would not be merely _nominal_, whether

duty, raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into

callous indifference or hollow selfishness? Again, is it not to exact

too high a strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree of

abhorrence we feel against a murderer by taking into our cool

consideration the pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in

the prospect of gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so

formed as to sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and his

victim. The degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of

extenuating, aggravates his guilt, and shows the depth of his malignity.

Now the mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is

itself well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a

feeble resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to

give consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so

much candour and courtesy to the antagonist principle of evil: virtue,

to be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the

blindness and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half

jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and

manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities

practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their

blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to

sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial,

as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of—this

is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the

bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have

stated, it must pass for mere irony. What the proportion between the

good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may

be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination and the

heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none!

Mr. Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too

little stress on the co-operation of the natural prejudices of mankind,

and the habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are

more particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legislation)

are philosophers, and governed by their reason: criminals, for whose

controul laws are made, are a set of desperadoes, governed only by their

passions. What wonder that so little progress has been made towards a

mutual understanding between the two parties! They are quite a different

species, and speak a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a

common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids as

fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at

ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a

prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he is

at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues,

outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his

cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an

inquiry into the barbarity and the defects of penal laws, the practical

improvements have been mostly suggested by reformed cut-throats,

turnkeys, and thief-takers. What even can the Honourable House, who when

the Speaker has pronounced the well-known, wished-for sounds, ‘That this

house do now adjourn,’ retire, after voting a royal crusade or a loan of

millions, to lie on down, and feed on plate in spacious palaces, know of

what passes in the hearts of wretches in garrets and night-cellars,

petty pilferers and marauders, who cut throats and pick pockets with

their own hands? The thing is impossible. The laws of the country are,

therefore, ineffectual and abortive, because they are made by the rich

for the poor, by the wise for the ignorant, by the respectable and

exalted in station for the very scum and refuse of the community. If

Newgate would resolve itself into a committee of the whole Press-yard,

with Jack Ketch at its head, aided by confidential persons from the

county prisons or the Hulks, and would make a clear breast, some _data_

might be found out to proceed upon; but as it is, the _criminal mind_ of

the country is a book sealed, no one has been able to penetrate to the

inside! Mr. Bentham, in his attempts to revise and amend our criminal

jurisprudence, proceeds entirely on his favourite principle of Utility.

Convince highwaymen and housebreakers that it will be for their interest

to reform, and they will reform and lead honest lives; according to Mr.

Bentham. He says, ‘All men act from calculation, even madmen reason.’

And, in our opinion, he might as well carry this maxim to Bedlam or St.

Luke’s, and apply it to the inhabitants, as think to coerce or overawe

the inmates of a gaol, or those whose practices make them candidates for

that distinction, by the mere dry, detailed convictions of the

understanding. Criminals are not to be influenced by reason; for it is

of the very essence of crime to disregard consequences both to ourselves

and others. You may as well preach philosophy to a drunken man, or to

the dead, as to those who are under the instigation of any mischievous

passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he ought to be sober; he

is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he is idle, and you recommend

industry to him as his wisest course; he gambles, and you remind him

that he may be ruined by this foible; he has lost his character, and you

advise him to get into some reputable service or lucrative situation;

vice becomes a habit with him, and you request him to rouse himself and

shake it off; he is starving, and you warn him if he breaks the law, he

will be hanged. None of this reasoning reaches the mark it aims at. The

culprit, who violates and suffers the vengeance of the laws, is not the

dupe of ignorance, but the slave of passion, the victim of habit or

necessity. To argue with strong passion, with inveterate habit, with

desperate circumstances, is to talk to the winds. Clownish ignorance may

indeed be dispelled, and taught better; but it is seldom that a criminal

is not aware of the consequences of his act, or has not made up his mind

to the alternative. They are, in general, _too knowing by half_. You

tell a person of this stamp what is his interest; he says he does not

care about his interest, or the world and he differ on that particular.

But there is one point on which he must agree with them, namely, what

_they_ think of his conduct, and that is the only hold you have of him.

A man may be callous and indifferent to what happens to himself; but he

is never indifferent to public opinion, or proof against open scorn and

infamy. Shame, then, not fear, is the sheet-anchor of the law. He who is

not afraid of being pointed at as a _thief_, will not mind a month’s

hard labour. He who is prepared to take the life of another, is already

reckless of his own. But every one makes a sorry figure in the pillory;

and the being launched from the New Drop lowers a man in his own

opinion. The lawless and violent spirit, who is hurried by headstrong

self-will to break the laws, does not like to have the ground of pride

and obstinacy struck from under his feet. This is what gives the

_swells_ of the metropolis such a dread of the _tread-mill_—it makes

them ridiculous. It must be confessed, that this very circumstance

renders the reform of criminals nearly hopeless. It is the apprehension

of being stigmatized by public opinion, the fear of what will be thought

and said of them, that deters men from the violation of the laws, while

their character remains unimpeached; but honour once lost, all is lost.

The man can never be himself again! A citizen is like a soldier, a part

of a machine, who submits to certain hardships, privations, and dangers,

not for his own ease, pleasure, profit, or even conscience, but—_for

shame_. What is it that keeps the machine together in either case? Not

punishment or discipline, but sympathy. The soldier mounts the breach or

stands in the trenches, the peasant hedges and ditches, or the mechanic

plies his ceaseless task, because the one will not be called a _coward_,

the other a _rogue_: but let the one turn deserter and the other

vagabond, and there is an end of him. The grinding law of necessity,

which is no other than a name, a breath, loses its force; he is no

longer sustained by the good opinion of others, and he drops out of his

place in society, a useless clog! Mr. Bentham takes a culprit, and puts

him into what he calls a _Panopticon_, that is, a sort of circular

prison, with open cells, like a glass bee-hive. He sits in the middle,

and sees all the other does. He gives him work to do, and lectures him

if he does not do it. He takes liquor from him, and society and liberty;

but he feeds and clothes him, and keeps him out of mischief; and when he

has convinced him, by force and reason together, that this life is for

his good, he turns him out upon the world a reformed man, and as

confident of the success of his handy-work, as the shoemaker of that

which he has just taken off the last, or the Parisian barber in Sterne,

of the buckle of his wig. ‘Dip it in the ocean,’ said the perruquier,

‘and it will stand!’ But we doubt the durability of our projector’s

patchwork. Will our convert to the great principle of Utility work when

he is from under Mr. Bentham’s eye, because he was forced to work when

under it? Will he keep sober, because he has been kept from liquor so

long? Will he not return to loose company, because he has had the

pleasure of sitting vis-à-vis with a philosopher of late? Will he not

steal, now that his hands are untied? Will he not take the road, now

that it is free to him? Will he not call his benefactor all the names he

can set his tongue to, the moment his back is turned? All this is more

than to be feared. The charm of criminal life, like that of savage life,

consists in liberty, in hardship, in danger, and in the contempt of

death, in one word, in extraordinary excitement; and he who has tasted

of it, will no more return to regular habits of life, than a man will

take to water after drinking brandy, or than a wild beast will give over

hunting its prey. Miracles never cease, to be sure; but they are not to

be had wholesale, or _to order_. Mr. Owen, who is another of those

proprietors and patentees of reform, has lately got an American savage

with him, whom he carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an

antithesis to his _New View of Society_, and as winding up his reasoning

to what it mainly wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent

visionary of the Lanark cotton-mills really think this _natural man_

will act as a foil to his _artificial man_? Does he for a moment imagine

that his _Address to the higher and middle classes_, with all its

advantages of fiction, makes any thing like so interesting a romance as

_Hunter’s Captivity among the North American Indians_? Has he any thing

to show, in all the apparatus of New Lanark and its desolate monotony,

to excite the thrill of imagination like the blankets made of wreaths of

snow under which the wild wood-rovers bury themselves for weeks in

winter? Or the skin of a leopard, which our hardy adventurer slew, and

which served him for great-coat and bedding? Or the rattle-snake that he

found by his side as a bedfellow? Or his rolling himself into a ball to

escape from him? Or his suddenly placing himself against a tree to avoid

being trampled to death by the herd of wild buffaloes, that came rushing

on like the sound of thunder? Or his account of the huge spiders that

prey on blue-bottles and gilded flies in green pathless forests; or of

the great Pacific Ocean, that the natives look upon as the gulf that

parts time from eternity, and that is to waft them to the spirits of

their fathers? After all this, Mr. Hunter must find Mr. Owen and his

parallelograms trite and flat, and will, we suspect, take an opportunity

to escape from them!

Mr. Bentham’s method of reasoning, though comprehensive and exact,

labours under the defect of most systems—it is too _topical_. It

includes every thing; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather

like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. Every

possible suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted as

much as enlightened by this perplexing accuracy. The exceptions seem as

important as the rule. By attending to the minute, we overlook the

great; and in summing up an account, it will not do merely to insist on

the number of items without considering their amount. Our author’s page

presents a very nicely dove-tailed mosaic pavement of legal

common-places. We slip and slide over its even surface without being

arrested any where. Or his view of the human mind resembles a map,

rather than a picture: the outline, the disposition is correct, but it

wants colouring and relief. There is a technicality of manner, which

renders his writings of more value to the professional inquirer than to

the general reader. Again, his style is unpopular, not to say

unintelligible. He writes a language of his own, that _darkens

knowledge_. His works have been translated into French—they ought to be

translated into English. People wonder that Mr. Bentham has not been

prosecuted for the boldness and severity of some of his invectives. He

might wrap up high treason in one of his inextricable periods, and it

would never find its way into Westminster-Hall. He is a kind of

Manuscript author—he writes a cypher-hand, which the vulgar have no key

to. The construction of his sentences is a curious frame-work with pegs

and hooks to hang his thoughts upon, for his own use and guidance, but

almost out of the reach of every body else. It is a barbarous

philosophical jargon, with all the repetitions, parentheses,

formalities, uncouth nomenclature and verbiage of law-Latin; and what

makes it worse, it is not mere verbiage, but has a great deal of

acuteness and meaning in it, which you would be glad to pick out if you

could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single

sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he

omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to

the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This is

over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the

nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has _acquired_

this disability—it is not natural to him. His admirable little work _On

Usury_, published forty years ago, is clear, easy, and vigorous. But Mr.

Bentham has shut himself up since then ‘in nook monastic,’ conversing

only with followers of his own, or with ‘men of Ind,’ and has

endeavoured to overlay his natural humour, sense, spirit, and style,

with the dust and cobwebs of an obscure solitude. The best of it is, he

thinks his present mode of expressing himself perfect, and that whatever

may be objected to his law or logic, no one can find the least fault

with the purity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his style.

Mr. Bentham, in private life, is an amiable and exemplary character. He

is a little romantic, or so; and has dissipated part of a handsome

fortune in practical speculations. He lends an ear to plausible

projectors, and, if he cannot prove them to be wrong in their premises

or their conclusions, thinks himself bound _in reason_ to stake his

money on the venture. Strict logicians are licenced visionaries. Mr.

Bentham is half-brother to the late Mr. Speaker Abbott[33]—_Proh pudor!_

He was educated at Eton, and still takes our novices to task about a

passage in Homer, or a metre in Virgil. He was afterwards at the

University, and he has described the scruples of an ingenuous youthful

mind about subscribing the articles, in a passage in his

_Church-of-Englandism_, which smacks of truth and honour both, and does

one good to read it in an age, when ‘to be honest’ (or not to laugh at

the very idea of honesty) ‘is to be one man picked out of ten thousand!’

Mr. Bentham relieves his mind sometimes, after the fatigue of study, by

playing on a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth’s prints. He

turns wooden utensils in a lathe for exercise, and fancies he can turn

men in the same manner. He has no great fondness for poetry, and can

hardly extract a moral out of Shakespeare. His house is warmed and

lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the

natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a

great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees,

and is for referring every thing to Utility. There is a little

narrowness in this; for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken

away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great

fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his

faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has

not ‘looked enough abroad into universality.’[34]

WILLIAM GODWIN

The Spirit of the Age was never more fully shown than in its treatment

of this writer—its love of paradox and change, its dastard submission to

prejudice and to the fashion of the day. Five-and-twenty years ago he

was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed

as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more

looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice

was the theme, his name was not far off:—now he has sunk below the

horizon, and enjoys the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality. Mr.

Godwin, during his life-time, has secured to himself the triumphs and

the mortifications of an extreme notoriety and of a sort of posthumous

fame. His bark, after being tossed in the revolutionary tempest, now

raised to heaven by all the fury of popular breath, now almost dashed in

pieces, and buried in the quicksands of ignorance, or scorched with the

lightning of momentary indignation, at length floats on the calm wave

that is to bear it down the stream of time. Mr. Godwin’s person is not

known, he is not pointed out in the street, his conversation is not

courted, his opinions are not asked, he is at the head of no cabal, he

belongs to no party in the State, he has no train of admirers, no one