CHAPTER III. OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND
ROMANS.
CHAPTER IV. CHECKS TO POPULATION IN MODERN EUROPE.
CHAPTER V. OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER VI. ON THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND
IRELAND.
CHAPTER VII. DETACHED ESSAYS.
CHAPTER IX. OF POOR LAWS.
CHAPTER X. WEALTH AS IT AFFECTS THE POOR.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
APPENDIX.
PREFACE.
Since 1877, when the Lord Chief Justice of England in his charge to the
jury pronounced the discovery of Malthus to be an irrefragable truth, a
vast amount of literature has appeared upon the population question. The
conclusion come to by many of the most recent writers has been in accord
with that pithy expression of John Stuart Mill, where he says: “Every
one has a right to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one has a
right to bring children into life to be supported by other people.
Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all
pretension to the last.” Mr. Cotter Morison, a distinguished writer,
says, in his work entitled _The Service of Man_: “The criminality of
producing children whom one has no reasonable probability of being able
to keep, must in time be seen in its true light, as one of the most
unsocial and selfish proceedings of which a man nowadays is capable. If
only the devastating torrent of children could be arrested for a few
years, it would bring untold relief.” Sir William Windeyer, of New South
Wales, in a judgment delivered in 1888, concerning a Malthusian work,
says: “It is idle to preach to the masses the necessity of deferred
marriage and of a celibate life during the heyday of passion.... To use
and not abuse, to direct and control in its operation any God-given
faculty, is the true aim of man, the true object of all morality.” The
Rev. Mr. Whatham, in a pamphlet entitled _Neo-Malthusianism_, says: “It
becomes the duty of every thoughtful man and woman to think out some
plan to stop or even check this advancing tide of desolation; and the
only plan, to my thinking, that is at all workable is artificial
prevention of child-birth.” Professor Mantegazza, Senator of Italy,
says, in his _Elements of Hygiene_, to those affected with hereditary
diseases: “Love, but do not beget children.” The Rev. Mr. Haweis says,
in _Winged Words_: “Overpopulation is one of the problems of the age.
The old blessing of ‘increase and multiply,’ suitable for a sparsely
peopled land, has become the great curse of our crowded centres.” Mr.
Montague Cookson says: “The limitation of the family is as much the duty
of married persons as the observance of chastity is the duty of those
who remain unmarried.” Professor Huxley, the Bishop of Manchester, Mr.
Leonard Courtney, Dr. William Ogle, and the Archbishop of Canterbury
have all recently endorsed the truth of the Malthusian law of
population, which, as Mr. Elley Finch has truly said, “is, in company
with the Newtonian law of gravitation, the most important discovery ever
made.”
CHARLES R. DRYSDALE, M.D.
_23 Sackville-street, Piccadilly, London, W.
October, 1892._
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF
THOMAS R. MALTHUS.
[Illustration]
A great deal has been said in Courts of Law during the last two years
about the Malthusian principle of population. The Lord Chief Justice of
England has pronounced that it is an irrefragable truth, and that all
parties who have studied such questions know, since the days of the Rev.
T. R. Malthus, that the great cause of indigence is the tendency that
population has to increase faster than agriculture can furnish food. And
yet we have serious doubts whether one out of a thousand of the
population of the British Islands knows who Mr. Malthus was, or, indeed,
whether he was a Roman, or a citizen of modern Europe, at all. It is,
therefore, we are convinced, very important to let his countrymen know
that Thomas Robert Malthus was an Englishman; that he was a denizen of
the 19th century; and that he lived most part of his life in the
neighbourhood of London.
Thomas Robert Malthus was born at the Rookery, near Dorking, in Surrey,
in 1766. Those who are interested in the matter will do well to make a
pilgrimage, as we have done, to the romantic birth-place of the
discoverer of the law of population, the greatest (if we measure
discoveries by their effect on human happiness) ever made. Malthus’
father was an able man, a friend and correspondent of the noble and
unfortunate J. J. Rousseau, and one of his executors. Thomas Robert was
his second son, and, as a boy, evinced so much ability that his father
kept him at home and superintended his education himself. The son repaid
his father’s care, and had awakened in him that spirit of independence
and love of truth which were ever afterwards the characteristics of his
mind. He had two tutors, in addition to his father, both men of
genius—Richard Graves and Gilbert Wakefield—the former the author of the
“Spiritual Quixote,” the latter the correspondent of Fox, and well known
in his day as a violent democratic writer and politician.
In 1784, when 22 years of age, T. R. Malthus went to Cambridge; and, in
1797, became a Fellow of Jesus College. After this he took orders, and
for a time officiated in a small parish near his father’s house, in
Surrey. In 1798, appeared his first printed work, which may be seen in
the British Museum. It is entitled “An Essay on the Principle of
Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society; with
Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, Mr. Condorcet, and other
Writers.”
The writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, from whom these details of
Malthus’ life are taken, informs us that the book was received with some
surprise, and excited considerable attention, as being an attempt to
overturn the prevalent theory of political optimism, and to refute, upon
philosophical principles, the speculations then so much in vogue, as to
the indefinite perfectibility of human institutions. In this remarkable
essay the general principle of population, which Wallace, Hume, and
others had very distinctly enunciated before him, though without
foreseeing the consequences that might be deduced from it, was clearly
expounded; and some of the important conclusions to which it leads in
regard to the probable improvement of human society were likewise stated
and explained; but his illustrations were not sufficient, and he,
therefore, sought in travel further confirmation of his theories.
In 1799 he visited Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and, after the peace of
Amiens, France; in which countries he busily collected all the data he
could bearing upon his researches. In 1815 he was appointed to the
professorship of political economy and modern history at Haileybury,
near London, which chair he occupied until his death in 1834, at the age
of 70. He left behind him one son and one daughter. The son is, we
believe, still alive, or was so a few years ago.
The account given by Mr. Malthus of the way in which he discovered the
law of population is to this effect. His father, Mr. Daniel Malthus, a
man of romantic and somewhat sanguine character, had espoused warmly the
doctrines of the great writers Condorcet and Godwin, with respect to the
perfectibility of man, to which the sound sense of the son was always
opposed; and when the subject had been very frequently discussed between
them, and the son had always objected to Godwin’s views, on account of
the tendency of population to increase faster than subsistence, he was
asked by his father to put down in writing his views on this point. The
result was the Essay on Population; and his father was so much struck
with the value of the arguments, that he recommended his son to publish
it.
In the first edition of this work he principally deals with the views of
Condorcet and Godwin; but on his return from the Continent, where he had
collected ample materials, the state and prospects of the poor became
the prominent features of the second edition, which appeared in two
volumes, in 1805.
The latter years of the life of Mr. Malthus were passed in the midst of
his family, in the performance of his professional and professorial
duties, and in the editing of the various editions of his work and other
treatises on political economy. In proportion as the views enunciated in
his Essay on Population became known, his fame was extended. Most of the
statesmen of his time, and the whole of the eminent political economists
of Great Britain, adopted his opinions; and thus the way was prepared
for the adoption of a better system of poor-law relief than the one
which at that time was ruining England. On the Continent, too, and
indeed wherever science extended, his views were adopted by the foremost
writers on political economy. He was elected a member of the most
eminent scientific societies abroad, such as the Institute of France and
the Royal Academy of Berlin. At home, he founded the Political Economy
Club and the Statistical Society.
In the other departments of the science of Political Economy Malthus was
a distinguished writer. He was, in company with Dr. West, a promulgator
of the theory of rent, first mooted, it seems, by a Scotchman, Dr.
Anderson, a contemporary of Adam Smith. Ricardo, the eminent political
economist, has acknowledged his deep obligations to Malthus, for his
exposition of this theory.
The great Principle of Population has been examined carefully and
accepted as a splendid discovery by the master minds of all countries
since the discoverer’s death in 1834. To say that it is looked upon as
axiomatic by the two Mills, by Ricardo, Senior, Cairnes, Alexander Bain,
Garnier, Bertillon, Fawcett, William Ellis, and William Hunter, is to
say that its truth has been fully proved to the ablest thinkers on
social science and on political economy that this and other European
States have produced.
It was, before the days of Malthus, the almost universal belief of
mankind that the wealth of a country was in proportion to its
population. Statesmen, poets, and philanthropists were constant in their
endeavour to secure as rapid a multiplication of the citizens as
possible: and, up till the publication of his essay—indeed, long after
that event, it was the custom in many European States for the Government
to give prizes to such parents as had given birth to and reared a more
than averagely large family of children. Such a law, indeed, was not
abrogated until about 25 years ago in Sardinia.
Mr. Malthus clearly exposed the error of such teaching. He showed that,
such is the immense power of increase in the human family, it is
probable that, were food plentiful enough, population might double in
some fifteen years, or even less. With incredible assiduity he read and
examined ancient history and the statistics of European countries and
their colonies, for the confirmation of his theory. He found, for
example, that after the great pestilences which had from time to time
ravaged European states, the surviving population had been so well fed
and housed that it had been enabled to replace the blanks left by deaths
usually in a very few years—in twenty years in several instances.
Turning to the colonies of Great Britain in the United States, Malthus
confirmed what the great pioneer of all progress in political economy,
Adam Smith, had noted, namely, that the colonists of those States had
doubled since their settlement in considerably less than twenty-five
years in some cases, without taking into account any fresh
immigration. In an article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, written by
Malthus, he gives most accurately the figures of the doubling of the
population of the United States from the year 1790 until 1820; and
shows, from statistics, that very few immigrants had arrived from
Europe during this period. Making ample allowance for the contingent
for such immigration, Malthus showed that, from 1790 to 1815, the
population of the States had more than doubled. Hence he was led to
the following expression:—“Population, when unchecked, goes on
doubling every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical
ratio.”
He next shows that the tendency of agricultural produce fit for the food
of man is to increase very much more slowly than man could increase.
This has been termed the “law of agricultural increase,” and is very
easily understood by taking an example. Let us grant that the average
quantity of wheat that can be grown at present on an acre of ground in
England is thirty bushels. It would be clearly impossible to suppose
that in 25 years 60 bushels per acre could be produced; in 50 years, 120
bushels, and so on. Whereas, the tendency of population to double in
from 12 to 25 years is clear enough, when it is remembered that the
human female commences to be capable of reproduction at about fifteen
and continues so until forty-five, in this climate. Were European women
to marry as early as the Hindoo women do, there would be a possibility,
if food were forthcoming, of a doubling of the population in some
fifteen years or less.
Mr. Malthus closely examined the statistics of European nations when he
wrote in 1805. Before the commencement of this century, he found that
the time taken for doubling of the populations of Europe was often as
great as some five hundred years. This remark had been anticipated by
Adam Smith, who had all the materials, had he sufficiently reflected on
them, to have written accurately on the Population Question, since he
also was acquainted with the rapid doubling of civilised peoples, when
they had been conveyed to new and fertile colonies such as the United
States. Here, then, was the conclusion of Malthus, which is perfectly
obvious when it is clearly stated. Whenever population, in Europe or
elsewhere, fails to double itself as rapidly as it does in new
countries, it must be checked in some way or other. Proceeding a little
further, he adds that it must either be checked by there being fewer
births or a greater number of deaths. Whatever tends to produce a
smaller number of births is included by Malthus among the _preventive
checks_ to population: whatever leads to a greater number of deaths,
among the _positive checks_.
His travels through Europe were mainly directed towards the inquiry as
to what kind of check was prevalent in each European state. In ancient
times, he saw that the positive checks to population had everywhere
extensively prevailed. Plagues and famines, with war and infanticide,
had been the checks in Greece and Rome, as now in China and Hindostan.
In the Europe of his day, all of these positive checks existed, in
greatly diminished proportions, indeed, but still they were far from
unknown. The extreme prevalence of celibacy, however, struck him in all
the civilised states of Europe which he then visited. He noticed that,
in many parts of the Continent, where the death-rate was lower than
elsewhere, it was the custom for the women to marry very late in life.
In one canton of Switzerland, where comfort and longevity were most
notable, Malthus found, on enquiry, that it was the custom for the
spinsters to delay their bridal day till long after the age of thirty.
On the other hand, wherever marriages were early, and the birth-rate was
high, he found on investigation that the death-rate was also above the
average.
From this experience of his, he was led to the conclusion that early
marriage, as a rule, was certain to lead to poverty and the positive
checks to population; and, therefore, in his practical maxims for
improving the condition of the poorer classes, he looked forward solely
to the exercise of that celibacy, which he had found so often
accompanied by long life and material comforts.
Had Mr. Malthus lived at this moment, he would have been aware of the
remarkable fact, that the French peasantry of modern days have, simply
from experience and without any theory, become acquainted with the
results of his enquiries, that a rapid increase of births leads
inevitably to poverty and early death. To quote from the most celebrated
of French statists, M. Maurice Block, the artizans of towns, and peasant
proprietors of whole districts of France, are accustomed to limit the
size of their families to two children; and thus, although France is the
most noted for its number of married couples of all European States, it
is also the country in all Europe which is the least rapid in the
increase of its population. The population check in France, then,
Malthus, had he lived, would have found to be, not celibacy, but the
_voluntary limitation of families_, in the midst of a married and most
moral and domestic community. The great philanthropist, who was so
distinguished for his charming temper and amiability, could not have
failed, we may rest assured, to have, with J. S. Mill, Garnier, and
Sismondi, given the preference to the modern French checks to population
over all others.
In closing this chapter, we should like to refer to a few additional
biographical circumstances of Malthus’ life. They have been supplied by
Mr. Robert Porter, of Beeston, Notts., a gentleman well known as an
admirer of the great discoverer, and as an expositor of his views. “The
Reverend Henry Malthus,” Mr. Porter writes, in February, 1879, “the only
son of Thomas Robert Malthus, lives at Effingham. The only daughter,
Emily, was living at Bathwick Hill Villa, Bath, some time back. She
married Captain Pringle. I have many letters from her, as also from her
mother, who was living with her in 1862, in her 86th year, when she had
a photograph taken from the family portrait, and sent to me with a scrap
of his MS. handwriting. I send you this to see and peruse. I wrote to
Mrs. Pringle about the memoir of her Father in his _Political Economy_,
saying there was much of Mr. Daniel Malthus in it, but nothing about his
mother, from whom I thought Mr. Malthus had received his best qualities.
In letter 3 you will see the reply, and I think will be interested to
read it. Dr. Anderson really _discovered_ the Law of Rent, as you may
see in Vol. 6 of _The Bee_, pp. 292–300.—1791.”
The information given by Mrs. Pringle, and referred to in the above
letter to Mr. Robert Porter, is as follows. After referring to Mr.
Ellis’ teachings in the _Friend of the People_, written about the year
1860, she speaks of the personal appearance of her father as follows:
“The likeness (photograph sent) is excellent, and to enable you to form
a complete idea of his personal appearance, I must tell you that his
complexion was fair, with light and curling hair, red whiskers, and
bright darkish blue eyes. His height was five feet eleven inches, and a
very well-formed figure.” Another granddaughter of Mrs. Malthus, the
mother of Thomas Robert, says that Daniel Malthus, the father, although
refined, was a selfish man. His wife was devoted to him, and although
not a _talented_ woman, was accomplished, and educated her own daughter
without a governess. All her children were devoted to her, especially
her eldest son. Thomas Robert was, perhaps, more attached to his father;
but his mother’s amiability descended to him, for he was never known to
say a harsh word of anyone, although more attacked than any writer has
perhaps ever been. It appears that Malthus died, not of heart disease,
but of bronchitis. His mother’s maiden name was Graham, and she was of
an old Scotch family. Here is one sentence to depict her character:—“In
short, I imagine her gentle, unobtrusive, loving, romantic, and
perfectly unselfish; but not the sort of person to form her sons’
characters, though to attract their affections.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE “ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION.”
Comparatively few students of Political Economy at the present day
appear to read Malthus’ celebrated Essay in the original. This, in our
opinion, is a great mistake. That work is as readable now as it was when
it attracted such well-merited attention at the commencement of this
century; and the statistics given by the learned author become even more
valuable than ever, owing to the important additions made to them of
recent years by the various modern writers on Social Economy.
The third edition of Malthus’ essay, which appeared in 1806, is now
before us: and consists of two volumes of about one thousand pages in
all, of large type, full of the most interesting accounts ever given of
the manners and customs of the different nations of ancient and modern
times. The first volume is divided into two books. In Book I. there are
fourteen chapters, the first of which states the Law of Population, or
the _tendency_ which population has to increase more rapidly than the
means of subsistence. The second chapter treats of the general checks to
population, and the way in which these operate. Then come three most
interesting chapters on the checks to population among savage nations,
followed by one on those obtaining among the ancient inhabitants of
Northern Europe. Chapter seven gives an account of the checks existing
among modern pastoral nations; and this is followed by an account of the
checks in Africa, and Northern and Southern Siberia. Then follows a most
interesting account of the brutal checks to population in Turkey, and
the lamentable starvation checks of Hindostan and China. Book I. ends
with chapters on the checks to population among the ancient Greeks and
Romans.
In Book II. there is a most important account given by Mr. Malthus of
the results of his extensive travels in Europe, in 1799 and after years,
with details of the checks to population existing in Norway, Sweden,
Russia, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland.
If those persons who at present think that the Malthusian law of human
increase has been found by subsequent investigation to be erroneous,
could only be induced to read Mr. Malthus’ essay in the original, they
would soon find that all these objections have been anticipated in that
celebrated work, and perhaps acknowledge, with Mr. J. S. Mill and other
economists, that the truth is “axiomatic,” or no longer requiring
discussion. In the last pamphlet, indeed, which we have seen, dedicated
to one of the most deservedly popular of modern British authors, Thomas
Carlyle, the writer, like Mr. Carlyle himself, speaks as if the law of
Malthus _had_ been refuted; but, as usual in such cases, it is clear
that the writer has not the least idea of what the celebrated Essay on
Population was written to prove.
In his first chapter, Malthus observes that Euler, a great
mathematician, had calculated that, on the supposition of such a
moderate amount of mortality as one in 36 (which is considerably higher
than our present mortality of one in 42 in England), and with the
further supposition of the births being to the deaths as three to one (a
ratio which seems nearly to hold good, at present, in New Zealand), the
period of doubling a population would be only 12⅘ years; and Sir William
Petty, in his work on _Political Arithmetic_, supposed a doubling to be
possible in some ten years.
Malthus compares this tendency with the _actual increase_ of man in such
countries as China and Japan. He observes that it may fairly be doubted
whether the best directed efforts of human industry could double the
agricultural produce of China even once, in _any_ number of years. The
difference between the time of doubling, which has taken place of late
in some twenty or thirty years, in North America, and in our Australian
colonies, when compared with the slow increase of the Chinese
population, gives the most complete view of the case that can be
obtained.
In countries which are naturally healthy, and where the _preventive_
check is found to prevail, too, with considerable force, the _positive_
check, as Malthus observes, will prevail very little, and the mortality
will be small; but in _every_ country some of the checks are and will
always continue to be, in constant operation: so that mankind has only a
_choice_ of evils, for we cannot possibly escape from _some_ of the
population checks, which are inevitable.
In his third chapter our author reviews the population checks in the
lowest stage of human society; and shows how impossible it is for such
unfortunate peoples as the natives of the Tierra del Fuego, or of Van
Diemen’s Land, to increase rapidly in numbers, owing to their extreme
ignorance of the laws of nature. In New Zealand, Captain Cook found the
checks to population to be war, and starvation so great as to prompt to
cannibalism, in a country where, as it is at present colonized by a
civilized people, the deaths seem not to exceed fifteen per 1,000
annually, and population doubles in about twenty years or less, without
counting immigrants.
In Mr. Malthus’ day, there still existed large numbers of those
unfortunate races of American Indians, which are now so rapidly
disappearing in the modern “struggle for existence” with civilised
Europeans. Then, as now, these tribes lived principally by hunting and
fishing, most narrow modes of subsistence. The mortality of infants
among such tribes was always enormous, and the Jesuit missionaries
mentioned how that the Indians of South America were subject to
perpetual diseases for which they knew no remedy; scarcely ever did the
individuals of such tribes attain to an advanced age; and the checks to
population among them were chiefly of the _positive_ kind—plagues,
starvation, brutal wars, and disease. The North American Indians, too,
lived in such a state of filth and over-crowding in their huts, that
every infectious disease carried off vast numbers. Cannibalism,
according to Captain Cook, as seen in New Zealand and other islands,
originated in the fearful privations experienced by such peoples when
their numbers were pressing on the food supplies.
And here let us quote Malthus’ own words,—“It is not that the American
tribes have never increased sufficiently to render the pastoral or
agricultural state necessary to them; but, from some cause or other,
they have not adopted in any great degree these more plentiful modes of
procuring subsistence, and therefore cannot have increased so as to
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 the purpose.”
In chapter v., our author gives a curious account of how population was
checked in the islands of the South Seas. It is among such islands as
these (and, indeed, the British islands in ancient times resembled them
greatly), that we trace the origin of many of the singular institutions
destined to retard the rapid increase of mankind—cannibalism, late
marriages, the consecration of virginity, and ferocious punishments
against such women as reproduce the species at too early an age. Captain
Cook found such a constant state of warfare existing among the various
tribes in New Zealand, that each village in its turn applied to him to
assist them in destroying the others. In his third voyage he adds that
warlike ferocity is so constant “that one hardly ever finds a New
Zealander off his guard, either by night or day.”
In Otaheite and the Society Islands, again, where the size of the
islands was too small, and the knowledge of navigation acquired by the
islanders too scanty to make it possible for population to increase
rapidly, all sorts of sufferings were seen among the poorer classes of
the people; the richer classes, however, seemed, according to Captain
Cook, to check their own increase by having recourse to the fearful
practice of infanticide, to an enormous and unparalleled extent. Even
with these checks, however, population, in the South Sea Islands,
occasionally pressed so hard on subsistence that animal food became very
scarce in certain seasons, and such destructive wars ensued that Captain
Vancouver, on visiting Otaheite, in 1777, and again in 1791, found that
most of his friends of 1777 were dead, having been killed in the wars.
Prostitution, and destruction of female infants, were extremely common
in Otaheite in Captain Cook’s time.
In taking a general review of that department of human society, classed
under the name of savage life, the only advantage Malthus notices is the
possession of a greater degree of leisure by the mass of the people,
than that possessed by those of civilised countries. “There is less work
to be done, and, consequently, there is less labour. When we consider
the incessant toil to which the lower classes, in civilised societies,
are condemned, this cannot but appear to us a striking advantage; but it
is probably overbalanced by greater disadvantages.”
This remark of Mr. Malthus shows us, to a certain extent, on what J. J.
Rousseau founded his belief as to the superior happiness of the state of
nature over the civilised. Had Rousseau read the Essay on Population, he
could not, we believe, have failed to perceive that the evils of
civilisation are almost solely due to the universal want of knowledge of
the Population Law. The late marriages, and prostitution, so bitterly
inveighed against by that author, are merely the sorrowful population
checks of most modern civilised nations, that have passed into the
pastoral and agricultural stages of society, and have not yet proceeded
far enough to control the enormous fecundity of the race by less painful
and more thoughtful expedients than those which Jean Jacques Rousseau so
clearly perceived and so powerfully denounced in the French society of
the reign of Louis XV.
After speaking of the positive checks to population which have been so
universal among savage nations, Mr. Malthus proceeds in chapter vi. to
treat of the checks which prevented increase among the ancient
inhabitants of the North of Europe. Astonishment has often been
expressed at the hordes of warriors that, at various periods of the
decay of the Roman Empire, were poured down upon it from the Northern
nations. Mr. Malthus explains, with great clearness, that, wherever the
customs of such nations as composed the immigrants were such as to
conduce to health and early marriage, the immense fecundity of the race
fully accounts for these crowds of immigrants so rapidly succeeding each
other until the destruction of Rome ensued. Machiavel, in the beginning
of his _History of Florence_, says: “The people who inhabit the northern
parts that lie between the Rhine and the Danube, living in a healthful
and prolific climate, often increase to such a degree, that vast numbers
of them are forced to leave their country and go in search of new
habitations. These emigrations proved the destruction of the Roman
Empire.”
There can be no doubt that this is a true account of the way in which
poverty and over-rapid reproduction cause emigration in ancient and
modern times; and we cannot help regarding the present warlike policy of
England and Germany as signs of a growing over-population in both of
these States, which tempts the _proletaire_ members of the governing
classes to seek ever fresh territory, and makes the other classes of
society so tolerant of such unjust conduct in their rulers. In fact, it
may be truly said that the adoption of Neo-Malthusian views is the only
really revolutionary measure, and the only safeguard of nations against
wars of conquest or intestinal dissension.
In chapter vii. Malthus speaks of the checks to population among modern
pastoral nations. Pastoral nations, although not so poor as hunting
nations, are, of course, far more unable to acquire wealth than nations
that have adopted agricultural pursuits. Hence, population increases but
slowly in such communities, and they are often on the verge of famine
for lengthened periods. Volney, in his travels, says, that the pastoral
tribes of the Arabian desert deny that the religion of Mahomet was made
for them. “For how,” they say, “can we perform ablutions when we have no
water; how can we give alms when we have no riches; or what occasion can
there be to fast during the month of Ramadan, when we fast all the
year?”
And yet it seems that in Arabia, as elsewhere, the direct social
encouragements to population are very great. A Mahometan is taught that
one of the great duties of man is to procreate children to glorify the
Creator. But, as Mr. Malthus truly says, “While the Arabs retain their
present manners, and the country remains in its present state of
cultivation, the promise of paradise to every man who had ten children
would but little increase their numbers, though it might greatly
increase their misery.”
The checks to population existing in Africa seem to be chiefly of the
positive kind. Incessant warfare, with death by famine or epidemics, are
described by the early travellers on that Continent, Park and Bruce, as
carrying off whole tribes. Park states that, independently of violent
causes, the struggle for food is so great in most African states, that
longevity is rare among the negroes. At forty, most of them become
grayhaired and covered with wrinkles, and but few of them survive the
age of fifty-five or sixty. There was, in his day, but little difficulty
in obtaining slaves in times of famine in Africa, as even free negroes
were often so pressed with hunger as to entreat, according to Dr.
Laidley, to be put on his slave-chain, to save them from starvation.
Bruce reports that, in many of the tribes, women begin to be mothers at
the age of eleven: and to such a life of privation and care does this
rapid reproduction lead, that he speaks of the women in some States near
Abyssinia as becoming, at the age of twenty-two, “more wrinkled and
deformed by age, than an European woman is at sixty.”
Mr. Malthus, after a very curious account of the checks to population in
Northern and Southern Siberia, then passes on in chapter x., to treat of
the Turkish Dominions and Persia, and his remarks are especially
interesting to our modern politicians. The fundamental cause of the low
rate of increase of population in Turkey, he truly remarks, is
undoubtedly the nature of the Turkish 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. It is calculated
at the present day that population would double only once in 555 years
in Turkey, owing to the positive checks caused by its wretched
government. The population of modern Turkey is about 28 millions, or
only some 16 persons per square mile; and, in 1876, it was stated in
governmental reports that the population of the empire was fast
declining, and its cultivated lands falling into the condition of
deserts. In Europe, as in Asia, we are informed by Malthus, it was the
maxim of Turkish policy, originating in the feebleness of government,
and the fear of popular tumults, to keep the price of corn low in all
the considerable towns. “When Constantinople is in want of provisions,
ten provinces are perhaps famished for a supply. At Damascus, during the
scarcity of 1784, the people paid only one penny farthing a pound for
their bread, whilst the peasants in the villages were actually dying
with hunger.”
As to the checks to population in Persia, the dreadful convulsions to
which that 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 were constantly subject
to the ravages of the Tartars. Hence the slow increase.
One of the most valuable parts of the _Essay on Population_ is that
wherein Mr. Malthus treats of the checks to population in Hindostan and
Tibet. In Hindostan, according to the ordinance of Menu, the Indian
legislator, marriage is very greatly encouraged, and a male heir is
considered as an object of the first importance. Hindoo maidens are
married at the age of eleven, and even younger: and become mothers
before they attain the age of twelve. For such reasons, Hindostan has
been one of the most noted countries in the world for devastations,
epidemics, and famines. The lower classes have for centuries been
reduced to the extremest poverty, and compelled to adopt the most frugal
and scanty mode of subsistence. Whilst the average annual income per
head in England was calculated, by Mr. Henry Fawcett in 1870, at about
some eighteen pounds; in Hindostan, it was lately stated by Mr. J.
Bright, that about two or three pounds sterling for food is all a Hindoo
peasant gets. And, as Lord Derby remarked in his admirable Rochdale
speech in 1879, the people of Hindostan seem to be a marked example of
how very low a standard of living a nation may people down to.
Recent years have made us familiar with the tales of Indian famines; but
there is nothing novel in these in the history of that long over-peopled
country. One of the Jesuits cited by Malthus says that it is impossible
for him to describe the misery to which he was witness during the two
years’ famine in 1737 and 1738, and another Jesuit writes, “Every year
we baptize a thousand children, whom their parents can no longer feed,
or who, being likely to die, are sold to us by their mothers in order to
get rid of them.”
Tibet, it seems, according to Malthus, is perhaps the only country where
habits tending to repress population are, or were, universally
encouraged by the government. Celibacy is there much encouraged among
government employés, and the number of monasteries and nunneries is
considerable. “But, even among the laity, the business of population
goes on very coldly. All the brothers of a family, without any
restriction of age or of numbers, associate their fortunes with one
female, who is chosen by the eldest and considered as the mistress of
the house.” It is evident that this custom, combined with the celibacy
of such a numerous body of ecclesiastics, must operate, says Malthus, in
the most powerful manner as a preventive check to population. Yet,
according to Mr. Turner’s account, it appears that the population of
Tibet presses on the means of subsistence. Tibet, in Mr. Turner’s time,
seems to have suffered, as England now does, and as we hear that even
our wealthy colonies of Victoria and New South Wales do, from a set of
paupers created by an extremely unwise system of out-door relief—a
system which but too often manufactures the very paupers it wishes to
relieve.
Mr. Malthus’ account of the Checks to Population in China and Japan,
contained in chapter xij. of his work is one of the most important
contributions to the question conceivable. His authorities are Duhalde’s
History of China and Sir G. Staunton’s Account of his Embassy to China.
According to the former author, writing in 1738, the population of China
was then estimated as at least three hundred and thirty-three millions.
At present China is said to contain some four hundred millions.
The causes of the great populousness of China are, according to Malthus,
its advantageous position as to climate and irrigation, and the very
great encouragement given to agriculture by the monarchs of that nation.
The Emperor himself every year, to set an example, ploughs a few ridges
of land, and the mandarins of every city perform the same ceremony. The
whole surface of the empire is, with trifling exceptions, dedicated to
the production of food for man alone. There is no meadow, and very
little pasture, and no waste land. Even the soldiers of the Chinese army
are mostly employed in agriculture.
The extraordinary encouragements given to marriage also contribute to
make China more populous in proportion to the extent of its territory
than any other country. The permission given by parents to abandon their
children, which exists in China, is shown by Sir G. Staunton to
facilitate marriage, and cause even greater over-population than in more
civilized states where such barbarities are not permitted. The effect of
this early marriage and rapid peopling is to subdivide property; and it
is a common remark among the Chinese, that fortunes seldom continue
considerable in the same family beyond the third generation. One of the
Jesuits, writing on China, says: “The richest and most flourishing
empire of the world is, in one sense, the poorest and most miserable of
all. Four times as much territory would be necessary to put the
inhabitants at their ease.”
It cannot be said in China, as it often is said in Europe, that the poor
are idle, and might gain a subsistence if they would work. The labours
and efforts of these poor people are beyond conception. “A Chinese will
pass whole days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in
water, and in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and
to drink the insipid water in which it is boiled.” This is the remark of
a Jesuit: and although it is evidently an exaggeration, since modern
researches on diet show that such food could not maintain animal
existence, it shows what miseries are caused by the peopling down to
such a low standard of comfort.
“The procreative power,” says Malthus, “would, with as much facility,
double in twenty-five years the population of China, as that of any of
the States of America.” We can readily sympathise, then, with the alarm
felt by our fellow-countrymen in Australasia and California, at the
possible invasion of the untold millions which China could, with the
greatest facility, pour into them. It is, for this reason, that the
Legislature of New South Wales has quite recently, by a large majority,
passed a Bill to stem the current of Chinese immigration. It will be for
the ultimate advantage of the human race that nations with such a low
standard of comfort as the Chinese, should learn that they must imitate
the more prosperous nations in prudential restraint before they can
become entitled to claim to become citizens of such countries.
We have lately understood the magnitude of a Chinese famine, where
millions of unfortunate people are reduced to misery and death at once,
from the failure of the crops. Mr. Malthus notices that, in such times
of dearth, China can obtain no assistance from her neighbours: and must
perforce draw the whole of her resources from her own provinces. When
such failures of the crops occur, the government of China pretend to be
very assiduous in providing schemes for the miseries of the people; but,
in the meanwhile, hosts of unfortunates are starved to death, since
there is not enough food forthcoming, so little margin is left, on
account of the very scanty share falling to the lot of each, even in
times of plenty.
In this chapter upon China and Japan Malthus makes an acute remark on
the question, which is sometimes discussed in this country, whether the
consumption of grain in the manufacture of spirits is ever a cause of
famine. The whole tendency of such a manufacture is, he asserts, to the
contrary. “The consumption of corn, in any other way but that of
necessary food, checks the population before it arrives at the utmost
limits of subsistence, and, as the grain may be withdrawn from this
particular use in the time of a scarcity, a public granary is thus
opened richer probably than could have been formed by any other means.
When such a consumption has been once established, and has become
permanent, its effect is exactly as if a piece of land, with all the
people upon it, were removed from the country. The rest of the people
would certainly be precisely in the same state as they were before,
neither better nor worse, in years of average plenty; but, in a time of
dearth, the produce of this land would be returned to them, without the
mouths to help them to eat it.”
This fact should be borne in mind by Mr. Hoyle and other writers on
abstinence from alcohol, since the advocacy of a good cause is often
impeded by incorrect reasoning. “China, without her distilleries, would
certainly be more populous,” says Malthus, “but on a failure of the
seasons would have still less resource than she has at present, and as
far as the magnitude of the cause would operate, would, in consequence,
be more subject to famines, and those famines would be severe.”
Temperance advocates, then, should, if possible, try to substitute a
less injurious luxury in the place of alcohol, which causes so much
disease; and not forget that the poverty of over-population is one of
the great causes of drunkenness.
The principal cause of the great populousness of Japan is doubtless the
persevering industry of the inhabitants. The checks to population in
Japan have been famines, as in China and Hindostan; but the Japanese are
also more warlike than the Chinese, and there is much less encouragement
given to marriage in Japan than there is in China. Hence the superior
enlightenment of the Japanese, and the intelligence which has recently
made them so alive to the benefits conferred on mankind by European
civilization.
The all-important nature of the discovery of Malthus may be better seen
by comparing the condition of China with that of the United States of
America, than by any other example. So far advanced have the Chinese
been, for perhaps some thousands of years, in the knowledge of the art
of agriculture, that it is now probable that the four hundred millions
at present occupying the Empire could not possibly double in _any given
number_ of years. Whereas, the population of the United States has for
the last century continued to double, aided by immigration, in periods
of less than twenty-five years. He must, indeed, be gifted with a poor
capacity for reason, who does not, on comparing these two rates, at once
see, that the grand problem for our race is to prevent the instinct of
reproduction from causing the terrible evils of early death, and chronic
poverty. To introduce the new Malthusian views into China and Hindostan
is the only way to cope with the famines, infanticides, and life-long
starvation of these terribly over-peopled countries.
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