DETACHED ESSAYS.
In Volume II. of the “Essay on the Principle of Population” (edition
1806) there are to be found a number of most interesting remarks on the
population question. Book II. contains chapters on the Fruitfulness of
Marriage, on the Effects of Epidemics, on Registers of Births, Deaths,
and Marriages, and on the General Deductions from the Preceding View of
Society.
“There is no absolutely necessary connection,” says Malthus, “between
the average age of marriage and the average age of death. In a country
the resources of which will allow of a rapid increase of population, the
expectation of life or the average age of death may be extremely high,
and yet the age of marriage may be very early; and the marriages, then,
compared with the contemporary deaths of the registers, would, even
after the correction for second and third marriages, be very much too
great to represent the true proportion of the born living to marry.”
At the commencement of this century, it appears from the transactions of
the Society of Philadelphia, in a paper by Mr. Barton, entitled
“Observations on the Probability of Life in the United States,” that the
proportion of marriages to births was as 1 to 4½. As, however, this
proportion was taken principally from towns, it is probable, according
to Malthus, that the births given were too low, and that as many as five
might be taken as an average for town and country. According to this
author, the mortality at that date was about 1 in 45; and, if the
population doubled in twenty-five years, the births would be 1 in 20 (50
per 1,000).
In England at the commencement of this century the proportion of
marriages to births appears to have been about 100 to 350. But in those
days Mr. Malthus calculated that the annual marriages to the births in
England amounted to about 1 in 4. In the East End of London at the
present day the writer has found that the average number of children to
a marriage among the women of the poorer classes is about 7, whilst the
annual births in England and Wales to the marriages are nearly as 4¼ to
1. In France the annual marriages are to the births as 1 to 3.
A writer in Mr. Malthus’s day, Crome, observes that when, the marriages
of a country yield less than four births, the population is in a very
precarious state; and he estimates the prolificness of marriages by the
proportion of yearly births to marriages. If this had been true, the
population of many countries of Europe would be at present in a
precarious state, since in many, as in France, the proportion of
marriages to births is much under 4 to 1.
“The preventive check,” says Malthus, “is perhaps best measured by the
smallness of the proportion of yearly births to the whole population.
The proportion of yearly marriages to the population is only a just
criterion in countries similarly circumstanced, but is incorrect where
there is a difference in the prolificness of marriages or in the
proportion of the population under the age of puberty, and in the rate
of increase. If all the marriages of a country, be they few or many,
take place young, and be consequently prolific, it is evident that to
produce the same proportion of births a smaller number of marriages will
be necessary, or, with the same proportion of marriages, a greater
proportion will be produced.”
Curiously enough, in his day Malthus mentions that in France both the
births and deaths were greater than they were in Sweden, although the
proportion of marriages was then rather less in France. “And when,” he
adds, “in two countries compared, one of them has a much greater part of
its population under the age of puberty than the other, it is evident
that any general proportion of the yearly marriages to the whole
population will not imply the same operation of the preventive check
among those of a marriageable age.”
One of the most interesting chapters in the second volume of Malthus’
essay is that which relates to the rapid increase of births after the
plagues. According to Sussmilch, very few countries had hitherto been
exempt from plagues, which every now and then would sweep away
one-fourth or one-third of their population. That writer calculated that
above one-third of the people in Prussia were destroyed by the plague of
1711; and yet, notwithstanding this great diminution of the population,
it appeared that the number of marriages in 1711 was very nearly double
the average of the six years preceding the plague. Hence the proportion
of births to deaths was prodigious—320 to 100—an excess of births as
great, perhaps, as has ever been known in America. In the four years
succeeding the plague the births were to the deaths in the proportion of
above 22 to 10, which, calculating the mortality at 1 in 36, would
double the population in 21 years.
“In contemplating,” says Malthus, “the plagues and sickly seasons which
occur in the tables of Sussmilch, after a period of rapid increase, it
is impossible not to be struck with the idea that the number of
inhabitants had, in these instances, exceeded the food and accommodation
necessary to preserve them in health. The mass of the people would, upon
this supposition, be obliged to live worse, and a greater number of them
would be crowded together in one house; and these natural causes would
evidently contribute to increase sickness, even though the country,
absolutely considered, might not be crowded and populous. In a country
even thinly inhabited, if an increase of population takes place before
more food is raised, and more houses are built, the inhabitants must be
distressed for room and subsistence.”
In Chapter xi. we have some general deductions from the preceding views
of Society. Mr. Malthus there shows that the main cause of the slow
growth of populations in Europe is insufficiency of supplies of food. No
settlements, says our author, could have been worse managed than those
of Spain, Mexico, Peru and Quito. Yet, under all their difficulties,
these colonies made a quick increase in population. But the English
North American Colonies added to the quantity of rich land they held in
common with the Spanish and Portuguese settlements, a greater degree of
liberty and equality. In Pennsylvania there was no right of
primogeniture in Malthus’ time: and in the provinces of New England the
eldest son had only a double share. The consequence of these favourable
circumstances united was a rapidity of increase almost without a
parallel in history. Throughout all the northern provinces the
population was found to double itself in 25 years. The original number
of persons which had settled in the four provinces of New England, in
1643, was 21,200. Afterwards it was calculated that more left them than
went to them. In the year 1760 they were increased to half a million.
They had, therefore, all along, doubled their numbers in 25 years. In
New Jersey the period of doubling appeared to be 22 years; and in Rhode
island still less. In the back settlements, where the inhabitants
applied themselves solely to agriculture, and luxury was not known, they
were supposed to double their numbers in 15 years.
The population of the United States, says Malthus, writing in 1806,
according to the last Census, is 11,000,000. “We have no reason to
believe that Great Britain is less populous at present, for the
emigration of the small parent stock which produced these numbers. On
the contrary, a certain amount of emigration is known to be favourable
to the population of the mother country. Whatever was the original
number of British emigrants which increased so fast in North America,
let us ask. Why does not an equal number produce an equal increase in
the same time in Great Britain? The obvious reason is the want of food;
and that this want is the most efficient cause of the three immediate
checks to population which have been observed to prevail in all
societies, is evident, from the rapidity with which even old States
recover the desolations of war, pestilence, famine, and the convulsions
of nature. They are then for a short time placed a little in the
condition of new colonies, and the effect is always answerable to what
might be expected. If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed,
subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the reduced numbers;
and the invariable consequence will be, that population, which before
perhaps was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to increase, and
will continue its progress till the former population is recovered.”
The decennial censuses of the United States during this century have
been as follows, in round numbers:—In 1800, 5,305,000; in 1810,
7,239,000; in 1820, 9,638,000; in 1830, 12,866,000; in 1840, 17,069,000;
in 1850, 23,193,000; in 1860, 31,443,000; in 1870, 38,558,000. If we
compare the cypher of 1830—12,866,000—with that of 1800—5,305,000—we see
that the population of the States far more than doubled itself in the
first thirty years of the century, making all due allowance for
immigration, by the simple process of fecundity inherent in the human
species.
Mr. Malthus mentions (chapter xi. p. 67), that in New Jersey “the
proportion of births to deaths, in an average of seven years, ending
1743, was 300 to 100. In England and France, he says, at that time the
highest average proportion could not be reckoned at more than 120 to
100.” At this date, 1880, the proportion of births to deaths in France
is as 111 is to 100, and in England it is as 152 is to 100, whereas in
Dublin the deaths exceed the births. In New Zealand the births are to
the deaths as 340 is to 100. There is nothing, he says, the least
mysterious in this. “The passion between the sexes has appeared in every
age to be so nearly the same, that it may be considered, in algebraic
language, as a given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents
population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can
either produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and
evident to our understandings, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The
different modes which nature takes to repress a redundant population, do
not appear, indeed, to us so certain and regular; but though we cannot
always predict the mode, we may with certainty predict the fact. If the
proportion of the births to the deaths for a few years indicates an
increase of numbers much beyond the proportional increased or acquired
food of the country, we may be perfectly certain that unless an
emigration take place the deaths will shortly exceed the births, and
that the increase that has been observed for a few years cannot be the
real average increase of the population of that country. If there were
no other depopulating causes, and if the preventive check did not act
very strongly, every country would without doubt be subject to
periodical plagues and famines.”
This is a well-known passage, and shows the genius of the writer as well
as any in his work. How immensely superior is his clear enunciation of
the attraction between the sexes when compared with the strange
speculations of Mr. Herbert Spencer of late years, about the supposed
gradual decay of that attraction in proportion to the alleged increase
in the weight of the human brain. It is quite deplorable to see what
ingenuity has been exercised by latter-day philosophers to get over the
plain and inevitable conclusions of Malthus and his common-sense school.
The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest has been put
forward as a plea for allowing over-population to grind the masses in
constant misery, and the delusive ideal of the equation of mouths to
food in the course of ages by a mere fanciful tendency of organisms to
become more perfect, without the exercise of volition, are the latest
struggles of the ostrich to burrow with his head in the sand in order to
avoid the sight of the inevitable.
“The only criterion,” says Malthus, “of a real and permanent increase in
the population of any country is the increase in the means of
subsistence. But even this criterion is subject to slight variations,
which, however, are completely open to observation. In some countries
population seems to have been forced: that is the people have been
habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest possible quantity
of food. There must have been periods in such countries when population
increased permanently without an increase in the means of subsistence.
China, India, and the countries possessed by the Bedoween Arabs, as we
have seen in the former part of this work, appear to answer to this
description. The average produce of these countries seems to be but
barely sufficient to support the lives of the inhabitants, and, of
course, any deficiency from the badness of the seasons must be fatal.
Nations in this state must necessarily be subject to famines.”
Almost all the histories of epidemics which we have read tend to confirm
the supposition that they are greatly caused by that over-population
which, as in Dublin in 1880, leads to over-crowded houses filled by
ill-fed and ill-clad inmates. Dr. Short, an author of the last century,
shows in his work (Air, Seasons, &c., vol. ii. p. 206), that a very
considerable proportion of the epidemic years either have followed or
were accompanied by seasons of dearth and bad food. In other places he
also mentions great plagues as diminishing particularly the numbers of
the poorest classes; and in speaking of different diseases, he observes,
that those which are occasioned by bad and unwholesome food generally
last the longest.
“We know (says our author) from constant experience that fevers are
generated in our jails, our manufactories, our crowded workhouses, and
in the narrow and close streets of our large towns, all which situations
appear to be similar in their effects to squalid poverty, and we cannot
doubt that causes of this kind, aggravated in degree, contributed to the
production and prevalence of those great and wasting plagues formerly so
common in Europe, but which now, from the mitigation of their causes,
are everywhere considerably abated, and in many places appear to be
completely extirpated.
“Of the other great scourge of mankind—famine—it may be observed that it
is not in the nature of things that the increase of population should
absolutely produce one. This increase, though rapid, is necessarily
gradual, and as the human frame cannot be supported, even for a very
short time, without food, it is evident that no more human beings can
grow up than there is provision to maintain. But though the principle of
population cannot absolutely produce a famine, it prepares the way for
one in the most complete manner, and by obliging all the lower classes
of people to subsist merely on the smallest quantity of food that will
support life, turns even a slight deficiency from the failure of the
seasons into a severe dearth; and may be fairly said, therefore, to be
one of the principal causes of famine. Among the signs of an approaching
dearth, Dr. Short mentions one or more years of luxuriant crops
together, and this observation is probably just, as we know that the
general effect of years of cheapness and abundance is to dispose a
greater number of persons to marry, and under such circumstances the
return to a year which gives only an average crop might produce a
scarcity.”
Much has been lately spoken in professional assemblies about recent
epidemics of small-pox. It is curious to hear what our author, writing
in 1806, or seven years after the discovery of Edward Jenner, has to
say. “The small-pox (says Malthus, book 2, ch. xi., p. 61), which at
present may be considered as the most prevalent and fatal epidemic in
Europe, is of all others, perhaps, the most difficult to account for,
though the periods of its return are in many places regular. Dr. Short
(Air, Seasons, vol. ii., p. 441), observes that from the history of this
disorder it seems to have very little dependence on present
constitutions of the weather of seasons, and that it appears
epidemically at all times and in all states of the air, though not so
frequently in hard frost. We know of no instances, I believe, of its
being clearly generated under any circumstances of situation. I do not
mean, therefore, to insinuate that poverty and crowded houses ever
absolutely produced it; but I may be allowed to remark that in those
places where its returns are regular, and its ravages among children,
particularly among those of the lowest class, are considerable, it
necessarily follows that these circumstances, in a greater degree than
usual, must always precede and accompany its appearance; that is, from
the time of its last visit, the average number of children will be
increasing, the people will, in consequence, be growing poorer, and the
houses will be more crowded till another visit removes this
superabundant population.”
Other circumstances being equal, it may be affirmed that countries are
populous according to the quantity of human food which they produce or
can acquire; and happy, according to the liberality with which the food
is divided, or the quantity which a day’s labor will purchase. Compare,
on this standard of our author, the condition of an agricultural laborer
in England, with beefsteak at one shilling the pound in London, with
that of Dunedin, where, as we write, it is at fourpence the pound, and
wages are at least two and a half those in England for that class. “Corn
countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries
more populous than corn countries. But their happiness does not depend
either upon their being thinly or fully inhabited, upon their poverty or
their riches, their youth or their age; but on the proportion which the
population and the food bear to each other. This proportion is generally
the most favorable in new colonies, where the knowledge and industry of
an old state operate on the fertile unappropriated land of a new one. In
other cases the youth or the age of a state is not, in this respect, of
great importance. It is probable that the food of Great Britain is
divided in more liberal shares to its inhabitants at the present period
than it was two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand years ago.”
This passage from Malthus shows that he at least does not believe in the
view sometimes attributed to him that the position of civilised society
is tending continually to become more and more unbearable from pressure
of population on food. Malthus saw quite clearly that the prevention of
a rapid birth-rate was more and more practised by nations in proportion
as they became better educated, and he therefore did not at all take the
pessimistic aspect of human society that many believe.
“In a country never to be overrun by a people more advanced in arts, but
left to its own natural progress in civilisation; from the time when its
produce might be considered as a unit, to the time that it might be
considered as a million, during the lapse of many thousand years, there
would not be a single period when the mass of the people could be said
to be free from distress, either directly or indirectly, from want of
food. In every state in Europe, since we have first had accounts of it,
millions and millions of human existences have been suppressed from this
simple cause, though perhaps in some of these states an absolute famine
may never have been known.”
These expressions of Mr. Malthus are entirely opposed to the idea that
he held that the future of society was likely to be less bright than
that of the past. Still there is a certain sadness in the following
sentence, which is the real secret of the unpopularity of the great
discoverer’s doctrine. In page 73, book ii., chap. xi., he says:
“Population invariably increases when the means of subsistence increase,
unless prevented by powerful and obvious checks.... Famine seems to be
the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population
is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,
that unless arrested by the preventive check, premature death must in
some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are
active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in
the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work
themselves. But should they fail in this work of extermination, sickly
seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array,
and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be
still incomplete, gigantic, inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and at
one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”
In Mr. Malthus’s edition of 1806, the third book contains several essays
on the different systems or expedients which have been proposed or have
prevailed in society, as they affect the evils arising from the
principle of population. In chapter i., p. 77, he treats of systems of
equality proposed by Wallace, and the illustrious Condorcet. Mr.
Wallace, whose name has been adverted to by many writers as one of those
who partly saw the importance of the tendency of mankind to increase
more rapidly than food, did not seem to be aware that any difficulty
would arise from this cause till the whole earth had been cultivated as
a garden, and was incapable of any further increase of produce. Mr.
Malthus remarks upon this idea of Mr. Wallace, that “at every period
during the period of cultivation, from the present moment to the time
when the whole earth was become like a garden, the distress for want of
food would be constantly pressing on all mankind if they were equal.
Though the produce of the earth would be increasing every year,
population would be tending to increase much faster, and the redundancy
must necessarily be checked by the periodical action of moral restraint,
vice, or misery.”
M. Condorcet’s _Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit
humain_ was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel
proscription which terminated in his death during the French Revolution,
and the posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work
which he proposed to write. By the application of calculations to the
probabilities of life and the interest of money, Condorcet proposed that
a fund should be established, which should assure to the old an
assistance produced in part by their own former savings, and in part by
the savings of individuals, who in making the same sacrifice die before
they reap the benefit of it. These establishments, he observes, might be
made in the name and under the protection of the state. Mr. Blackley
brought forward a somewhat similar proposal in 1880. Condorcet adds that
by the just application of such calculations, means might be found of
more completely preserving a state of equality, by preventing credit
from being the exclusive privilege of large fortunes, and yet giving it
a basis equally solid, and by rendering the industry and activity of
commerce less dependent on great capitalists.
Mr. Malthus criticises the schemes of Condorcet as follows:—“Supposing
for a moment that they would give no check to production, the greatest
difficulty remains behind. Were every man sure of a comfortable
provision for a family, almost every man would have one; and were the
rising generation free from the killing frost of misery, population must
increase with unusual rapidity.” And Condorcet himself saw this, for he
says: “But in this progress of industry and happiness, each generation
will be called to more extended enjoyments, and, in consequence, by the
physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number
of individuals. Must not there arise a period when these laws, equally
necessary, shall counteract each other; when the increase of the number
of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must
be, either a continual diminution of happiness and population—a movement
truly retrograde—or, at least, a kind of oscillation between good and
evil. Shall we ever arrive at such a period? It is equally impossible to
pronounce for or against the future realization of an event, which
cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained
improvements of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.”
To this Mr. Malthus replies that the only point in which he differs from
Condorcet in the paragraph just cited is with regard to the period when
it may be applied to the human race. Condorcet thought that his age of
iron would not come until a very distant era. Our author remarks, on the
contrary, that the period when the number of men surpassed their
subsistence had long ago arrived; and that this constantly subsisting
cause of periodical misery has existed ever since we have any history of
mankind, and continues to exist at the present moment.
“M. Condorcet (says Malthus) however goes on to say that should the
period which he conceives to be so distant ever arrive, the human race,
and the advocates of the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at
it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I
profess not to understand. Having observed that the ridiculous prejudice
of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a
corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes either to a promiscuous
concubinage which would prevent breeding, or to something else as
unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will surely, in the
opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners
which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man,
profess to be the end and object of their views.”
It is from passages such as these that Mr. Malthus differs so much from
the so-called New-Malthusians, who look for the solution of the
population difficulty to the “small-family system” of the French. It
would seem that the great French writer, Condorcet, had a prophetic
knowledge of what the effect of the great French Revolution would be, a
revolution which, by converting the cultivator of the soil of that state
into the proprietor, has made France the most prudent country in the
known world in the question of the size of families. Mr. Bonar, too, in
a clever pamphlet, published in 1880, shows that Mr. Malthus retained
somewhat the same phraseology as he uses here, in his 7th edition, page
512, where he thus speaks: “If it were possible for each married couple
to limit by a wish the number of their children, there is certainly
reason to fear that the indolence of the human race would be very
greatly increased.” Had he lived in 1881, and seen how rapidly the
industry of France is increasing, her wealth developing, and poverty
diminishing in that happiest of modern European states in the face of
the lowest European birth-rate (26 per 1,000), he would have been the
first, we doubt not, to retract these crude expressions, and to see
wherein the virtue consists.
M. Condorcet seems to have entertained some very hopeful ideas as to the
perfectibility of the human frame, and to have thought that though man
would not become absolutely immortal, yet that the duration between his
birth and his natural death would increase without ceasing, would have
no natural term, and might properly be expressed by the term indefinite.
Malthus demurs to these speculations. He thinks that the average
duration of human life will, to a certain extent, vary from healthy or
unhealthy climates, from wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or
vicious manners, and from other causes; but it may be fairly doubted
whether there has been really the smallest perceptible advance in the
natural duration of human life since we had any authentic history of
man. “What can we reason but from what we know?”
“The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain extent,
no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already
been made, and yet I think that it would be highly absurd to say that
this progress has no limits.... The error does not seem to lie in
supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not
discriminating between a small improvement, the limit of which is
undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race could
not be improved in the same way as the domestic animals, without
condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an
attention to breed should ever become general.” Here, again, we prefer
the injunction of Professor Mantegazza to consumptive parents: ‘Amate,
ma non generate’ (‘Marry but do not reproduce’). The speculations of
Condorcet seem, to a certain extent, to have been revived in modern days
by Mr. H. Spencer and Dr. B. W. Richardson. The former of these
distinguished authors seems to look forward to a time when the wants of
mankind shall by the process of evolution become equated to their powers
of acquiring food, without calling in the will; and Dr. Richardson seems
to look forward to a far greater longevity for individuals of the human
species than has been experienced in its past history.
“When paradoxes of this kind (says Malthus) are advanced by ingenious
and able men, neglect has no tendency to convince them of their
mistakes. Priding themselves on what they conceive to be a mark of the
make and size of their own understandings, of the extent and
comprehensiveness of their views, they will look upon this neglect
merely as an indication of poverty and narrowness of the mental
exertions of their contemporaries, and only think that the world is not
yet prepared to receive their sublime truths. On the contrary, a candid
investigation of these subjects, accompanied with a perfect readiness to
adopt anything warranted by sound philosophy, may have a tendency to
convince them that in forming unfounded and improbable hypotheses, so
far from enlarging the bounds of science, they are contracting it; so
far from promoting the improvement of the human mind, they are
obstructing it; they are throwing us back again almost into the infancy
of knowledge, and weakening the foundations of that mode of
philosophising under the auspices of which science has of late made such
rapid advance. The late rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems
to have been a kind of mental intoxication, arising perhaps from the
great and unexpected discoveries which had been made in various branches
of science. To men elate and inspired with such successes, everything
appears to be within the grasp of human powers, and under this illusion
they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved with
those where the progress had been marked, certain and acknowledged.”
The great antagonist of Mr. Malthus at the commencement of this century
was Mr. Godwin, who, in his work on _Political Justice_, gives a
magnificent picture of a system of equality, which, by his account, is
to regenerate society. On page 458 of book IV. of that work Mr. Godwin
thus speaks:—“The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the
spirit of fraud, then, are the immediate growth of the established
administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual
improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their
inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the
midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature,
these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of
selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little
store, or provide with anxiety or pain for his restless wants, each
would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good.
No man would be an enemy to his neighbours, for they would have no
subject of contention; and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume
the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her
perpetual anxiety about corporeal support, and free to expatiate in the
field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the
inquiries of all.”
The great error, as Malthus observes, under which Mr. Godwin labors
throughout his whole work is in attributing almost all the vices and
miseries that prevail in civil society to human institutions. Political
regulations, and the established administration of property, are, with
him, the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbed of all the crimes that
degrade mankind. “Man cannot live (says Malthus) in the midst of plenty.
All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established
administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with
force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of
contention would be perpetual. Every individual would be under a
constant anxiety about corporeal support, and not a single intellect
would be left free to expatiate in the field of thought.”
Mr. Godwin supposed that the population difficulty would only become of
importance at some remote future. “Three-fourths of the habitable globe
are now uncultivated. The parts already cultivated are capable of
immeasurable improvement. Myriads of centuries of still increasing
population may pass away, and the earth be still found sufficient for
the subsistence of its inhabitants.” Mr. Malthus asks us to imagine for
a moment Mr. Godwin’s system of equality realised in its utmost extent,
and see how soon the difficulty of population might be expected to press
upon us under so perfect a form of society.
Let us suppose, he says, all the causes of vice and misery in this
island removed. “War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and
manufactories do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great
and pestilent cities for purposes of Court intrigue, of commerce, and
vicious gratification. Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take
place of drinking, gambling, and debauchery. There are no towns
sufficiently large to have any prejudicial effects on the human
constitution. The greater part of the happy inhabitants of this
terrestrial Paradise live in hamlets and farm-houses, scattered over the
face of the country. All men are equal. The labors of luxury are at an
end, and the necessary labors of agriculture are shared amicably among
all. The number of persons and the produce of the island we suppose to
be the same as at present. “The spirit of benevolence guided by
impartial justice will divide this produce among all the members of
society according to their wants. Though it would be impossible that
they should all have animal food every day, yet vegetable food, with
meat occasionally, would satisfy the desires of a frugal people, and
would be sufficient to preserve them in health, strength, and spirits.”
“Mr. Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose
the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most
perfect freedom. Mr. Godwin does not think himself that this freedom
would lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree
with him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural
taste, and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and
virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select for himself a
partner to whom he would adhere, as long as that adherence continued to
be the choice of both parties. It would be of little consequence,
according to Mr. Godwin, how many children a woman had, or to whom they
belonged. Provisions and assistance would spontaneously flow from the
quarter in which they abounded to the quarter in which they were
deficient, and every man according to his capacity would be ready to
furnish instruction to the rising generation.”
“I cannot conceive a form of society so favorable upon the whole to
population. The irremediableness of marriage, as it is at present
constituted, undoubtedly deters many from entering into this state. An
unshackled intercourse, on the contrary, would be a most powerful
incitement to early attachments, and as we are supposing no anxiety
about the future support of children to exist, I do not conceive that
there would be one woman in a hundred, of twenty-three years of age,
without a family.”
“With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause
of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would
necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been
known. I have before mentioned that the inhabitants of the back
settlements of America appear to double their numbers in fifteen years.
England is certainly a healthier country than the back settlements of
America; and as we have supposed every house in the island to be airy
and wholesome, and the encouragements to have a family greater even than
in America, no probable reason can be assigned why the population should
not double itself in less, if possible, than fifteen years.”... “It is
probable that the half of every man’s time (in a system of equality)
must be employed for this purpose (in agriculture). Yet with such a much
greater exertion, a person who is acquainted with the nature of the soil
of the country, and who reflects on the fertility of the lands already
in cultivation, and the barrenness of those that are not cultivated,
will be very much disposed to doubt whether the whole average produce
could possibly be doubled in twenty years from the present period. The
only chance of success would be from the ploughing up most of the
grazing countries, and putting an end almost entirely to animal food.
Yet this scheme would probably defeat itself. The soil of England will
not produce much without dressing; and cattle seem to be necessary to
make that species of manure which best suits the land.
“Alas, what becomes of the picture, where men lived in the midst of
plenty, when no man was obliged to provide with anxiety and pain for his
restless wants; when the narrow principles of selfishness did not exist;
when the man was delivered from his perpetual anxiety for corporal
support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is so
congenial to him? This beautiful fabric of the imagination vanishes at
the severe touch of truth.... The children are sickly from insufficient
food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the pallid cheek and
hollow eye of misery.”
In as short a period as fifty years the whole of the worst evils of
society will certainly re-appear, if population be not checked (says
Malthus) by moral restraint, vice, or misery. After showing that a
regime of equality would inevitably end in these shallows, so long as
the birth-rate was not restricted, Malthus contends that some such laws
of private property, as those which at present exist, would be certain
to re-appear and misery to be increased. He then continues to give the
best account of the irrevocable contract of marriage, with which we are
familiar, that any writer has ever attempted to give.
“The next subject which would come under discussion, intimately
connected with the preceding, is the commerce of the sexes. It would be
urged by those who had turned their attention to the true cause of the
difficulties under which the community labored, that while every man
felt secure that all his children would be well provided for by general
benevolence, the powers of the earth would be absolutely inadequate to
produce food for the population which would inevitably ensue; that even
if the whole attention and labor of the society were directed to this
sole point, and if by the most perfect security of property, and every
other encouragement that could be thought of, the greatest possible
increase of produce were yearly obtained; yet still the increase of food
would by no means keep pace with the much more rapid increase of
population; that some check to population, therefore, was imperiously
called for; that the most natural and obvious check seemed to be to make
every man provide for his own children; that this would operate in some
respect as a measure and a guide in the increase of population, as it
might be expected that no man would bring beings into the world for whom
he could not find the means of support; that when this, notwithstanding,
was the case, it seemed necessary, for the example of others, that the
disgrace and inconvenience attending such conduct should fall upon that
individual who had thus inconsiderately plunged himself and his innocent
children into want and misery. The institution of marriage, or at least
of some express or implied obligation on every man to support his own
children, seems to be the natural result of these reasonings, in a
community under the difficulties that we have supposed.”
Mr. Malthus then proceeds with his theory of the reason why society
punishes carelessness in sexual relations much more in the case of a
woman than in that of a man. “The view of these difficulties presents us
with a very natural reason why the disgrace which attends a breach of
chastity should be greater in a woman than in a man. It could not be
expected that a woman should have resources sufficient to support her
own children. When, therefore, a woman had lived with a man who had
entered into no compact to maintain her children; and aware of the
inconveniences that he might bring upon himself, had deserted her, those
children must necessarily fall upon the society for support or starve.
And to prevent the frequent recurrence of such an inconvenience, as it
would be highly unjust to punish so natural a fault by personal
restraint or infliction, society might agree to punish it with disgrace.
The defence is besides more obvious and conspicuous in the woman, and
less liable to any mistake. The father of a child may not always be
known; but the same uncertainty cannot easily exist with regard to the
mother. Where the evidence of the offence was most complete, and the
inconvenience to society at the same time the greatest, there it was
agreed that the largest share of blame should fall. The obligation on
every man to support his children the society would enforce by positive
law, and the greater degree of inconvenience or labor to which a family
would necessarily subject him, added to some feature of disgrace, which
every human being must incur who leads another into unhappiness, might
be considered as a sufficient punishment for the man.
“That a woman should at present be almost driven from society for an
offence which men commit nearly with impunity, seems to be undoubtedly a
breach of natural justice. But the origin of the custom, as the most
obvious and effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of a
serious inconvenience to a community, appears to be natural, though not
perhaps perfectly justifiable. This origin, however, is now lost in the
new train of ideas that the custom has since generated. What at first
sight might be dictated by state necessity is now supported by female
delicacy, and operates with the greatest force on that part of the
society, where, if the original intention of the custom were preserved,
there is the least occasion for it.”
These most ingenious speculations of our author contain undoubtedly a
great deal of truth in them. At the same time, it is clear that when
society shall begin to replace traditional views of morality by more
positive and scientific deductions from experience, when it shall be
generally acknowledged in all civilised states of the old world that the
basis of true morality must consist in that conduct which will keep the
birth-rate very low, Mr. Malthus’s arguments in favour of irrevocable
marriage and excessive severity towards those who prefer not to enter
the imperfect marriage arrangements of modern European countries, with a
full knowledge of what they are doing, must be gradually replaced by
some law which shall affix a stigma, not so much upon illegitimacy, but
rather upon the production of large families. Those who are well
acquainted with the modern position of the marriage question in Europe,
and who have studied what has been written on it by Wilhelm von Humboldt
and J. S. Mill, will readily acknowledge that, if society would but take
care to stigmatise as immoral all those persons who take more than a
very moderate share of the blessings of parentage in old countries, it
might, as Humboldt proposes, entirely withdraw from all legal
interference in the contracts between the sexes. Moral obligations might
still remain in full force towards those who have been led to base their
future life on the implied continuance of such contracts; but doubtless
the law of civilised states is at present tending towards far greater
facility of dissolving such contracts than Mr. Malthus seems to have
approved of.
In chapter iii. of book III. our author disposes of the so-called
“futurity fallacy,” which unfortunately still continues to be opposed to
the teachings of the economists, as if it had not been over and over
again refuted by the author of the essay on population. “Other persons,”
says our author, “besides Mr. Godwin have imagined that I looked to
certain periods in future when population would exceed the means of
subsistence in a much greater degree than at present, and that the evils
arising from the principle of population were rather in contemplation
than in existence; but this is a total misconception of my argument.
Poverty, and not absolute famine, is the specific effect of the
principle of population, as I have before endeavoured to show. Many
countries are now suffering all the evils that can ever be expected to
flow from this principle, and even if we were arrived at the absolute
limit to all further increase of produce, a point which we shall
certainly never reach, I should by no means expect that those evils
would be in any marked manner aggravated. The increase of produce in
most European countries is so very slow, compared with what would be
required to support an unrestricted increase of people, that the checks
which are constantly in action to repress the population to the level of
a produce increasing so slowly would have very little more to do in
wearing it down to a produce absolutely stationary.”
The great historian Hume had pointed out that in those countries where
infanticide was permitted by law, there was greater over-population than
in others where it was prohibited, because parents were too humane to
betake themselves to such a frightful “positive check.” The excessive
poverty of China, where the custom of infanticide prevails, is an
example of the truth of Mr. Hume’s remarks. “It is still, however,
true,” adds our author (p. 139), “that the expedient is, in its own
nature, adequate to the end for which it was cited, but to make it so in
fact, it must be done by the magistrate, and not left to the parents.
The almost invariable tendency of this custom to increase population,
when it depends entirely upon the parents, shows the extreme pain which
they must feel in making such a sacrifice, even when the distress
arising from excessive poverty may be supposed to have deadened in great
measure their sensibility. What must the pain be then upon the
supposition of the interference of a magistrate, or of a positive law,
to make parents destroy a child, which they feel the desire and think
they possess the power of supporting? The permission of infanticide is
bad enough and cannot but have a bad effect on the moral sensibility of
a nation: but I cannot conceive anything more detestable or shocking to
the feelings than any direct regulation of this kind, although
sanctioned by the names of Plato and Aristotle.”
It is a singular fact that Mr. Godwin (_Reply_, p. 70), made a
supposition respecting the number of children that might be allowed to
each prolific marriage. That writer, however, did not enter into any
detail as to the mode by which a greater number might be prevented. The
last check which Mr. Godwin mentions, Mr. Malthus feels persuaded is the
only one which that author would seriously recommend. It is “That
sentiment, whether virtue, prudence, or pride, which continually
restrains the universality and frequent repetition of the marriage
contract.” He says he entirely approves of this check, and adds that the
tendency to early marriage is so strong that we want every possible help
that we can get to counteract it; and therefore he thinks that a system
of equality like that proposed by Mr. Godwin, which tends to weaken the
foundations of private property, and to lessen in any degree the full
advantage and superiority which each individual may derive from his
prudence, must remove the only counteracting weight to the passion of
love that can be depended upon for any essential effect.
Mr. Godwin acknowledges that in his system “the ill consequences of a
numerous family will not come so coarsely home to each man’s individual
interest as they do at present.” Mr. Malthus is sorry to say that from
what we know hitherto of the human character, we can have no rational
hopes of success without this coarse application to individual interest.
In our author’s day it was out of the question for him to be aware that
Mr. Godwin’s hint as to the limitation of the family would come to be
the prominent social doctrine it has since become. In France, among the
respectable classes the production of a large family is now looked upon
as quite a mark of a low state of morality and culture; and so effectual
has this public opinion become in that most remarkable state that the
families of the professional classes are not even two on an average
(1·74). That Mr. Malthus should have considered late marriage as the
only remedy for poverty is easily understood. Experience alone can
enable mankind to judge of how happiness is to be best attained; and it
was doubtless because our incomparable writer on social questions, Mr.
J. S. Mill, had so long resided in France that he could take the decided
stand he did against the large families which cause such terrible misery
in England and Germany. The result of this great prudence among the
better classes of France is well shown by the very small excess of
births over deaths. Thus, in 1879, the increase of population from this
cause was but 92,000, whereas M. Yves Guyot speaks of a total of births
in 1879 in unfortunate Ireland of 887,055, with a total of deaths of
500,348, which gives an excess of births over deaths, in a population of
about five millions, of 386,707. No wonder that Ireland is so fond of
emigration and still so steeped in poverty.
It has recently been contended by the author of the “Elements of Social
Science” that the only way of raising wages and profits in old countries
and making life a desirable thing to all lies in the state making it an
offence, to be punished by a small fine, to bring into an over-crowded
country more than a very moderate average number of children. Mr. J. S.
Mill’s teachings tended in the same direction, and this view of the duty
of the citizen towards his neighbour is fast becoming a piece of
morality accepted by the most thinking and most dutiful portion of
society. When this duty of limiting our offspring, not only to the
income we possess, but also to the powers possessed by the community, of
affording an increase of numbers, becomes a political question, then,
but not until then, will happiness for the masses be possible.
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