On the Principle of Population

Thomas Robert Malthus was born near Dorking, Surrey, England, Feb.

17, 1766, and after passing through the University of Cambridge was

ordained, and travelled on the Continent. His great work, "An Essay

on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement

of Society," was first published Anonymously in 1798, and five

years later it appeared, under the title of "An Essay on the

Principle of Population, or a View of its Past and Present Effect

on Human Happiness, with an Enquiry into our Prospects Respecting

the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions,"

under the author's name. Malthus is one of the most persistently

misrepresented of great thinkers, his central doctrine being

nothing less moral than that young men should postpone marriage

until they have the means of supporting a family. It is of the

first interest in the history of thought that the reading of this

great essay of Malthus should have independently suggested, first

to Charles Darwin, and later to Alfred Russel Wallace, the idea of

natural selection as a necessary consequence of that struggle for

life so splendidly demonstrated by Malthus in the case of mankind.

It is to be wondered that Malthus, having provided himself with the

key to the great problem of organic evolution, should have left its

use to others. One explanation is, doubtless, that his survey was

not comparative, covering the whole range of life, but was

practically confined to one living form. Malthus died on December

23, 1834.

_I.--General Survey of the Checks to Population_

Since population is capable of doubling itself at least once in every

twenty-five years, and since the supply of food can increase in only

arithmetical ratio, it follows that increase of population must always

be checked by lack of food. But, except in cases of famine, this check

is never operative, and the chief checks to increase of population are

moral restraint, vice, and misery.

In spite of these checks, which are always more or less in operation,

there is a constant tendency for the population to increase beyond the

means of subsistence. Such increase is followed by lowered wages, dearer

food, and thus a lowered marriage-rate and birth-rate; and the lowered

wages, in turn, induce more agricultural enterprise, and thus means of

subsistence become more abundant again.

More abundant and cheaper food, in turn, promotes marriage, and

increases the population, until again there is a shortage of food; and

this oscillation, though irregular, will always be found, and there will

always be a tendency for the population to oscillate around the food

limit.

Even among savages, where the degradation of women, infanticide, vice,

famine, war, and disease are active instruments of decimation, it will

be found that the average population, generally speaking, presses hard

against the limits of the average food.

Among modern pastoral nations the principal checks which keep the

population down to the level of the means of subsistence are: restraint

from inability to obtain a wife, vicious habits with respect to women,

epidemics, war, famine, and the diseases arising from extreme poverty.

In modern Europe we find similar preventive and positive checks, in

varying proportions, to undue increase of population. In England and

Scotland the preventive check to population prevails in a considerable

degree.

A man of liberal education, with an income only just sufficient to

enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely

certain that if he marry and have a family he shall be obliged to give

up all his former connections. The woman whom a man of education would

naturally choose is one brought up in similar refined surroundings. Can

a man easily consent to place the object of his affections on a lower

social plane?

Such considerations certainly prevent many of the better classes from

early marriage; and those who marry in the face of such considerations

too frequently justify the forebodings of the prudent.

The sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry till they

have a sufficient sure income to support a family, and often accordingly

postpone marriage till they are far advanced in life. The labourer who

earns eighteenpence or two shillings a day, as a single man, will

hesitate to divide that pittance among four or five, seeing the risks

such poverty involves. The servants who live in the families of the rich

have yet stronger inducements to forego matrimony. They live in

comparative comfort and luxury, which as married men they could not

enjoy.

The prolific power of nature is very far from being called fully into

action in Great Britain. And yet, when we contemplate the insufficiency

of the price of labour to maintain a large family, and the amount of

mortality which arises directly and indirectly from poverty, and add to

this the crowds of children prematurely cut off in large towns, we shall

be compelled to acknowledge that, if the number born annually were not

greatly thinned by this premature mortality, the funds for the

maintenance of labour must increase with much greater rapidity than they

have ever hitherto done in order to find work and food for the

additional numbers that would then grow up to manhood.

Those, therefore, who live single, or marry late, do not by such conduct

contribute in any degree to diminish the actual population, but merely

to diminish the proportion of premature mortality, which would otherwise

be excessive; and consequently, from this point of view, do not seem to

deserve any very severe reprobation or punishment.

It has been usual to consider a great proportion of births as the surest

sign of a vigorous and flourishing state. But this is erroneous. Only

after great mortality, or under very especial social conditions, is a

large proportion of births a favourable symptom. In the average state of

a well-peopled territory there cannot be a worse sign than a large

proportion of births, nor a better sign than a small proportion. A small

proportion of births is a decided proof of a very small mortality, since

the supply always equals the demand for population. In despotic,

miserable, or naturally unhealthy countries, the proportion of births to

the whole population will generally be found very great.

In Scotland emigration is a potent cause of depopulation, but any

thinning out from this cause is quickly neutralised by an increased

proportion of births.

In Ireland the details of population fluctuations are little known; but

the cheapness of potatoes, and the ignorance and depressed, indifferent

state of the people, have encouraged marriage to such a degree that the

population is pushed much beyond the resources of the country, and the

consequence, naturally, is that the lower classes of the people are in

the most impoverished and miserable state. The checks to the population

are, of course, chiefly of the positive kind, and arise from the

diseases caused by squalid poverty. To these positive checks have of

late years been added the vice and misery of civil war, and of martial

law.

_II.--Population and the Subsistence Level_

That the checks which have been mentioned are the immediate causes of

the slow increase of population, and that these checks result

principally from an insufficiency of subsistence will be evident from

the comparative rapid increase which has invariably taken place

whenever, by some sudden enlargement in the means of subsistence, these

checks have been in any considerable degree removed. Plenty of rich land

to be had for little or nothing is so powerful a cause of population as

generally to overcome all obstacles. The abundance of cheap and

profitable land obtained by the colonists in English North America

resulted in a rapid increase of population almost without parallel in

history. Such an increase does not occur in Britain, and the reason to

be assigned is want of food. Want of food is certainly the most

efficient of the three immediate checks to population. Population soon

increases after war and disease and convulsions of nature, because the

food supply is more than adequate for the diminished numbers; but where

food is deficient no increase of population can occur.

Since the world began the causes of population and depopulation have

been probably as constant as any of the laws of nature with which we are

acquainted.

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly

the same that it may always 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 obvious and evident to our

understandings that we cannot doubt it. The different modes which nature

takes to repress a redundant population do not, indeed, appear 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 takes place, the deaths

will shortly exceed the births, and that the increase which has been

observed for a few years cannot be the real average increase of the

population of the country. If there were no other depopulating causes,

and if the preventive check did not operate very strongly, every country

would, without doubt, be subject to periodical plagues and famines.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the

population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence,

and even this criterion is subject to some slight variations.

Other circumstances being the same, 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 this

food is divided, or the quantity which a day's labour will purchase.

This happiness does not depend either upon their being thinly or fully

inhabited, upon their poverty or their riches, their youth or age, but

on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each other.

In modern Europe the positive checks to population prevail less, and the

preventive checks more, than in past times, and in the more uncivilised

parts of the world, since wars, plagues, acute diseases, and famines

have become less frequent.

With regard to the preventive checks to population, though it must be

acknowledged that the preventive check of moral restraint does not, at

present, largely prevail, yet it is becoming more prevalent, and if we

consider only the general term, which implies principally a delay of

marriage from prudential considerations, it may be considered as the

most potent of the checks which in modern Europe keep down the

population to the level of the means of subsistence.

_III.--Remedies other than Moral Restraint for Evils of Over-population_

All systems of equality which have been proposed are bound to fail,

because the motive to the preventive check of moral restraint is

destroyed by equality and community of goods. As all would be equal and

in similar circumstances, there would be no reason why one person should

think himself obliged to practise the duty of restraint more than

another. And how could a man be compelled to such restraint? The

operation of this natural check of moral restraint depends exclusively

upon the existence of the laws of property and succession; and in a

state of equality and community of property could only be replaced by

some artificial regulation of a very different stamp, and a much more

unnatural character.

No scheme of equality, then, can overcome the population difficulty;

emigration is only a palliative, and poor-law relief only a nostrum

which eventually aggravates the evils of over-population.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the

poor in two ways. Their first obnoxious tendency is to increase

population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may

marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family

without parish assistance. The poor laws may be said, therefore, to

create the poor which they maintain, and as the provisions must be

distributed to the greater numbers in smaller proportions, the labours

of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a

smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently more of

them will require assistance. Secondly, the quantity of provisions

consumed in workhouses by the least worthy members of the community

diminishes the food of the more worthy members, who are thus driven to

obtain relief.

Fortunately for England a spirit of independence still remains among the

peasantry. The poor laws, though calculated to eradicate this spirit,

have only partially succeeded. Hard as it may appear in individual

instances, dependent poverty ought to be deemed disgraceful. Such a

stigma seems necessary to promote the general happiness of mankind. If

men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they

are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon

themselves and their children, but they are tempted unwittingly to

injure all in the same class as themselves. Further, the poor laws

discourage frugality, and diminish the power and the will of the common

people to save, and they live from hand to mouth without thought of the

future. A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house by

the knowledge that his death and sickness must throw his wife and family

upon the parish, might fear to waste his earnings if the only provisions

for his family were casual charity.

The mass of unhappiness among common people must be diminished when one

of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus removed; and

when institutions which render dependent poverty so lessen the disgrace

which should be attached to it. I feel persuaded that if the poor-laws

had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few

more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness

among the common people would have been much greater than it is at

present.

In view of all these facts I do not propose a law to prevent the poor

from marrying, but I propose a very gradual abolition of the poor laws.

By means of an extending commerce a country may be able to purchase an

increasing quantity of food, and to support an increasing population;

but extension of commerce cannot continue indefinitely; it must be

checked by competition and other economic interference; and as soon as

funds for the maintenance of labour become stationary, or begin to

decline, there will be no means of obtaining food for an increasing

population.

It is the union of the agricultural and commercial systems, and not

either of them taken separately, that is calculated to produce the

greatest national prosperity. A country with an extensive and rich

territory, the cultivation of which is stimulated by improvements in

agriculture, manufactures, and foreign commerce, has such various and

abundant resources that it is extremely difficult to say when they will

reach their limits. There are, however, limits to the capital population

of a country--limits which they must ultimately reach and cannot pass.

To secure a more abundant, and, at the same time, a steadier supply of

grain, a system of corn laws has been recommended, the object of which

is to discourage, by duties or prohibitions, the importation of foreign

corn, and to encourage by bounties the exportation of corn of home

growth.

Laws which prohibit the importation of foreign grain, though by no means

unobjectionable, are not open to the same objections as bounties, and

must be allowed to be adequate to the object they have in view, the

maintenance of an independent supply. Moreover, it is obviously

possible, by restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn, to

maintain a balance between the agricultural and commercial classes. The

question is not a question of the efficiency or inefficiency of the

measure proposed, but of its policy or impolicy. In certain cases there

can be no doubt of the impolicy of attempting to maintain an unnatural

balance between the agricultural and commercial classes; but in other

cases the impolicy is by no means so clear. Restrictions upon the

importation of foreign corn in a country which has great landed

resources tend not only to spread every commercial and manufacturing

advantage possessed, whether permanent or temporary, on the soil, but

tend also to prevent these great oscillations in the progress of

agriculture and commerce which are seldom unattended with evil.

_IV.--Moral Restraint and Discriminate Charity_

As it appears that in the actual state of every society which has come

within our view the natural progress of population has been constantly

and powerfully checked, and as it seems evident that no improved form of

government, no plans of emigration, no direction of natural industry

can prevent the continued action of a great check to population in some

form or other, it follows that we must submit to it as an inevitable law

of nature, and the only inquiry that remains is how it may take place

with the least possible prejudice to the virtue and happiness of human

society.

All the immediate checks to population which have been observed to

prevail in the same and different countries seem to be resolvable into

moral restraint, vice, and misery; and if our choice be confined to

those three, we cannot long hesitate in our decision. It seems certain

that moral restraint is the only virtuous and satisfactory mode of

escape from the evils of over-population. Without such moral restraint,

and if it were the custom to marry at the age of puberty, no virtue,

however great, could rescue society from a most wretched and desperate

state of want, with its concomitant diseases and famines.

Prudential restraint, if it were generally adopted, would soon raise the

price of labour by narrowing its supply, and those practising it would

save money and acquire habits of sobriety, industry, and economy such as

should ensure happy married life. Further, postponement of marriage

would give both sexes a better opportunity to choose life-partners

wisely and well; and the passion, instead of being extinguished by early

sensuality, would burn the more brightly because repressed for a time,

and attained as the prize of industry and virtue, and as the reward of a

genuine attachment.

Moral restraint in this matter is a Christian duty. There are, perhaps,

few actions that tend so directly to diminish the general happiness as

to marry without the means of supporting children. He who commits this

act clearly offends against the will of God, for he violates his duty to

his neighbours and to himself, and listens to the voice of passion

rather than fulfils his higher obligations. The duty is intelligible to

the meanest capacity.

It is simply that he must not bring beings into the world whom he cannot

support. When once this subject is cleared from the obscurity thrown

over it by parochial laws and private benevolence, every man must see

his obligation. If he cannot support his children they must starve; and

if he marry in the face of a fair probability that he shall not be able

to support his children, he is guilty of all the evils which he thus

brings upon himself, his wife, and his offspring.

When the wages of labour are barely sufficient to support two children,

a man marries and has five or six, and finds himself in distress. He

blames the low price of labour. He blames the parish and the rich and

social institutions; but he never blames himself. He may wish he had

never married; but it never enters into his head that he has done

anything wrong. Indeed, he has always been told that to raise up

children for his king and country is a very meritorious act.

The common people must be taught that they themselves in such a case are

to blame, and that no one has power to help them if they act thus

contrary to the will of God. Those who wish to help the poor must try to

raise the relative proportion between the price of labour and the price

of provisions, instead of encouraging the poor to marry and overstock

the labour market. A market overstocked with labour and an ample

remuneration to each labourer are objects perfectly incompatible with

each other.

It is not enough, however, to abolish all the positive institutions

which encourage population, but we must endeavour at the same time to

correct the prevailing opinions which have the same effect. The public

must be made to understand that they have no _right_ to assistance, and

that it is the duty of man not only to propagate his species but to

propagate virtue and happiness.

Our private charity must also be discriminate. If we insist that a man

shall eat even if he do not work, and that his family shall be supported

even if he marry without prospect of supporting a family, we merely

encourage worthless poverty. We must not put a premium on idleness and

reckless marriages, and we must on no account do anything which tends to

remove in any regular manner that inequality of circumstances which

ought always to exist between the single man and the man with a family.