THE REMEDY: OLD AND NEW.
The principle stated at the end of the preceding chapter being assumed,
the question arises: How can the evils caused by the constant tendency
towards over-population be prevented? The method which Mr. Malthus
proposed was the substitution of the prudential (or birth-restricting)
for the positive (or life-destroying) check. He advised late marriage
and celibacy as the most moral means of restraining population. He
urged that men should wait until they were in a position to provide
for a family before undertaking the responsibilities consequent upon
the marriage state. He says: "Our obligation not to marry till we have
a fair prospect of 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."
This, then, was the prudential check advocated by Malthus; but since
his time it has been perceived that his remedy is in itself the cause
of evils scarcely less terrible than those which it was designed
to remove. Further, it is one which, in the vast majority of cases,
could not possibly be put into practice; for it assumes a power of
mental control over the sexual passion which exists in a comparatively
small number of individuals.
The physiological evils arising from celibacy, and, in lesser degree,
from prolonged abstention from marriage, are of the most disastrous
nature. Celibacy is necessarily a condition of privation and suffering,
since it involves the deliberate and incessant suppression of the
most powerful instinct of mankind. The pure and elevating joys of
wedded and family life are shut out, and existence is shorn of its
most delightful features. The unselfish pleasure of promoting the
happiness of a loved wife and children is denied to the morbid and
gloomy celibate, doomed to a solitary and cheerless existence. And
even when permanent celibacy is not contemplated, marriage may be
deferred until the bloom and brightness of life are gone for ever,
until delay and disappointment have soured the temper and choked the
fountain of affection.
Dr. Bertillon, of Paris, has proved conclusively by statistics derived
from France, Holland and Belgium, that married persons, especially
males, live much longer than single ones, and are less liable to become
insane, criminal, or vicious. It has been shown that the married state
reduces the danger of insanity by nearly one-half. With regard to the
effects of celibacy upon individuals, Dr. Holmes Coote is reported
in the Lancet to have said: "No doubt incontinence is a great sin;
but the evils connected with continence are productive of far greater
misery to society. Any person could bear witness to this who has had
experience in the wards of lunatic asylums."
In addition to the personal ills arising from celibacy, it must be
remembered that late marriage directly encourages prostitution, the
most hideous blot upon our social state. Malthus, indeed, laid great
stress upon the duty of chastity whilst young men were engaged in
accumulating the means to enable them to marry and rear a family later
in life. He might as fitly have preached to the whirlwind, or exhorted
the storm to moderate its violence. The power of restraint is given
to but few men; and, even when that restraint can be exercised, it
is only at the cost of much suffering and physical and moral detriment.
The later school of thinkers, whilst adopting the principle formulated
by Malthus, propound an infinitely better method of compassing the
end which he had in view. They advocate early marriage and limited
families. It is not necessary that young men and women should sacrifice
the youth and freshness of their lives in order that they may marry
when the evening shadows are lengthening around them. The blessings
of domestic comfort, of intimate companionship and of family love
are opened to them in the noontide of life, when the possibility of
enjoyment is at its highest point. Mrs. Annie Besant says: "To be
in harmony with nature, men and women should be husbands and wives,
fathers and mothers, and until nature evolves a neuter sex celibacy
will ever be a mark of imperfection.... No one who desires society
to be happy and healthy should recommend late marriage as a cure for
the social evils around us. Early marriage is best, both physically
and morally; it guards purity, softens the affections, trains the
heart, and preserves physical health; it teaches thought for others,
gentleness and self-control; it makes men gentler and women braver
from the contact of their differing natures. The children that spring
from such marriages--where not following each other too rapidly--are
more vigorous and healthy than those of middle-aged parents; and in
the ordinary course of nature the parents of such children live long
enough to see them make their start in life, to aid, strengthen,
and counsel them at the beginning of their career."
Medical science has shown that the size of families is absolutely
under the control of parents, if they will but exercise a reasonable
degree of care and forethought. A young couple may now enter the
marriage-state without misgiving: for the number of their offspring
can be regulated in proportion to their means as surely as they can
determine the amount of their expenditure upon clothing or luxuries.
Thus the teachings of Malthusianism, combined with the later
development of innocent prudential checks, open up boundless
possibilities for the improvement of social conditions. When the law
of population--a law of nature--is clearly understood, it becomes
possible for man, by the exercise of his reason, to control its
operation, just as he constructs dykes to protect his crops from
floods, or diverts the lightning harmlessly into the ground.
Let us see, then, how the general adoption of the New-Malthusian
principle of early marriage and limited families would affect the
welfare of individuals and of the nation at large.
The knowledge of prudential checks immensely increases the
possibility of happiness for every man and woman whose means are
"limited." Marriage ceases to be a hazardous enterprise, which may
bring in its train liabilities terribly out of proportion to the
power of meeting them. The husband is relieved from anxiety lest
his children may increase whilst his ability to provide suitably
for them remains a fixed, or even diminishing, quantity. The wife
need no longer dread the burden of continual child-bearing and the
incessant servitude of domestic drudgery. How much of the drunkenness
that exists amongst the working-class is due to the discomfort of a
crowded and cheerless home! The husband, wearied with his day's toil,
returns to his narrow lodgings to find his wife, harassed and soured
by the petty cares of a large family, sharp in temper and tongue. The
tender romance of courtship is dispelled by the never-ending round
of household slavery, with the constant need of "making both ends
meet," of contriving that every sixpence shall do the work of a
shilling. And over all there hangs the haunting fear that sickness
or loss of employment may disable the bread-winner, and that the
wolf of hunger, ever waiting outside, may show his fangs within
the door. Little cause is there for wonder that in many cases the
sweetheart of happier days becomes a shrew and slattern, or that the
toil-worn husband flies to the ruinous joys of the tap-room in a vain
attempt to escape from the vexations that surround him in his "home."
And what of the children? They are at once the innocent cause and
the helpless victims of the misery that encompasses them. The wage
that would amply provide for two or three is inadequate for the
proper support of seven or eight, and their little frames suffer from
insufficient nourishment. The overburdened mother cannot bestow upon
so large a flock the loving care and attention that children need for
their proper physical and mental development. Thus they grow up (if
haply they survive), enfeebled in mind and constitution, transmitting
to the next generation their own defects in an aggravated form.
It is amongst the very poorest of our fellow-creatures that we see
the horrors of over-population in their most heartrending aspect. In
the squalid courts and alleys of our great cities the dismal stream
of child-life is constantly at high-water mark. The parents, ignorant
and hopeless, callous by reason of their daily contact with misery,
"increase and multiply" instinctively, as do the beasts of the
field. Amongst the poor the birth-rate is (broadly speaking) double as
high as that of the richer classes. A few years ago the birth-rate in
wealthy Kensington was 20 per 1,000; in the poor district of Bethnal
Green it was 40 per 1,000. This deplorable state of things is not
peculiar to Great Britain: it prevails, with slight variations as to
details, in all so-called civilised countries.
But the birth-rate tells only one-half of the piteous tale: it is the
death-rate which completes the measure of human suffering caused by
the insensate increase of population. In the course of his address
to the Association of Sanitary Inspectors in 1888, Sir Edwin Chadwick
stated that amongst the gentry and professional persons the deaths of
children under five years of age in Brighton formed 8·93 per cent. of
the total deaths, while among the wage-earning class they formed
45·44 per cent. He also said that in Brighton the mean (or average)
age at death for wage-earners is 28·8 years; for the rich it is 63
years. Dr. Playfair has shown that 18 per cent. of the children of
the upper class, 36 per cent. of those of the tradesman class, and
55 per cent. of those of the workmen die before they reach the age
of five years.
Here we see the painful positive or natural checks to population at
work in our very midst. Death stands with his sword and ruthlessly
strikes out the redundant lives. What pen can picture the frightful
suffering indicated by the figures given above? The mother's pangs
of child-birth: her protracted agony of grief as she watches the
ravages of disease upon the weakly frame of her ill-fed, ill-clothed,
ill-tended babe: the last dread scene when death releases from
its misery the child that should never have been called into
existence! This squalid tragedy is enacted a thousand times; and the
upshot of it all is five hundred little coffins hastily thrust into
the earth.
And what of those that survive? Here and there one may rise above
his fellows in the struggle for existence; but the vast majority of
those who pass through the valley of the shadow of death emerge into
a laborious and joyless existence. Of the males a section will drift
into pauperism or crime; many of the females will be driven by want
to the shameful traffic of prostitution. The honest and industrious
are doomed to a life of incessant toil and privation; and with their
numerous offspring will begin another cycle of the obscure tragedy.
In this way, the nation ever renews within itself the elements
of its own weakness and despair. The question of the unemployed is
ultimately a question of over-population; and wages are reduced by the
competition, one against another, of desperate men seeking bread for
their wives and families. Trade Unions and other forms of combination
may partially and temporarily improve the condition of a section of the
workers; but in the long run every advance in comfort is overtaken and
swallowed up by the increase of population stimulated by prosperity.
Thus, unless the teachings of New-Malthusianism be generally acted
upon, poverty will remain a permanent feature of society; and, as we
have already said, the element of poverty is a constant menace to the
community at large. The strength of a chain is that of its weakest
link. The wealth, luxury, and refinement of society exist upon a frail
tenure if the desperation of the poorest class is suffered to pass
a certain limit. History has shown us the civilisation of centuries
extinguished by hordes of barbarians, driven by hunger from their
sterile lands. In Paris, during times of revolutionary excitement,
the Faubourg St. Antoine pours forth its thousands of gaunt and
tattered spectres to make war upon society.
Prudence in the matter of population, then, is seen to be the only
way of conserving the most valuable and progressive elements in
human society. In this, as in other countries, the apostles of the
new teaching have been confronted by the prejudices handed down from
previous generations; and in the succeeding chapter we shall trace
the history of the Malthusian movement in England and abroad.