THE QUESTION IN ITS CONNEXION WITH POLITICAL ECONOMY.
The population question, as it is called, has of late years occupied
much attention, especially in Great Britain. It was first prominently
brought forward and discussed, through two large volumes, by Malthus, an
English clergyman. Godwin, Ricardo, Thompson, Place, Mill, and other
celebrated cotemporary writers, have all discussed it, with more or less
reserve, and at greater or less length.
Malthus’ work has become the text book of a large politico-economist
party in England. His doctrine is, that “_population unrestrained, will
advance beyond the means of subsistence_.” He asserts, that in most
countries population at this moment presses against the means of
subsistence; and that in all countries, it has a tendency so to do. He
recommends, as a preventive of the growing evil, celibacy till a late
age, say thirty years; and he asserts, that unless this “moral
restraint” is exerted, vice, poverty and misery, will and must become
the checks to population. His book, in my opinion, has done infinite
mischief. I have heard his disciples openly declare, that they
considered the crimes and wretchedness of society to be _necessary_—to
be the express ordainings of Providence, intended to prevent the earth
from being over-peopled. I have heard it argued by men of rank, wealth
and influence, that the distinctions of rich and poor, and even of
morality and immorality, of luxury and want, will and must exist to the
end of the world; that he who attempts to remove them fights against God
and nature; and, if he partially succeed, will but afford the human race
an opportunity to increase, until the earth shall no longer suffice to
contain them, and they shall be compelled to prey on each other. It must
be confessed, that this is a comfortable doctrine for the rich idler: it
is a healing salve to the luxurious conscience; an opiate to drown the
still small voice of truth and humanity, which calls to every man to be
up and do his part towards the alleviation of the human suffering that
every where stares him in the face.
It is vain to argue with these defenders of the evils that be, that the
day of overstocking is afar off. They tell you, it must come at last;
and that the more you do to remove vice and misery—those destroyers of
population—the sooner it will come. And what reply can one make to the
argument in the abstract? I believe it to be proved, that population,
unrestrained,[9] will double itself on an average every twenty-five to
fifty years. If so, it is evident to a demonstration, that, if
population be not restrained, morally or immorally, the earth will _at
last_ furnish no foothold for the human beings that will cover it.
Take a medium calculation as to the natural rate of increase, and say,
that population, unrestrained, will double itself every _thirty-three
and a third_ years. That it has done so, (without reckoning the increase
from emigration,) in many parts of this continent, is certain.
Then, if we suppose the present numerous checks to population, viz.
want, war, vice, and misery, removed by national reform, and if we
assume the present population of the world at one thousand millions, we
shall find the rate of increase as follows:
At the end of 100 years, there will be 8,000 millions.
------------- 200 ------------------- 64,000 ---------
------------- 300 ------------------ 512,000 ---------
------------- 400 ---------------- 4,096,000 ---------
------------- 500 --------------- 32,768,000 ---------
And so on, multiplying by 8 for every additional hundred years. So that,
in 500 years, there would be more than _thirty thousand_ times as many
as at present: and in 1000 years, upwards of _a thousand million_ times
as many human beings as at this moment: consequently, _one single pair_,
if suffered to increase without check, _would, in 1000 years, increase
to more than double the present population of the globe_.
It appears evident, then, to a demonstration, that population CANNOT be
suffered to increase unrestrained for more than a very few hundred
years. We are thus compelled to admit to Malthus, that, _sooner_ or
_later_, some restraint or other to population _must_ be employed; and
compelled to admit to his aristocratic disciples, that if no other
better restraint than vice and misery can be found, then _vice and
misery must be_; they are the lot of man, from generation to generation.
Let me repeat it: it is no question—never can be a question—whether
there shall be a restraint to population or not. There MUST be; unless
indeed we find the means of visiting other planets, so as to people
them. In the nature of things, there must be a check, of some kind, at
some time. The _only_ question is, what that check shall be—whether, as
heretofore, the check of war, want, profligacy, misery; or a “moral
restraint,” sanctioned by reason and suggested by experience.
Let those, then, who cry out against this little treatise, be told, that
though they may postpone the question, no human power can evade it. It
must come up. Had the friends of reform been left to choose their own
time, it might, perhaps with advantage, have been postponed. And it is
an imaginable case, that prejudice might delay it until a general famine
or a universal civil war became the frightful checks. But will any man
of common sense argue the propriety of suffering such a crisis to
approach?
Malthus saw this. He saw that some check must exist; and, whatever some
of his disciples might permit themselves to say, he did not choose to be
considered the apologist of vice and misery. His theory, indeed,
supplied specious arguments to those who asserted, with the ingenious
author of the Fable of the Bees,[10] that “private vices are public
benefits;” and in consequence, its tendency appears to be essentially
aristocratic and _demoralizing_, as tending to produce supine
contentment with a vicious and degrading order of things. But Malthus
himself declares the only proper check to be, the general practice of
celibacy to a late age. He employs all his eloquence to persuade men and
women that they ought not to marry till they are twenty-eight or thirty;
and that if they do, they are contributing to the misery of the
world.[11]
Now, Mr. Malthus may preach for ever on this subject. Individuals may
indeed be found, who will look to distant consequences, and sacrifice
present enjoyment; even as individuals are found to become and remain
Shaking Quakers: but to believe that the mass of mankind will abjure,
through the ten fairest years of life, the nearest and dearest of social
relations; and during the very holiday of existence, will live the life
of monks and nuns—all to avert a catastrophe which is confessedly some
hundreds of years distant—to believe this, requires a faith which no
accurate observer of mankind possesses.
This weak point the aristocratic expounders of Malthus’ doctrines were
not slow to discover. They broadly asserted, that such “moral restraint”
would never be generally practiced. They asked, whether a young woman,
to whom a comfortable home and a pleasant companion were offered, would
refuse to accept them, on this theory of population; whether a young man
who had a fair (or even but a very indifferent) prospect of maintaining
a family, would doom himself to celibacy lest the world should be
over-peopled. And they put it to the advocates of late marriages,
whether, in one sex at least, the recommendation, if even nominally
followed, would not almost certainly lead to vicious excess and
degrading associations; thus resolving the check into vice and misery at
last. If experience answered these questions in the negative, was it not
clear, (they would exultingly ask,) that vice and misery are the natural
lot of man; and that it is quixotic, if not impious, to plague ourselves
about them, or to attempt, by their suppression, to controvert the
decrees of God?
It was very easy for generous feelings to reply to so heartless an
argument. It was easy to ask, whether even the apparent hopelessness of
the case formed any legitimate apology for supine indifference; or
whether, where we cannot cure, we are absolved from the duty of
alleviating. But it was not very easy fully and fairly to meet the
question. It was idle to deny that preaching would not put off marriage
for ten years: and if no other species of moral restraint than ten years
Shakerism could be proposed, it did appear evident enough, that moral
restraint would be by the mass neglected, and that the physical checks
of vice and misery must come into play at last.
I pray my readers, then, distinctly, to observe how the matter stands.
Population, unrestrained, _must_ increase beyond the possibility of the
earth and its produce to support. At present it is restrained by vice
and misery. The only remedy which the orthodoxy of the English clergyman
permits him to propose, is, late marriages. The most enlightened
observers of mankind are agreed, that nothing contributes so positively
and immediately to demoralize a nation, as when its youth refrain, until
a late period, from forming disinterested connections with those of the
other sex. The frightful increase of prostitutes, the destruction of
health, the rapid spread of intemperance, the ruin of moral feelings,
are to the mass, the _certain_ consequences. Individuals there are who
escape the contagion; individuals whose better feelings revolt, under
_any_ temptation, from the mercenary embrace, or the Circean cup of
intoxication; but these are exceptions only. The mass must have their
pleasures; the pleasures of intellectual intercourse, of unbought
affection, and of good taste and good feeling, if they can; but if they
cannot, then such pleasure (alas! that language should be perverted to
entitle them to the name!) as the sacrifice of money and the ruin of
body and mind can purchase.[12]
But this is not all. Not only is Malthus’ proposition fraught with
immorality, in that it discountenances to a late age those disinterested
sexual connexions which can alone save youth from vice; but it is
_impracticable_. Men and women will scarcely pause to calculate the
chances they have of affording support to their children ere they become
parents: how, then, should they stop to calculate the chances of the
world’s being over-peopled? Malthus may say what he pleases, they never
will make any such calculation; and it is folly to expect they should.
Let us observe, then: _unless some less ascetic and more practicable
species of “moral restraint” be introduced_, vice and misery will
_ultimately_ become the inevitable lot of man upon earth. He can no more
escape them, than he can the light of the sun, or the stroke of death.
What an incitement, this, to the prosecution of our enquiry! Here is a
principle set up, which is all but an apology for the apathy that
prevails among the rich and the powerful—among governors and
legislators—in regard to human improvement. How important, how essential
for the interests of virtue, that it should be refuted! How beneficent
that knowledge, which discloses to us some moral, practicable check to
population, and relieves us from the despairing conclusion, that the
irrevocable doom of man is misery, without remedy and without end! In
the absence of such knowledge, truly the prospects of the world were
dark and cheerless. The modern doctrine of population has weighed like a
spell on the exertions of benevolence, and chilled, almost to inaction,
even the warm heart of charity. Philanthropy herself pauses, when she
begins to fear that all her exertions are to result in hopeless
disappointment. And yet—such is this world—even the ablest opponents of
Malthus stop short when they come to the question, and leave an argument
unanswered, which a dozen pages might suffice for ever to set at rest.
Let one of the most intelligent of these opponents, a man of splendid
and sterling talent—let MILL, the celebrated political economist and
talented author of “British India,” speak for himself.
I extract from the article “Colony,” in the supplement to the
Encyclopædia Britannica, and which is from the pen of Mill, the
following paragraph:
“What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it
cannot go on unrestrained without producing one or other of two most
undesirable effects, either drawing an undue portion of the population
to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it
is not now the time to enquire. _It is, indeed, the most important
practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and the moralist
can be applied._ It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all
those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by those who were
called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which
it relates. And yet, _if the superstitions of the nursery were
disregarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view_, a
solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of
drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil—a source which
_if all other sources were taken away, might alone suffice to retain the
great mass of human beings in misery_, might be seen to be neither
doubtful nor difficult to be applied.”
Let my readers bear in mind, that this is from the pen of one of the
most justly admired writers of the present day; a man celebrated
throughout all Europe, for his works on political economy, and whose
writings are not unknown even on this side the Atlantic. He considers
the question now under discussion to involve “the most important problem
to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied.” This
question, he admits, has ever been “miserably evaded.” Yet even a man so
influential and enlightened as Mill, must himself yield to the weakness
he reprobates; must speak in parables, as the Nazarene reformer did
before him; and, even while commenting on the “miserable evasion” of a
subject so engrossingly important, must imitate the very evasion he
despises.
I will not imitate it. I am more independently situated than the English
economist; and I see, as clearly as he does, the extreme importance of
the subject. What he saw and declared _ought_ to be said, I will say.
Before concluding this chapter, let me state distinctly, that I by no
means agree with Malthus and other political economists in believing,
that, at this moment, there is an actual excess of population in any
country (China perhaps excepted) in the known world. I believe that
there is more than enough land in every country of Europe to support, in
perfect comfort, all its present inhabitants. That they _are_ not
supported in comfort, is, in my opinion, attributable, not to
overpopulation, but to mal-government. Monopolies favour the rich, taxes
oppress the poor, commercial rivalry grinds its victims to the dust. To
such causes as these, and not to overpopulation, _at the time being_, is
the mass of distress (felt more or less over the civilized world) to be
attributed. Thus, if the enemies of reform would but let us alone, we
might long postpone to other and more important discussions, this
population question. But they will not. They _force_ it upon us. And
though it might have evinced want of judgment to obtrude it
unnecessarily or prematurely on the public, it would betray cowardice to
evade it now, when thrust upon us.
Besides, though it be undeniable that iniquitous laws and a vicious
order of things often produce the result that is falsely attributed to
overpopulation, it is yet equally undeniable, that the most perfect
system of laws in the world could not _ultimately_ prevent the evils of
a superabundant population. And it is no less certain, that, in the
meantime, the pressure of a large family on the labouring man greatly
augments the evil, and often deprives him of that very leisure which he
might employ in devising constitutional means to better his condition,
instead of leaving public business in the hands of political gamblers.
Thus an answer to the population question is offered as an _alleviation_
of existing evils, not as a _cure_ for them. Population might be but
half what it is, and unjust legislation and vicious customs would still
give birth, as they now do, to luxury and want. The laws and customs
ought to be, _must_ be changed; but while the grass is growing, let us
prevent the horse from starving, if we can.
Enough has been said, probably, in this chapter, to determine the
question, whether it is, or is not, _desirable_, in a political point of
view, that some check to population be sought and disclosed—some “moral
restraint” that shall not, like vice and misery, be demoralizing, nor,
like late marriages, be ascetic and impracticable.