In Chapter X. Mr. Malthus treats of bounties on the exportation of corn.
He sets out by observing that according to the general principles of
political economy, it cannot be doubted, that it is for the interest of
the civilised world that each nation should purchase its commodities
wherever they can be had the cheapest.
“During the seventeenth century, and indeed the whole period of our
history previous to it, the prices of wheat were subject to great
fluctuations, and the average price was very high. For fifty years
before the year 1700, the average price of wheat per quarter was £3 0s.
11d., and before 1650 it was £6 8s. 10d. From the time of the completion
of the corn laws in 1700 and 1706, the prices became extraordinarily
steady, and the average price for forty years previous to the year 1750,
sunk as low as £1 16s. per quarter. This was the period of our greatest
exportations. In 1757 the laws were suspended, and in 1773 they were
totally altered. The exports of corn have since been regularly
decreasing, and the imports increasing. The average price of wheat for
the forty years ending in 1800, was £2 9s. 5d., and for the last five
years of this period £3 6s. 6d. During this last term the balance of the
imports of all sorts of grain is estimated at 2,938,357.”
Mr. Malthus observes that it is totally contrary to the habits and
practice of farmers to save the superfluity of six or seven years. Great
practical inconvenience generally attends the keeping of so large a
reserved store. Difficulties often occur from a want of proper
accommodation for it. It is at all times liable to damage from vermin
and other causes. When very large it is apt to be viewed with a jealous
and grudging eye by the common people. And in general, the farmer may
either not be able to remain so long without the returns, or may not be
willing to employ so considerable a capital in a way in which the
returns must necessarily be distant and precarious.
Mr. Malthus was in favour of a bounty on the exportation of corn,
because the effect of such a bounty was to repress slightly the increase
of population in years of plenty, whilst it encouraged it comparatively
in years of scarcity. This effect, he maintained, was one of the
greatest advantages which could possibly occur to a society, and
contributed more to the happiness of the labouring poor than could
easily be conceived by those who had not deeply considered the subject.
“In the whole compass of human events,” he says, “I doubt if there be a
more fruitful source of misery, or one more invariably productive of
disastrous consequences, than a sudden start of population from two or
three years of plenty, which must necessarily be repressed on the first
return of scarcity, or even of average crops.” From 1637 to 1700, both
inclusive, the average price of corn, according to Adam Smith, was £2
11s.; yet in 1681 the growing price was only £1 8s. This high average
price, according to Malthus, would not proportionally encourage the
cultivation of corn. Though the farmer might feel very sanguine during
one or two years of high price, and project many improvements, yet the
glut in the market which would follow, would depress him in the same
degree, and destroy all his projects. Sometimes, indeed, a year of high
prices really tends to impoverish the land, and prepare the way for
future scarcity.
In a foot-note in page 264, Chapter X., Mr. Malthus makes the remark
that, “On account of the tendency of population to increase in
proportion to the means of subsistence, it had been supposed by some
that there would always be a sufficient demand at home for any quantity
of corn which could be grown. But this is an error. It is undoubtedly
true that if the farmers could gradually increase their growth of corn
to any extent, and could sell it sufficiently cheap, a population would
arrive at home to demand the whole of it. But in this case, the great
increase of demand arises solely from the cheapness, and must therefore
be totally of a different nature from such a demand as, in the actual
circumstances of this country, would encourage an increased supply. If
the makers of superfine broadcloth would sell their commodity for a
shilling a yard, instead of a guinea, it cannot be doubted that the
demand would increase more than tenfold, but the certainty of such an
increase of demand, in such a case, would have no tendency whatever, in
the actual circumstances of any known country, to encourage the
manufacture of broad cloths.”
In page 267 Mr. Malthus adverts to what has recently been commented upon
by a great French statistician, Mr. Maurice Block, viz.: the danger of a
country becoming too dependent on others for its supplies of food. “A
rich and commercial nation is by the natural course of things led more
to pasture than to tillage, and is tempted to become daily more
dependent upon others for its supplies of corn. If all the nations of
Europe could be considered as one great country, and if any one state
could be as sure of its supplies from others, as the pasture district of
a particular state are from the corn districts in their neighbourhood,
there would be no harm in this dependence, and no person would think of
proposing corn laws. But can we safety consider Europe in this light?
The fortunate condition of this country, and the excellence of its laws
and government, exempt it, above any other nation, from foreign invasion
and domestic tumult, and it is a pardonable love for one’s country,
which under such circumstances produces an unwillingness to expose it,
in so important a point as the supply of its principal food, to share in
the dangers and chances which may happen on the Continent. How would the
miseries of France have been aggravated during the revolution if she had
been dependent on foreign countries for the support of two or three
millions of her people.”
It is instructive to read what was thought might be the magnitude of our
future imports of wheat in 1806. In page 268 Mr. Malthus writes: “We can
hardly doubt that in the course of some years we shall draw from
America, and the nations bordering on the Baltic, as much as two
millions of quarters of wheat, besides other corn, the support of above
two millions of people. If under these circumstances, any commercial
discussion, or other dispute, were to arise with these nations, with
what a weight of power they would have to negociate! Not the whole
British Navy could offer a more convincing argument than the single
threat of shutting all their ports. I am not unaware that in general, we
may securely depend upon people not acting directly contrary to their
interest. But this consideration, all powerful as it is, will sometimes
yield voluntarily to national indignation, and it is sometimes forced to
yield to the resentment of a sovereign. It is of sufficient weight in
practice when applied to manufactures; because a delay in their sale is
not of such immediate consequence. But in the case of corn, a delay of
three or four months may produce the most complicated misery; and from
the great bulk of corn, it will generally be in the power of the
sovereign to execute almost completely his resentful purpose.” This is
the argument of Mr. Block, with respect to our dependence on the United
States for so much of our food supplies. He remarks that it might easily
happen that some party in the United States might take to prohibiting
the export of corn, and in such a case there can be no doubt that the
people of this country would at once be plunged into the severest
trouble with respect to their food supplies. A war with the United
States is of course most unlikely, too, but alas! even such a
catastrophe is possible in the present position of human affairs.
The argument made use of by M. Maurice Block, that, in times of war,
Great Britain may possibly in some future time be in danger of seeing
much of its population starved from want of food supplies, was
anticipated by Malthus in a foot-note in chapter x. He there says:—“I
should be misunderstood if, from anything I have said in the four last
chapters, I should be considered as not sufficiently aware of the
advantages derived from commerce and manufactures. I look upon them as
the most distinguishing characteristics of civilization, the most
obvious and striking marks of the improvement of society, and calculated
to enlarge our enjoyments, and add to the sum of human happiness. No
great surplus of agriculture could exist without them, and if it did
exist, it would be comparatively of very little value. But still they
are rather the ornaments and embellishments of the political structure
than its foundations. While these foundations are perfectly secure, we
cannot be too solicitous to make all the apartments convenient and
elegant: but if there be the slightest reason to fear that the
foundations themselves may give way, it seems to be folly to continue
directing our principal attention to the less essential parts. There has
never yet been an instance in history of a large nation continuing with
undiminished vigour to support four or five millions of its people on
imported corn; nor do I believe that there ever will be such an instance
in future. England is, undoubtedly, from her insular situation and
commanding navy, the most likely to form an exception to this rule; but
in spite even of the peculiar advantages of England, it appears to me
clear that if she continues yearly to increase her importations of corn,
she cannot ultimately escape that decline which seems to be the natural
and necessary consequence of excessive commercial wealth. I am not now
speaking of the next twenty or thirty years, but of the next two or
three hundred. And though we are little in the habit of looking so far
forward, yet it may be questioned whether we are not bound in duty to
make some exertions to avoid a system which must necessarily terminate
in the weakness and decline of our posterity. But whether we make any
practical application of such a discussion or not, it is curious to
contemplate the cause of those reverses in the fate of empires, which so
frequently changed the face of the world in past times, and may be
expected to produce similar, though perhaps not such violent changes in
future. War was undoubtedly, in ancient times, the principal cause of
these changes; but it frequently only finished a work which excess of
luxury and agriculture had begun. Foreign invasions, or internal
convulsions, produced but a temporary and comparatively slight effect
upon such countries as Lombardy, Tuscany, and Flanders, but are fatal to
such states as Holland and Hamburg, and though the commerce and
manufactures of England will probably always be supported in a great
degree by her agriculture, yet that part which is not so supported will
still remain subject to the reverses of dependent states.”
Writing in 1806, Mr. Malthus adds:—“We should recollect that it is only
within the last twenty or thirty years that we have become an importing
nation. In so short a period it could hardly be expected that the evils
of the system should be perceptible. We have, however, already felt some
of its inconveniences; and if we persevere at it, its evil consequences
may by no means be a matter of remote speculation.”
In the eleventh chapter of his third book our author treats of the
prevailing errors respecting population and plenty, and notices some of
the arguments which have this very year (1883) been put forward, over
and over again, by the disciples of Mr. Henry George, an American writer
who has acquired a sudden celebrity for his work on “Progress and
Poverty.” “It has been observed,” says Mr. Malthus, “that many countries
at the period of their greatest degree of populousness have lived in the
greatest plenty, and have been able to export corn; but at other
periods, when their population was very low, have lived in continual
poverty and want, and have been obliged to import corn. Egypt,
Palestine, Rome, Sicily, and Spain are cited as particular examples of
this fact: and it has been inferred that an increase of population in
any state, not cultivated to the utmost, will tend rather to augment
than diminish the relative plenty of the whole society; and that, as
Lord Kaimes observes, a country cannot easily become too populous for
agriculture, because agriculture has the signal property of producing
food in proportion to the number of consumers.... The prejudices on the
subject of population bear a very striking resemblance to the old
prejudices about specie, and we know how slowly and with what difficulty
those last have yielded to juster conceptions. Politicians, observing
that states which were powerful and prosperous were almost invariably
populous, have mistaken an effect for a cause, and concluded that their
population was the cause of their prosperity, instead of their
prosperity being the cause of their population; as the old political
economists concluded, that the abundance of specie was the cause of
national wealth, instead of the effect of it. The annual produce of the
land and labour, in both of these instances, became in consequence a
secondary consideration, and its increase, it was conceived, would
naturally follow the increase of specie in the one case, or of
population in the other. Yet surely the folly of endeavouring to
increase the quantity of specie in any country without an increase of
the commodities which it is to circulate, is not greater than that of
endeavouring to increase the number of people without an increase of the
food which is to maintain them; and it will be found that the level
above which no human laws can raise the population of a country, is a
limit more fixed and impassable than the limit to the accumulation of
specie.”
“Ignorance and despotism seem to have no tendency to destroy the
passions which prompt to increase; but they effectually destroy the
checks to it from reason and foresight. The improvident barbarian who
thinks only of his present wants, or the miserable peasant, who, from
his political situation, feels little security of reaping what he has
sown, will seldom be deterred from gratifying his passion by the
prospect of inconvenience, which cannot be expected to press upon him
under three or four years. Industry cannot exist without foresight and
security. Even poverty itself, which appears to be the great spur to
industry, when it has passed certain limits almost ceases to operate.
The indigence which is hopeless destroys all vigorous exertion, and
confines the efforts to what is sufficient for bare existence. It is the
hope of bettering our condition, and the fear of want rather than want
itself, that is the best stimulus to industry; and its most constant and
best directed efforts will almost invariably be found among a class of
people above the class of the wretchedly poor.”
This remark of Malthus is a reply to those who say that if food were
cheaper and the poor better fed, they would only work as much as was
needed to get a scanty supply of food. Experience in our colonies and in
the United States shows that the fear of want is an incentive to make
the early colonists of a fertile country fervid in their desire to
obtain wealth.
“That an increase of population,” says Malthus, “when it follows in its
natural order, is both a great positive good in itself, and absolutely
necessary to a further increase in the annual produce of the land and
labour of any country, I should be the last to deny. The only question
is, What is the natural order of this progress? In this point, Sir James
Stewart appears to me to have fallen into an error. He determines that
multiplication is the efficient cause of agriculture, and not
agriculture of multiplication; but though it may be allowed that the
increase of people beyond what could easily subsist on the natural
fruits of the earth, first prompted man to till the ground: and that the
view of maintaining a family, or of obtaining some valuable
consideration in exchange for the products of agriculture, still
operates as the principal stimulus to cultivation; yet it is clear that
these products, in their actual state, must be beyond the lowest wants
of the existing population before any permanent increase can possibly be
supported. We know that a multiplication of births has in numberless
instances taken place, which has produced no effect upon agriculture,
and has merely been followed by an increase of diseases: but perhaps
there is no instance where a permanent increase of agriculture has not a
permanent increase of population, somewhere or other. Consequently
agriculture may with more propriety be termed the efficient cause of
population, than population of agriculture, though they certainly react
upon each other, and are mutually necessary to each other’s support.”
“The author of ‘L’Ami des Hommes’ (Mirabeau’s father), in a chapter on
the effects of a decay in agriculture upon population, acknowledges that
he had fallen into a fundamental error in considering population as the
source of revenue: and that he was afterwards convinced that revenue was
the source of population. From a want of attention to this most
important distinction, statesmen, in pursuit of the desirable object of
population, have been led to encourage early marriages, to reward the
fathers of families, and to disgrace celibacy; but this, as the same
author justly observes, is to dress and water a piece of land without
sowing it, yet to expect a crop.” It is curious that so backward is
speculation on this question even in modern France, the most practical
Neo-Malthusian country in Europe, that this year has already seen two
proposals made by learned Frenchmen to encourage marriage and large
families. The first emanated from the son of one of the most
distinguished surgeons of Paris, Dr. Richet; the other from a member of
the French _Corps Legislatif_.
“Among the other prejudices,” says Malthus, “which have prevailed on the
subject of population, it has been generally thought that while there is
either waste among the rich, or land remaining uncultivated in any
country, the complaints for want of food cannot be justly founded, or at
least that the presence of distress among the poor is to be attributed
to the ill-conduct of the higher classes of society and the bad
management of the land. The real effect, however, of these two
circumstances is merely to narrow the limit of the actual population;
but they have little or no influence on what may be called the average
pressure of distress on the poorer members of society. If our ancestors
had been so frugal and industrious, and had transmitted such habits to
their posterity, that nothing superfluous was consumed by the higher
classes, no horses were used for pleasure, and no land was left
uncultivated, a striking difference would appear in the state of the
actual population, but probably none whatever in the state of the lower
classes of people, with respect to the price of labour and the facility
of supporting a family. The waste among the rich, and the horses kept
for pleasure, have indeed a little the effect of the consumption of
grain in distilleries, noticed before with regard to China. On the
supposition that the food consumed in this manner may be withdrawn on
the occasion of a scarcity, and be applied to the relief of the poor,
they operate certainly as far as they go, like granaries which are only
opened at the time that they are wanted, and must therefore tend rather
to benefit than to injure the lower classes of society.
“With regard to uncultivated land,” says our author, “it is evident that
its effect upon the poor is neither to injure nor to benefit them. The
sudden cultivation of it would undoubtedly tend to improve their
condition for a time, and the neglect of lands before cultivated will
certainly make their situation worse for a certain period; but when no
changes of this kind are going forward the effect of uncultivated land
on the lower class operates merely like the possession of a smaller
territory. It is indeed a point of very great importance to the poor
whether a country is in the habit of exporting or importing corn; but
this point is not necessarily connected with the complete or incomplete
cultivation of the whole territory, but depends upon the proportion of
the surplus produce to those who are supported by it; and in fact this
proportion is generally the greatest in countries which have not yet
completed the cultivation of their territory.
“We should not, therefore, be too ready to make inferences against the
internal economy of a country from the appearance of uncultivated
heaths, without other evidence. But the fact is, that no country has
ever reached, or probably ever will reach, its highest possible acme of
produce, it appears always as if the want of industry, or the
ill-direction of that industry, was the actual limit to a further
increase of produce and population, and not the absolute refusal of
nature to yield any more; but a man who is locked up in a room may be
fairly said to be confined by the walls of it, though he may never touch
them; and with regard to the principle of population, it is never the
question whether a country will produce _any more_, but whether it may
be made to produce a sufficiency to keep pace with an unchecked increase
of people. In China the question is not, whether a certain additional
quantity of rice might be raised by improved culture, but whether such
an addition could be counted on during the next twenty-five years as
would be sufficient to support an additional three hundred millions of
people. And in this country it is not the question whether, by
cultivating all our commons, we could raise considerably more than at
present: but whether we could raise sufficient for a population of
twenty millions in the next twenty-five years and forty millions in the
next fifty years.
“The allowing of the produce of the earth to be absolutely unlimited
scarcely removes the weight of a hair from the argument, which depends
entirely upon the differently increasing ratios of population and food;
and all that the most enlightened governments and the most persevering
and best guided efforts of industry can do, is to make the necessary
checks to population act more equably, and in a direction to produce the
least evil; but to remove them is a task absolutely hopeless.”
We have now arrived at the last part of Malthus’s great essay on
population. In Book IV. our author speaks in chapter i. of future
prospects of the removal or mitigation of the evils arising from the
principle of population. He shows that we must submit to the population
law as an ultimate law of nature, and that all that remains for us is,
how we may check population with the least prejudice to the virtue and
happiness of human society. He claims for moral restraint that it is the
least harmful of all the checks. “If we be intemperate in eating and
drinking (he says) we are disordered; if we indulge the transports of
anger, we seldom fail to commit acts of which we afterwards repent; if
we multiply too fast, we die miserably of poverty and contagious
diseases.... The kind of food, and the mode of preparing it, best suited
for the purposes of nutriment and the gratification of the palate, &c.,
were not pointed out to the attention of man at once, but were the slow
and late result of experience, and of the admonitions received by
repeated failures.”
Mr. Malthus then, following Hippocrates, points out that in the history
of every epidemic, it has almost invariably been observed, that the
lower classes of people, whose food was poor and insufficient, and who
lived crowded together in small and dirty houses, were the principal
victims. “In what other manner can nature point out to us, that if we
increase too fast for the means of subsistence, so as to render it
necessary for a considerable part of the society to live in this
miserable manner, we have offended against one of her laws?” After the
desire of food, the most powerful and general of our desires is passion
between the sexes, taken in an enlarged sense. Mr. Godwin had said, in
one of his works: “Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its attendant
circumstances, and it would be generally despised.” To this Mr. Malthus
replies, that Godwin might as well say to a man who admired trees:
“Strip them of their spreading branches and lovely foliage, and what
beauty can you see in a bare pole?” “The evening meal, the warm house,
and the comfortable fire-side would lose half of their interest if we
were to exclude the idea of some object of affection with whom they were
to be shared.”
Few or none, then, of our human passions would admit of being greatly
diminished, without narrowing the sources of good more powerfully than
the sources of evil. The fecundity of the human species is, in some
respects, a distinct consideration from the passion between the sexes.
It is strong and general, and apparently would not admit of any very
considerable diminution without being inadequate for its object. “It is
of the very utmost importance to the happiness of mankind that they
should not increase too fast; but it does not appear that the object to
be accomplished would admit of any very considerable diminution in the
desire for marriage. It is clearly the duty of each individual not to
marry until he has a prospect of supporting his children; but it is at
the same time to be wished that he should retain undiminished his desire
for marriage, in order that he may exert himself to realise this
prospect, and be stimulated to make provision for the support of greater
numbers.
“Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect being able to
support our children will appear to deserve the attention of the
moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to these obligations is
of more effect in the prevention of misery than all the other virtues
combined; and that if, in violation of this duty, it was the general
custom to follow the first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of
puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in the greatest
conceivable degree would fail of rescuing society from the most wretched
and deplorable state of want, and all the diseases and famines which
usually accompany it.”
In chapter ii. Mr. Malthus speaks of the effects which would result to
society from the prevalence of this virtue of moral restraint. “No man
whose earnings were only sufficient to maintain two children, would put
himself in a situation in which he might have to maintain four or five,
however he might be prompted to it by the passion of love. The interval
between the age of puberty and the period at which each individual might
venture to marry must, according to this view be passed in strict
chastity; because the law of chastity cannot be violated without
producing evil. The effect of anything like a promiscuous intercourse
which prevents the birth of children, is evidently to weaken the best
affections of the heart, and in a very marked manner to degrade the
female character. And any other intercourse would, without improper
arts, bring as many children into society as marriage, with a much
greater probability of their becoming a burden to it.”
The phrase, “improper arts,” is the only point on which the so-styled
Neo-Malthusians differ from Malthus. To his modern disciples it seems
abundantly proved, from the experience of France and elsewhere, that
late marriage is not what must be trusted to check population; but a
restraint in the size of families. Mr. Malthus, indeed, seems himself to
recognise the evils of late marriages, for he writes: “The late
marriages at present are, indeed, principally confined to the men; and
there are few, however advanced in life they may be, who, if they
determine to marry, do not fix their choice on a very young wife. A
young woman, without fortune, when she has passed her twenty-fifth year,
begins to fear, and with reason, that she may lead a life of
celibacy.... If women could look forward with just confidence to
marriage at twenty-eight or thirty, I fully believe that, if the matter
were left to them for choice, they would clearly prefer waiting till
this period, to the being involved in all the cares of a large family at
twenty-five.”
Lord Derby, some years ago, truly observed that great emperors did not
like their subjects to be too well off. This remark may have been a
citation from Malthus, where he says: “The ambition of princes would
want instruments of destruction, if the distresses of the lower classes
of their subjects did not drive them under their standards. A recruiting
sergeant always prays for a bad harvest and want of employment, or in
other words, a redundant population.” Mr. Malthus points out that a
society with a low birth-rate will be extremely powerful both in war and
peace. One of the principal encouragements to an offensive war would be
removed, and there would be greater freedom from political dissensions
at home. “Indisposed to a war of offence, in a war of defence such a
society would be strong as a rock of adamant. Where every family
possessed the necessaries of life or plenty, and a decent portion of its
comforts and conveniences, there could not exist that hope of change, or
at best that melancholy and disheartening indifference to it, which
sometimes prompts the lower classes of people to say—Let what will come,
we cannot be worse off than we are now.”
In chapter iii. Mr. Malthus speaks rather gloomily as to the prospect of
Society adopting his recommendation of late marriages, “I believe (he
says) that few of my readers can be less sanguine of expectations of any
great change in the general conduct of men on this subject than I am.”
He proposes it, it seems, in order chiefly to vindicate the character of
the Deity! This is at present known by all scientific inquirers to be a
fallacious argument; and we cannot but contrast with our great author’s
vacillating doctrine, the clear line of duty laid down by the greatest
of his followers, Mr. J. S. Mill, when he says that the happiness of
society is quite attainable, if only it becomes a rule of morals that
the producing of large families in Europe should be looked upon as a
vice.
“Almost everything that has hitherto been done for the poor has tended,
as if with solicitous care, to throw a veil of obscurity over this
subject, and to hide from them the true cause of their poverty. A man
has always been told that to raise up subjects for his king and country
is a meritorious act. In an endeavour to raise the proportion of the
quantity of provisions to the number of consumers in any country, our
attention would naturally be first directed to the increasing of the
absolute quantity of provisions, but finding that, as fast as we did
this, the numbers of consumers more than kept pace with it, and that
with all our exertions we were still as far as ever behind, we should be
convinced that our efforts directed in this way would never succeed. It
would appear to be setting the tortoise to catch the hare. Finding
therefore, that from the laws of nature we could not proportion the food
to the population, our next attempt should naturally be to proportion
the population to the food. If we can persuade the hare to go to sleep,
the tortoise may have some chance of overtaking her.”
In chapter iv., our author replies to some objections. Some of his
critics had said that if his advice were followed, the market would be
rather understocked with labour. To this Malthus observes that “a market
overstocked with labour, and an ample remuneration to each labourer, are
objects perfectly incompatible with each other. In the annals of the
world they have never existed together; and to couple them even in
imagination betrays a gross ignorance of the simplest principles of
political economy.” Mr. Malthus then replies to the oft repeated
futurity argument as follows: “I can easily conceive that this country,
with a proper direction of the national industry, might, in the course
of some centuries, contain two or three times its present population,
and yet every man in the kingdom be better paid and clothed than he is
at present.”
“While the springs of industry continue in vigor, and a sufficient part
of that industry is directed to agriculture, we need be under no
apprehension of a deficient population; and nothing perhaps would tend
so strongly to create a spirit of industry and economy among the poor,
as a thorough knowledge that their happiness must always depend
principally upon themselves; and that if they obey their passions in
opposition to their reason, or be not industrious and frugal while they
are single men, and save a sum for the common contingencies of the
married state, they must expect to suffer the natural evils which
Providence has prepared for those who disobey its admonitions.”
This, then, is the main argument of our author; but, as we have seen, he
fears lest he will not be listened to by the masses, and also sees
clearly enough that his advice to delay the marriage day until funds
have been reserved to meet all demands on the married pair, is not
unlikely to lead to other evils. “A third objection which may be started
(he says) to this plan, and the only one which appears to me to bear any
kind of plausibility is, that by endeavoring to urge the duty of moral
restraint on the poor, we may increase the quantity of sexual vice.”
Malthus finds considerable difficulty in meeting this attack, and few
will be found who will be satisfied with the following reply to this
objection. “I should be extremely sorry to say anything which could be
either remotely or directly construed unfavorably to the cause of
virtue; but I certainly cannot think that the vices which relate to the
sex are the only vices which are to be considered in a moral question;
or that they are even the greatest and most degrading to the human
character. They can rarely or never be committed without producing such
offences somewhere or other, and therefore ought always to be strongly
repudiated; but there are other vices, the effects of which are still
more pernicious; and there are other situations which lead more
certainly to moral offences than the refraining from marriage.”
All of this is beside the question; and our author fell into this kind
of argument precisely because he had no experience as we moderns have of
marriage with small families. This alone of all the alternatives gives
the human race a chance of comfort, love, and family joys. Were it the
custom for all in a country like England to consider it immoral to have
a family exceeding four children, there might doubtless be hope that all
might lead a virtuous life; but Mr. Malthus’ plan of late marriage
necessarily condemns many women to celibacy, and, as he admits, tends to
the degradation of numbers of other women.
Our author continues: “Powerful as may be the temptations to a breach of
chastity, I am inclined to think that they are impotent, in comparison
with the temptations arising from continued distress. A large class of
women and many men, I have no doubt, pass a considerable part of their
lives in chastity; but I believe there will be found very few who pass
through the ordeal of squalid and hopeless poverty, or even of
long-continued embarrassed circumstances without a considerable
degradation of character.... Add to this that squalid poverty,
particularly when joined with idleness, is a state the most unfavorable
to character that can well be conceived. The passion is as strong, or
nearly so, as in other situations, and every restraint on it from
personal respect or a sense of morality is generally removed. There is a
degree of squalid poverty in which, if a girl was brought up, I should
say that her being really modest at twenty was an absolute miracle.
Those persons must have extraordinary minds indeed, and such as are not
usually found under similar circumstances, who can continue to respect
themselves when no other person whatever respects them. If the children
thus brought up were even to marry at twenty, it is probable that they
would have passed some years in vicious habits before that period.”
Had Mr. Malthus been alive at this moment, and travelled as he did in
his lifetime through the rural districts of France, he would have been
the first to admit that the French have given the only solution of the
problem he states so clearly, that has ever been given by any nation.
“If (says our author) statesmen will not encourage late marriages, but
rather the opposite, then to act consistently they should facilitate,
instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of
nature in causing a great infantile mortality. Instead of recommending
cleanliness to the poor, they should cultivate contrary habits. If by
these and similar means, the annual mortality were increased from 1 in
36 or 40, to 1 in 18 or 20, we might probably every one of us marry at
the age of puberty, and yet few be absolutely starved. If, however, we
all marry at this age, and yet still continue our exertions to impede
the operations of nature, we may rest assured that all our efforts will
be vain. Nature will not, and cannot be defeated in her purposes. The
necessary mortality must come, in some form or other: and the
extirpation of one disease will only be the signal for the birth of
another perhaps more fatal. We cannot lower the waters of rivers by
pressing them down in different places, which must necessarily make them
rise somewhere else; the only way in which we can hope to effect our
purpose is by drawing them off.”
“In a country which keeps up its population at a certain standard, if
the average number of marriages and births be given, it is evident that
the average number of deaths will also be given: and to use Dr.
Heberden’s metaphor, the channels through which the stream of mortality
is constantly flowing will always convey off a given quantity. Now, if
we stop up any of these channels, it must be perfectly clear that the
stream of mortality must run with greater force through some of the
other channels: that is, if we eradicate some diseases, others will
become proportionally more fatal.”
“Dr. Heberden, (says Malthus) draws a striking picture of the favorable
change observed in the health of the people of England, and greatly
attributes it to the improvements which have gradually taken place, not
only in London but in all great towns; and in the manner of living
throughout the kingdom, particularly in respect to cleanliness and
ventilation. But these causes would not have produced the effect
observed, if they had not been accompanied by an increase of the
preventive check; and probably the spread of cleanliness, and better
mode of living, which then began to prevail, by spreading more generally
a decent and useful pride, principally contributed to this increase. The
diminution in the number of marriages, however, was not sufficient to
make up for the great decrease of mortality, from the extinction of the
plague, and the striking reduction of the deaths from the dysentery.
While these, and some other diseases became evanescent, consumption,
palsy, apoplexy, gout, lunacy and the small-pox became more mortal. The
widening of these drains was necessary to carry off the population which
still remained redundant, notwithstanding the increased operation of the
preventive check, and the part which was annually disposed of, and
enabled to subsist by the increase of agriculture.”
Mr. Malthus then adds: “For my own part, I feel not the slightest doubt,
that if the introduction of the cow-pox should extirpate the small-pox,
and yet the number of marriages continue the same, we shall find a very
perceptible difference in the increased mortality of some other
diseases. Nothing could prevent this effect but a sudden start in our
agriculture; and should this take place, which I fear we have not much
reason to expect, it will not be owing to the number of children saved
from death by the cow-pox inoculations, but to the alarms occasioned
among the people of property by the late scarcities, and to the
increased gains of farmers, which have been so absurdly reprobated. I am
strongly, however, inclined to believe, that the number of marriages
will not in this case remain the same; but that the gradual light which
may be expected to be thrown on this interesting topic of human inquiry,
will teach us how to make the extinction of a mortal disorder, a real
blessing to us, and a real improvement in the general health and
happiness of the society.”
In these admirable remarks Malthus points out that whenever we make
improvements in the science of health, we must be contented to lessen
the birth-rate, if we would really secure the benefits we might expect.
Thus, if drainage, good water supply, and the extirpation of fevers are
to be of service to us, it must be that we are determined to have fewer
children. For, if we have an equally high birth-rate, and no great
addition to our food supplies from abroad or from our own soil, we must
die inevitably of some other chronic, although different, maladies than
those produced by bad drainage and fevers, or small-pox. In no case can
we have a birth-rate of 40 per 1,000 in an old country, without a high
death-rate.
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