CHECKS TO POPULATION IN MODERN EUROPE.
Book ij. of Malthus’ Essay treats of the checks to population in the
different States of modern Europe,—Norway, Sweden, Russia, Germany,
Switzerland, France, Great Britain, and Ireland. In Malthus’ day, Norway
seems to have been, perhaps, the most prosperous country in Europe; and
it was distinguished by the great healthiness of its people. The
death-rate he puts down as only one in 48, in a population of about
three-quarters of a million.
With such a very low _positive_ check, Malthus at once looked for the
existence of a very high _preventive_ check; and found this to be
present in the very small proportion of marriages (one in 130) taking
place annually in Norway.
There were, then as now, no large manufacturing towns in Norway to take
away the overflowing population of the country; and, hence, as
emigration was not then in vogue, the Norwegian peasant seldom left the
village he was born in. Until, then, some married person died, there was
usually no place for another marriage to take place. “In countries more
fully peopled (says Malthus) this subject is always involved in great
obscurity. Each man naturally thinks that he has as good a chance of
finding employment as his neighbour, and that if he fail in one place he
shall succeed in another. He marries, therefore, and trusts to fortune:
and the effect too frequently is, that the redundant population
occasioned in this manner is repressed by the positive checks of poverty
and disease.”
It is without doubt, says our author, owing to the preventive check to
population, as much as to any peculiar healthiness of air, that the
mortality of Norway is so low. In every country the principal mortality
takes place among very young children; and the smaller number of these
in Norway, in proportion to the whole population, will naturally
occasion a smaller mortality than in other countries, supposing the
climate to be equally healthy.
The population of Norway is now about 1,800,000, a very large accession
since the days of Malthus, and there has of late years been a very large
emigration from that country to the United States, which indicates that,
in all probability, there will soon be less of prudential restraint in
the matter of births, and hence, doubtless, a higher death-rate than at
the commencement of this century. The former low death-rate of Norway,
one in 48, is not attained to at present by almost any European State
except Norway. It is little more than 20 per 1000 per annum.
Malthus mentions in his work that Norway is almost the only country in
Europe where a traveller will hear any apprehensions expressed of a
redundant population, and where the danger to the happiness of the lower
classes of people from this cause, is in some degree seen and
understood. “This obviously arises from the smallness of the population
altogether and the consequent narrowness of the subject. If our
attention were confined to one parish, and there were no power of
emigrating from it, the most careless observer could not fail to remark
that, if all married at twenty, it would be perfectly impossible for the
farmers, however carefully they might improve their land, to find
employment and food for those that would grow up; but when a great
number of these parishes are added together in a populous kingdom, the
largeness of the subject and the power of moving from place to place
obscure and confuse our view. We lose sight of a truth which before
appeared completely obvious; and in a most unaccountable manner
attribute to the aggregate quantity of land a power of supporting people
beyond comparison greater than the sum of all its parts.”
In Sweden, in Mr. Malthus’ day, the inhabitants of the towns were only
one-thirtieth part of the whole population; and the mortality, when
Malthus wrote, seems to have been as high as one in 35. The proportion
of yearly marriages he found, in Sweden, to be about one in 112: varying
from one in 100, in good years, to one in 124, in bad ones. When it is
remembered that the marriage-rate in Norway was but one in 135, against
one in 112 in Sweden, the reason of the high death-rate is at once
explained.
As usual, in Europe at that time, however, Swedish legislators were in
the habit of endeavouring to increase population in all sorts of foolish
ways, as, for instance, by encouraging strangers to settle in the
country. Malthus remarks that, by doing so, the Government of Sweden was
merely raising the already high death-rate, and not really increasing
the population at all.
According to the economist, Cantzlaer, the principal measures in which
the Government had been employed for the encouragement of the population
were the establishment of the Colleges of Medicine, and of Lying-in and
Foundling Hospitals. Malthus remarks, that “the example of the hospitals
of France may create a doubt whether such establishments are universally
to be recommended. Foundling hospitals, whether they attain their
professed object or not, are, in every view, hurtful to the State.”
The population of Sweden, in 1751, was 2,229,000. It is now 4,400,000.
There has recently been, as from Norway, a very large emigration from
that State to America. “The sickly periods in Sweden (says Malthus)
which have retarded the increase of its population, appear in general to
have arisen from the unwholesome nourishment occasioned by severe want.
And this want has been caused by unfavourable seasons falling upon a
country which was without any reserved store, either in its general
exports, or in the liberal division of food to the labourer in common
years, and which was therefore peopled up to its produce before the
occurrence of the scanty harvest. Such a state of things is a clear
proof that if, as some of the Swedish economists assert, their country
ought to have a population of nine or ten millions, they have nothing
further to do than to make it produce food sufficient for such a number,
and they may rest perfectly assured that they will not want mouths to
eat it, without the assistance of lying-in and foundling hospitals.”
With regard to the State of Russia at the beginning of this century,
Malthus has left us a most interesting account derived from queries made
during his travels in that country. At that date, the births in some
parts of Russia were, to the deaths, according to Russian statistics,
nearly as three to one. This reminds us moderns of 1879, of the birth
and death-rate of our happy colony of New Zealand, where in 1877, there
was the prodigious birth-rate of 41 per 1000, with the very low
death-rate of only 12·4. Russian mortality, in Malthus’ time, must have
been very low indeed; and Mr. Tooke, in his _View of the Russian
Empire_, published about that time, made out that the general mortality
in Russia was one in 58 of the population annually. This is incredible,
we think, in such an uncivilised State as Russia then was.
The birth-rate in Russia was, at that date, about 40 per 1,000, or
similar to that of New Zealand. The marriage-rate (one in 90) was vastly
higher than that of Norway (one in 130), so that the population of
Russia was evidently increasing most rapidly at that time. If we are to
give any credit to the healthiness of Russia in Malthus’ time, it is
clear that the city of Saint Petersburg was an exception to it, for the
half of all persons born there lived only till the age of 25.
With regard to foundling hospitals, Mr. Malthus’ visit to the renowned
Russian State hospitals of this description, has often been quoted, and
deserves to be attentively studied by all who speak of the question of
illegitimacy and charity. Malthus found the mortality in the _Maison des
Enfans trouvés_ prodigious. One hundred deaths a month was a common
average. The average number of children taken into this charity was at
that time ten daily, and the death-rate terrible and heartrending.
Children were taken in and no questions asked from the mothers, but were
handed over to nurses, and given back to their parents at any time when
they could prove themselves able to support them.
The country nurses to whom these unfortunate children were given were
paid only some fifteen-pence a week, and the children were received into
that hospital without any limit. The children returned from the country
(when they did return, for most of them died), at the age of six or
seven; and the girls left the charity at 18, the boys at 20. The
excessive mortality of the London Foundling Hospital of former days,
caused it to be forced almost entirely to close its doors; and to
become, what it now is, one of the many useless charities and shams of
the metropolis of Mr. Malthus’ native land.
Mr. Malthus also speaks of the great mortality of the Moscow Foundling
Hospital, which was instituted in 1786, as follows: “It appears to me
that the greatest part of this mortality is clearly to be attributed to
these institutions, miscalled ‘philanthropical.’ If any reliance can be
placed on the accounts given of the infant mortality in the Russian
towns and provinces, it would appear to be unusually small. The
greatness of it, therefore, in the foundling hospitals, may justly be
laid to the account of the institutions which encourage a mother to
desert her child, at the very time when, of all others, it stands most
in need of her fostering care. The frail tenure by which an infant holds
its life will not allow of a remitted attention, even for a few hours.”
Foundling Hospitals, it is clear, in Paris, Vienna, and in all
countries, tend to cause women to become thoughtless and heartless.
Malthus, indeed, makes a remark which we have recently heard paralleled
in Vienna. “An English merchant at Saint Petersburg told me that a
Russian girl, living in his family, under a mistress who was considered
as very strict, had sent six children to the Foundling hospital, without
the loss of her place. And with regard to the moral feelings of a
nation, it is very difficult to conceive that they must not be very
sensibly impaired by encouraging mothers to desert their offspring, and
endeavouring to teach them that their love for their new-born infants is
a prejudice, which it is the interest of their country to eradicate.”
Malthus mentions that the population of Russia, in 1796, was 36,000,000.
At present it is computed at eighty-five and a half millions, only seven
millions of which is found in Asia, and the rest in Europe.
A Government that had a true sense of what was advantageous for its
subjects would, instead of offering _encouragements_ to population, and
incentives to thoughtlessness on the part of parents, such as foundling
hospitals and other charities, encourage, by all means in its power, the
feeling of parental responsibility among all classes. To do this, the
most direct way would be, to show by some slight fine on the production
of large families, that there is no possibility of attaining comfort and
a low death-rate without _conjugal prudence_.
In Chapter ix. of Book ii., Malthus treats on the Checks to Population
in the Middle parts of Europe at the beginning of this century. He makes
the observation that there are few countries where the poorer classes
have so much foresight as to defer marriage till they have a fair
prospect of being able to support properly all their children: and in
all countries, he adds, a great mortality, whether arising from the too
great frequency of marriage, or occasioned by the number of towns and
the natural unhealthiness of the situation, will necessarily produce a
great frequency of marriage.
In Holland, in the registers of twenty-two villages, Sussmilch noted one
marriage to every 64 persons living, the usual rate being about 1 in
120. Malthus says he was for some time puzzled at this high annual
marriage-rate, until he found that the mortality in these villages was
actually 45 per 1,000 of the population. The extraordinary number of
marriages was merely produced by the rapid dissolution of the old
marriages by death, and the consequent vacancy of some employment by
which a family might be supported. In Norway the mortality in his day
was only 22 per 1,000, and the annual marriage-rate 1 in 130. This is a
notable contrast with the figures relating to Holland just quoted.
Of late years the birth and death-rate in Holland have been much more
satisfactory than they were in the days of Malthus: but the extreme
poverty of the working classes in South, as compared with North-Holland,
has been recently shown by Mr. S. Van Houten to result in a far higher
birth-rate and death-rate in the districts adjoining Rotterdam, than
occurs among the more prudent and well-fed inhabitants of Groningen.
Still, there have been years quite recently in Holland, when the
death-rate has been as high as 29 per 1,000 (1871), and even as lately
as 1875 it was 25 per 1,000.
The standard of comfort has greatly changed in several cities in
Germany. Thus, in Leipsig, Malthus mentions that, in 1620, the annual
marriage-rate was 1 in 82: whilst it fell in 1756 to 1 in 120. He
observes that, in countries which have long been fully peopled, and in
which no new sources of subsistence are opening, the marriages being
regulated principally by the deaths, will generally bear nearly the same
proportion to the whole population, at one period as another. In Berlin,
at the commencement of this century, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in
110, whilst it was 1 in 137 at Paris. Berlin, then as now, was probably
a very unhealthy city. The death-rate of infants there at present is
said to amount to one-half of all born in the first year of life in some
years.
Direct encouragements to marriage are, says Malthus, either perfectly
futile, or produce a marriage when there is no place for one, thus
increasing the mortality. Montesquieu, Sussmilch, and other authors
thought that princes and statesmen would really merit the name of
fathers of their people, if from the proportion of 1 in 120–125, they
could increase the marriages to the proportion of 1 in 80 or 90. But,
says Malthus, as this would greatly raise the death-rate and the poverty
in the State, such princes would more justly deserve the title of
destroyers of the people. Had Mr. Malthus lived in our day, he would
have been aware that a high marriage-rate is not by any means
necessarily followed by a high birth-rate, since, in modern France,
where there are the greatest number of married women in proportion to
population, over the age of 15, of any European state, the birth-rate is
_lower_ than in any other European state. But, in Malthus’ day, human
beings were still dominated greatly by instinct, and had not begun to
allow reason to prevail in the most important of all human acts, that
which leads to the addition of new members to society.
Mr. Malthus mentions that it had been calculated in his time that, when
the proportion of the people in towns in any State was to those in the
country as 1 to 3, then the mortality was about 28 per 1,000, rising to
32 in 1,000, when the proportion of townsmen to countrymen was as 3 to
7; and falling below 28 per 1,000 when the townsmen are to the
countrymen as 1 to 4. This holds true in principle in modern times: and
it is out of the question to expect to have the death-rate of large
cities as low as it is in country districts inhabited by well-fed
peasants.
In chapter vi. our author speaks of the checks to population in
Switzerland. From statistics existing in Geneva, it seems that in that
town, during the sixteenth century, the probability of life, or the age
to which half of those born live, was only 4·88, or rather less than 5;
and the mean life was about 18½ years. In the seventeenth century the
probability of life was 11½, and the mean life 23¼. In the eighteenth
century the probability of life had increased to 27, and the mean life
to 32.
M. Muret, a Swiss clergyman of Vevey, in the eighteenth century,
mentions the case of a village called Leyzin, with a population of 400
persons, where there were only eight births a year. The probability of
life in this model parish appeared to be so extraordinarily high as to
reach 61 years. And the average number of the births having been for 30
years almost accurately equal to the number of deaths, clearly proved
that the habits of the people had not led them to emigrate, and that the
resources of the parish for the support of the population had remained
nearly stationary. As the marriages in this parish would, with few
exceptions, be very late, it is evident that a very large proportion of
the subsisting marriages would be among persons so far advanced in life
that the women had ceased to bear. The births were only about 1 in 49 of
the population or much fewer than in France of modern days (1 in 40). In
England they are 1 in 28 of the population at present.
M. Muret made some calculations at Vevey respecting the fecundity of
marriages. He found that 375 mothers had produced 2,093 children:
_i.e._, about six children each: and he also found that there were 20
sterile women out of 478, or about 1 in 23 wives. Taking this into
account, the average number of children to a family at Vevey was 5⅓. In
modern France it is about 3, in Prussia 4·68, and in England about 4¼.
In those days, the proportion of annual marriages to population was
lower in the Canton de Vaud than even in Norway, being only 1 in 140. In
the model village of Leyzin only one-fifth of the total mortality was
among persons under fifteen. Such were the results of what Mr. Malthus
considered as the only true “moral restraint,” late marriages. All these
calculations of M. Muret imply the operation of the preventive check to
population in a very great degree in the Canton de Vaud. In the town of
Berne, the proportion of unmarried persons, including widows and
widowers, was considerably above the half of the adults, and the
proportion of the living below sixteen to those above was nearly as 1 to
3 in the beginning of this century. The peasants in Berne were noted for
comfort and wealth, doubtless owing to the low birth-rate in that
country. A law there prevented those who had no means from marrying.
Mr. Malthus gives an amusing account of a conversation he had with a
peasant who went with him from the Lac de Joux to the sources of the
river Orbe. This man said that the habit if early marriage might be
really said to be the vice of the country: and he was so strongly
impressed with the necessary and unavoidable wretchedness that must
result from it, that he thought a law ought to be made restricting men
from entering into the married state before they were forty years of
age, and then allowing it only with old maids, who might bear them two
or three children instead of six or eight. That peasant would have been,
we doubt not, one of the most zealous advocates of the _two children
system_, so wonderfully carried out in many of the most flourishing
districts of France, and probably would have abandoned all desire to
keep prudent couples like those in these French districts from marrying.
We hold with that simple peasant of the Jura, who had learnt the truths
he expounded by sad and cruel experience, he having married himself when
very young, and with his family, suffered much from poverty, that
governments are culpable when they do not attempt to lessen high
birth-rates. To forbid early marriage, indeed, is to encourage
prostitution and cause many other evils; but to affix a stigma on those
who produce large families is, as far as we can see, a plan which can
only produce good and need produce no evil results. It is an utter
misunderstanding of the rights of the individual to suppose that each
man and woman ought to have the _right_ to cause misery to their
unfortunate children, and at the same time produce a pressure upon the
powers of the soil and lessen the productive powers of past and present
labour. That this will ere long be seen to be the truth arising out of
the discoveries of the great English professor we cannot for a moment
doubt.
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