OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS.
The more equal division of landed property among the Greeks and Romans
in the earlier period of their history, must have tended greatly to
encourage population, since agriculture, Mr. Malthus says, is the only
kind of industry which permits of multitudes existing. When, as often
occurred, the number of free citizens did not exceed ten or twenty
thousand, every individual would naturally feel the value of his own
exertions, and know that, if he left his lands idle, he would be wanting
in his duty as a citizen. Hence, a great attention was paid to
agriculture in Greece. Population rapidly increased, and colonization
was common, so that the legislators of Greece had their attention
frequently called to the question of over-population. Mr. Malthus had
already shown that the practice of infanticide, as existing in China,
tended rather to increase population, by tempting people into early
marriage. Solon permitted the exposition of infants, Mr. Malthus is
inclined to think, partly for the purpose of tempting the citizens into
early marriage, and thus increasing the population.
The great philosophers of Greece, such as Plato and Aristotle, are the
origin of all real civilisation in succeeding ages throughout Europe:
and have saved us from the deluge of crude theologies, such as those of
Palestine or less cultured tribes. The so-called divine law of “Increase
and multiply and replenish the earth,” and other equally vague and
meaningless exclamations, are in strongest contrast with the scientific
reasoning of these _masters of all the learned_. Plato, in his
“Republic,” limits the number of free citizens in his ideal state to
five thousand and forty. Procreation, he maintains, when it proceeds too
fast, may be checked, or when it goes on too slowly, may be encouraged,
by the proper distribution of honors and marks of ignominy, and by the
admonitions of the elders to prevent or promote it according to
circumstances. Mr. John Stuart Mill evidently was of a similar opinion,
and his followers have advocated State intervention as a cure for
poverty. Plato also anticipated Mr. Darwin himself and the modern
Darwinians, who lay such great and just stress on the point of the
rational selection of parents. In the fifth book of his “Republic,” he
proposes that the most healthy men should be joined in marriage to the
finest specimens among the women, and the inferior citizens should be
paired with each other. He next proposes that the children of the first
class alone shall be brought up, the others not. It will doubtless be
one of the results of the Neo-Malthusian movement of this day, that
persons afflicted with hereditary disease will not so often desire to
become parents as the healthy, whilst they may follow the advice of
Professor Mantegazza, of Florence, and “marry, but not procreate.”
From these and other passages it is clear that Plato well saw the
tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. His
expedients for checking it were not permissible, indeed, but the extent
to which they were to be used shows how great he perceived the
difficulty to be. How backward most modern nations are in speculation on
such points may be judged of by the unwillingness in Germany, England,
and even in France to look the question fairly in the face. In Plato’s
time wars were nearly perpetual, and very destructive, and if, whilst
knowing this, he could still contemplate the destruction of the children
of the poorer and sicklier of the population, of all who were born when
their parents were either too young or too old, the fixing of the date
of marriage late, and the regulating the number of marriages, his
reasonings and experience must have pointed out to him the terrible
tendency of population to over-pass the means of subsistence.
The great writer, Aristotle, seems to have seen the principle even more
clearly than Plato. He fixes the age of marriage for men in his Republic
actually at thirty-seven; and, even with this late marriage, he foresaw
that there might be too many children, so that he proposed that the
number allowed to each marriage should be regulated. Aristotle accuses
Plato of not being sufficiently attentive to the population difficulty,
and for proposing to equalise property without limiting the number of
children (_De Repub._ lib. ii. ch. vi.). This may be a hint to modern
Socialists, especially to those of Germany, where Socialism seems to be
becoming the creed of the masses, in despair at ever hearing any good
thing from the military despots now in power. Aristotle justly observes
that the laws require to be much more definite and precise in a state
where property is equalised, than in others, since, in ordinary
circumstances, an increase of population would only occasion a further
sub-division of landed property, whereas, in a state of communism, the
supernumeraries would be altogether destitute, because the lands, being
reduced to equal elementary parts, would be incapable of further
sub-division. He remarks that it is necessary in all cases to regulate
the number of children, so that they may not exceed the proper number.
In doing this, death and sterility are of course to be taken into
account. But if, he says in chapter vii., every person be left free to
have as many children as he pleases, the necessary consequence will be
poverty: and poverty is the mother of crime and sedition. For these very
reasons, an ancient writer on politics, Pheidon of Corinth, introduced a
regulation to limit population without equalising wealth.
Speaking again, in book ii. ch. vii., of schemes for the equalisation of
wealth, Aristotle says that, in order that such schemes should be
successful, it would be imperative to regulate at the same time the size
of families. For, if children multiply beyond the means of supporting
them, the law will necessarily be broken, and families will be suddenly
reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to
public tranquility. In Sparta the landed property had passed into the
hands of a very small number of the citizens: and Aristotle remarks that
in such a state the encouragement of large families by rewards could
only have for its effect to cause an immense accumulation of indigence,
so long as a better distribution of the land were not secured. It would
have been well for European nations up to this time, had their rulers
known even as much as Aristotle and Plato of this matter: they would
have avoided those disastrous historical incentives to procreation,
which must always have ended only in increasing indigence and premature
death.
The positive checks to population in ancient Greece and Rome are
palpable enough. Incessant wars, plagues, and famines prevailed. Livy
expresses his surprise that the Volci and Æqui, who were so often
destroyed by the Romans, should have been able to bring fresh armies
into the field, but when the principle of population is understood, our
astonishment ceases. Such conquered tribes, like the ancient Germans,
doubtless gave full scope to the powers of procreation, and hence were
soon as numerous as before their defeat. And yet it seems clear that the
horrible practice of infanticide was very common in Italy, for Romulus
was supposed already to have forbidden it, though the constant warfare
of the Romans must have lessened the necessity for this check. The Roman
population of Italy soon fell off when the land passed into the hands of
a few great proprietors, since the other classes, having no means of
selling their labour, or competing with the numerous slaves of the
wealthy, would have been entirely starved, had it not been for the
curious custom which arose of distributing large quantities of corn
gratis to the poorer or landless citizens. No less than two hundred
thousand were thus fed in Augustus’ reign, and probably had little else
to depend upon. Hence the poorer free citizens could not increase, and
they are said to have been constantly in the habit of exposing their
unfortunate children, since the quantity of food doled out was not
enough for a family to subsist upon.
The _jus trium liberorum_ (law for rewarding fathers of three children)
could effect nothing in such circumstances, in making the poor give
birth to large families, although it may occasionally have tempted the
landed proprietors to increase their families. Had the poor had large
numbers of children in such a miserable state of society, they must have
been born only to die of starvation, since the food doled out by the
Government was not sufficient to feed all.
Positive laws to encourage marriage, says Mr. Malthus, enacted on the
urgency of the occasion, and not mixed with religion, as in China and
some other countries, are seldom calculated to answer the end they aim
at, and therefore generally indicate ignorance in the legislator who
proposes them; but the apparent necessity of them almost always
indicates a very great degree of moral and political depravity in the
State; and in the countries in which they are most strongly insisted on,
not only vicious manners will be found to prevail, but political
institutions extremely unfavourable to industry, and, consequently, to
population.
On this account Malthus entirely disagreed with Hume, who supposed that
the Roman world was probably most populous during the long peace under
Trajan and the Antonines. Wars, he says, do not depopulate much while
industry continues in vigour: and peace will not increase the number of
people when they cannot find means of subsistence. “The renewal of the
laws relating to marriage under Trajan indicates the continued
prevalence of vicious habits, and of a languishing industry, and seems
to be inconsistent with the supposition of a great increase of
population.”
Hume also thought that the population of the ancient world was greater
than in modern times, because, he said, there were hosts of domestic
servants in modern States remaining unmarried. But the contrary
inference, says Malthus, seems to be the more probable. When the
difficulties attending the rearing of a family are very great, and,
consequently, many persons of both sexes remain single, we may naturally
suppose that the population is stationary, but by no means that it is
not absolutely great; because the difficulty of rearing a family may
arise from the very circumstance of a very great absolute population,
and the consequent fulness of all the channels to a livelihood; though
the same difficulty may undoubtedly exist in a thinly peopled country,
which is yet stationary in its population.
The number of unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, says
Malthus, may form some criterion by which we may judge whether
population is increasing, stationary, or decreasing; but will not enable
us to determine anything respecting absolute populousness. Yet even in
this point we may be deceived, since, in some southern countries early
marriages are general, and very few women remain in a state of celibacy,
yet the people not only do not increase, but the actual number is
perhaps small. In this case the removal of the preventive check is made
up by the excessive force of the positive check. The sum of all the
positive and preventive checks taken together, forms, undoubtedly, the
immediate cause which represses population; but we never can expect to
obtain and estimate accurately this sum in any country; and we can
certainly draw no safe conclusion from the contemplation of two or three
of these checks taken by themselves, because it so frequently happens
that the excess of one check is balanced by the defect of some other.
Causes which affect the number of births or deaths may or may not affect
the average population, according to circumstances; but causes which
affect the production and distribution of the means of subsistence must
necessarily affect population; and it is therefore on these causes,
besides actual enumerations, on which we can with any certainty rely.
“All the checks to population, which have been hitherto considered in
the course of this review of human society, are clearly resolvable into
moral restraint, vice, and misery.”
With regard, then, to the checks to population in ancient Rome, Mr.
Malthus thinks that moral restraint acted but feebly in restraining the
increase of numbers. And of the other branch of the preventive check,
which comes under the denomination of “vice,” according to Mr. Malthus,
though its effect seems to have been very considerable in the later
periods of Roman history and in some other countries; yet, on the whole,
he thinks its operation was much inferior to the positive checks. A
large portion of the procreative power was called into action among the
Romans, the redundancy being checked by violent causes, among which war
was the most prominent and striking, and after which came famines and
violent diseases.
In most of these ancient nations the population seems to have been
seldom measured accurately according to the average and permanent means
of subsistence, but generally to have vibrated between the two extremes,
and therefore the contrasts between want and plenty were strongly
marked, as might be expected in the earlier and less experienced ages of
human society.
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