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MALTHIJ8 AND HIS WORK 
 
 JAMES BONAE, M.A. 
 
 BALLIOL COIXEQE, OXFOED 
 
 bonbon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1885 
 
 The Riiiht of Translation and Meprodnclion is Iteseried 
 
865 
 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Richard Clay and Sons, 
 bread street hill, e.c, 
 
TO 
 
 THIS BOOK, 
 
 WHICH OWES MUCH TO HIM, 
 
 18 DEDICATED. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Inteoduction ... 
 
 Book I. THE ESSAY. 
 
 Chap. i. fiest_ihcw«ht%4-798 ... 
 ii. second thought3^1803 
 iii. theses ... 
 
 iv. the savage, barbarian, and oeiental 
 v. north and mid europe 
 
 VI. -WtSTTOB ... 
 VU.___ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND ... 
 
 Book II. ECONOMICS. 
 Chap. i. the landlords 
 „■ II. the working man 
 
 „ III. GENERAL GLUTS 
 „ IV. THE BEGGAR 
 
 PAGI 
 
 vii 
 
 1 
 
 45 
 
 60 
 
 85 
 
 119 
 
 153 
 
 170 
 
 207 
 254 
 282 
 303 
 
 Book III. MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 319 
 
 „ IV. THE CEITICS 355 
 
 V. BIOOtRAPHY 399 
 
 Index ... 
 
 428 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ^^F the three English writers whose work has 
 become a portion of all Political Economy, Malthus 
 is the second in time and in honour. His services 
 to general theory are at least equal to Eicardo's ; and 
 his full illustration of one particular detail will rank 
 with the best work of Adam Smith, f 
 
 In the following pages the detail will be the 
 main subject, and general theory the episode. The 
 Political Economy and minor writings of Malthus 
 (which are not few) will be noticed only in relation 
 to the Essay on Popidation. 
 
 Accordingly, the First of these Five Books will deal 
 with the genesis, history, and contents of the Essay, 
 plunging the reader in medias res and keeping him 
 there, till the facts force him, in the Second Book, 
 to recur with the author to Economical theory. The 
 Third will show the mind of Malthus more clearly 
 by adding to his economics his Ethics and Political 
 
Tiii INTEODUCTION. 
 
 Philosophy ; and the Fourth, with the case now fully- 
 stated, will criticize the Critics of the Essay, and try 
 to determine how much of its doctrine remains still 
 valuable. The Fifth Book, with its Biography, may 
 help the reader to associate the living personality of 
 the man with his writings. 
 
 London, June 1885. 
 
lALTHUS Km HIS WOEK. 
 
 BOOK I. THE ESSAY. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIEST THOUGHTS, .1798. 
 
 The Common Caricature — The Essay an Inquiry into the Poverty of 
 Nations — Godwiu's Political Justice and Enquirer — The Two Pos- 
 tulates and Conclusions from them — Condorcet's Sketch of the 
 Progress of the Human Mind — Organic Perfectibility of Man and its 
 Obstacles — Historical Context of the Essay — The Crisis — Pitt's Poor 
 Bill — Malthus and his Teachers — Success explained — Theology 
 and Metaphysics — Faults of the Essay — -Immediate aim secured. 
 
 I He was the " best-abused man of tbe age." Bonaparte 
 himself was not a greater enemy of his species. Here 
 was a man who defeaded small-pox, slavery, and 
 child- murder ; who denounced soup-kitchens, early 
 marriage, and parish allowances ; who " had the 
 impudence to marry after preaching against the evils 
 of a family ; " who thought the world so badly 
 governed that the best actions do the most harm ; 
 who, in short, took all romance out of life and 
 preached a dull sermon on the threadbare text — 
 " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Such was the 
 character of Malthus as described by his oppoDents.\! 
 
2 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 If an angry man is probably in the wrong, an 
 abusive man is certainly so ; and, when not one or 
 two, but one or two thousand are engaged in the 
 abuse, the certainty amounts to a demonstration. 
 We may measure the soundness of the victim's logic 
 by the violence of the personal attacks made upon 
 him. For most worldly purposes, to be ignored and 
 to be refuted are the same thing. 
 
 Malthus from the first was not ignored. For thirty 
 years it rained refutations. The question, as he 
 stated it, was thoroughly threshed out. The Essay 
 on Population passed in the author's lifetime through 
 six editions (1798, 1803, 1806, 1807, 1817, and 
 1826) ; even between the first edition, in 1798, and 
 the second, in 1803, there were more than a score 
 of ' Eeplies ' ; and the discussion was carried on in 
 private correspondence, as well as in public journals 
 and parliamentary speeches. The case was fully 
 argued ; and no one who fairly considers the extent 
 of the discussion, and the ability of the disputants, 
 can fail to believe that we have, in the records of this 
 controversy, ample materials for forming our own 
 judgment on the whole question in dispute. 
 
 Such a privilege is seldom used. The world 
 has no time to consult authorities, though it likes 
 them to be within reach of consultation. When an 
 author becomes an authority, he too often ceases' 
 to be read, and his doctrines, like current coin, 
 are worn by use till they lose the clear image ' 
 and superscription of the issuer. In this way an 
 author's name may come to suggest, not his own 
 
CHAP. I.] FIEST THOUGHTS, 1798. 3 
 
 book, but the current version of his doctrines. 
 Malthus becomes Malthusianism, — Darwin, Dar- 
 winism ; and if Adam Smith's name were more 
 flexible he too would become an epithet.^ As it is, 
 Ad am Smith has left a book which " every one 
 praises and nobo dy reads," Malthus a book which 
 no one reads and all abus e. The abuse is, fortun- 
 ately, not quite unanimous ; but it is certain that 
 Malthus for a longtime had an experience worse 
 than Cassandra's, for his warnings were disbelieved 
 without being heard or understood. Miss Marti- 
 neau, in her girlhood, heard him denounced " very 
 eloquently and forcibly by persons who never saw 
 so much as the outside " ^ of his book. Tliis was in 
 1816; and when at a later time she inquired about 
 him for herself, she could never find any one who 
 had read his book, but scores who could " make 
 great argument about it and about," or write senti- 
 mental pamphlets on supposed Malthusian subjects. 
 This carelessness was not confined to the general 
 public ; it infected the savants. Nothing more 
 clearly shows how political economy, or at least 
 one question of it, had descended into the streets 
 and become a common recreation. Even Nassau 
 William Senior, perhaps the most distinguished 
 professor of political economy in his day, confessed 
 with penitence that he had trusted more to his ears 
 than to his eyes for a knowledge of Malthusian 
 doctrine, and had written a learned criticism, not 
 of the opinion of Mr. Malthus, but of that which 
 
 ' The Germans talk of ' SmitManismus.' ^ Autobiogr., vol. i. p. 11. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. I. 
 
 " the multitudes who have followed and the few who 
 have endeavoured to oppose " Mr. Mai thus, have 
 assumed to be his opinion.^ 
 
 The " opinion " so imagined by Senior and the 
 multitude is still the current Malthusianism. A 
 Malthusian is supposed to forbid all marriage. Mr. 
 Malthus was supposed to believe that " the desire of 
 marriage, which tends to increase population, is a 
 stronger principle than the desire of bettering our 
 condition, which tends to increase subsistence." ^ This 
 meant, as Southey said, that " God makes men and 
 women faster than He can feed them." The old 
 adage was wrong then : Providence does not send 
 meat where He sends mouths ; on the contrary. He 
 sends mouths wherever He sends meat, so that the 
 poor can never cease out of the land, for, however 
 abundant the food, marriage will soon make the 
 people equally abundant. It is a question of simple 
 division. A fortune that is wealth for one will not 
 give comfort to ten, or bare life to twenty. The 
 moral is, for all about to marry, "Don't," and for 
 all statesmen, "Don't encourage them." 
 
 This caricature had enough truth in it to save it 
 from instant detection, and its vitality is due to the 
 superior ease in understanding, and therefore greater 
 pleasure in hearing, a blank denial or a blank affirm- 
 ation as compared with the necessary qualifications of 
 a scientific statement. The truth must be told, how- 
 ever, that Malthus and the rest of the learned world 
 
 1 Senior, Two Lectures on Population, 1829, Appendix, pp. 56, 57. 
 2 Senior, I. c, p. 56. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 5 
 
 were by no means at utter discord. He always 
 treated a hostile economist as a possible ally. He 
 was carrying on tlie work of their common Founder. 
 in the Esmy on Population he was inquiri ng into the 
 nature and causes of p overty, as Adam Smith had 
 inquired into the nature and causes of wealthTw But 
 Malthus himself did not intend the one to be a mere 
 supplement to the other. He did not approach the 
 subject from a purely scientific side. He had not 
 devoted long years of travel and reflection to the pre- 
 paration of an economical treatise. Adam Smith had 
 written his Moral Sentiments seventeen years before 
 his greater work. When he wrote the latter he had 
 behind him an academical and literary reputation ; 
 and he satisfied the just expectations of the public 
 by giving them, in the two quarto volumes of the 
 Wealth of Nations, his full-formed and completely 
 digested conclusions and reasonings definitively ex- 
 pressed (1776). Malthus, on the contrary, gained 
 his reputation by a bold and sudden stroke, well fol- 
 lowed up. His Essay was an anonymous pamphlet 
 I in a political controversy, and was meant to turn 
 the light of political economy upon the political 
 philosophy of the day. Whatever the essay con- 
 tained over and above politics, and however far 
 afield the author eventually travelled in the later 
 editions, there is no doubt about the first origin of 
 the essay itself. It was not, as we are sometimes told, 
 that, being a kind-hearted clergyman, he set himself 
 to work to inquire whether after all it was right to 
 increase the numbers of the population without caring 
 
6 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. l. 
 
 for tlie quality o-f it. In 1798 Malthus was no doubt 
 in holy orders and held a curacy at Albury ; but he 
 seems never to have been more than a curate. The 
 Whigs offered him a living in his later years, but he 
 passed it to his son ; ^ and we should be far astray if 
 we supposed his book no more than the " recreations 
 of a country parson." "Parson" was in his case a 
 title without a r6le and Cobbett's immortal nickname 
 is very unhappy.^ He had hardly more of the parson 
 , ,than Condillac of the abbe. In 1798 Pitt's Bill 
 for extending relief to large families, and thereby 
 leucouraging population, was no doubt before the 
 -country ; but we owe the essay not to William Pitt, 
 |but to William Godwin. The changed aspect of the 
 book in its later editions need not blind us to the 
 efEcient cause of its first appearance. 
 
 Thomas Robert Malthus had graduated at Cam- 
 bridge as ninth wrangler in the year 1788, in the 
 twenty-second year of his age. In 1797, after gaining 
 a fellowship at Jesus College, he happened to spend 
 some time at his father's house at Albury in Surrey. 
 Father aud son discussed the questions of the day, 
 the younger man attacking Jacobinism, the elder 
 
 1 Macvey Napier's Correspondence, p. 187. Cf. Pol. Eeon., 2nd ed., 
 pp. XXXV, liv. 
 
 2 " Why," said I, " how many children do you reckon to have at last 1 " 
 " I do not care how many," said the man, " God never sends mouths 
 without sending meat." "Did you ever hear," said I, "of one Parson 
 Malthus ■? he wants an act of parliament to prevent poor people from 
 marrying young, and from having such lots of children." " Oh, the 
 brute ! " exclaimed the wife ; while the husband laughed, thinking I 
 was joking."— Cobbett's Advice to Yoimg Mm, Letter 3, p. 83. The 
 references to Cobbett in the Essay are probably, 7th ed., pp. 310 and 
 318, cf. p. 313 ; but his name is not mentioned. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 7 
 
 t defending it. Daniel Mai thus had been a friend 
 
 ! and executor of Rousseau, and was an ardent believer 
 
 f in human progress. Robert had written a Whig 
 
 ii tract, which he called The Crisis, in the year of 
 
 i Pitt's new loan and Napoleon's Italian campaign 
 
 1] (1796) ; but he did not publish it, and his views 
 
 I were yet in solution. We may be sure the two 
 i( men did not spare each other in debate. In the 
 IS words of the elder Malthus, Robert then, if at no 
 i other time, " threw little stones " into his garden. An 
 li[ old man must have the patience of Job if he can look 
 li with calmness on a young man breaking his ideals. 
 It But in this case he at least recognized the strength 
 1( of the slinger, and he bore him no grudge, though he 
 Ij did not live to be won by the concessions of the second 
 
 essay (1803). That Robert, on his part, was not want- 
 
 n ing in respect, is shown by an indignant letter, written 
 
 li in February, 1800, on his father's death, in reply to 
 
 II the supposed slight of a newspaper paragraph.^ 
 
 i( The fireside debates had in that year (1797) 
 
 ij, received new matter. William Godwin, quondam 
 
 f parson, journalist, politician, and novelist, whose 
 
 J Political Justice was avowedly a " child of the 
 Revolution," ^ had written a new book, the Enquirer, 
 in which many of his old positions were set in a 
 
 !' new light. The father made it a point of honour 
 
 ^ to defend the Enquirer ; the son played devil's advo- 
 
 I cate, partly from conviction, partly for the sake of 
 
 li 
 
 I 1 Namely, in thh Monthly Magazine for Jan. 1800. But see below, 
 
 \ Book V. 
 
 ( ^ Thoughts on Parr's Sermon, p. 2, and Pol. Justice, Pref. p. x. 
 
8 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 argument ; and, as often happens in sucn a case, 
 Robert found his case stronger than he had thought. 
 Hard pressed by an able opponent, he was led, on 
 the spur of the moment, to use arguments which had 
 not occurred to him before, and of which The Crisis 
 knows nothing. In calmer moments he followed 
 them up to their conclusions. " The discussion," he 
 tells us,i " started the general question of the future 
 improvement of society, and the author at first sat 
 down with an intention of merely stating his thoughts 
 to his friend upon paper in a clearer manner than 
 he thought he could do in conversation." But the 
 subject opened upon him, and he determined to 
 publish. This is the plain story of the publication of 
 the Essay on Population, reduced to its simplest terms. 
 At the very time when the best men in both worlds 
 were talking only of progress, Malthus saw rocks 
 ahead. French and English reformers were looking 
 forward to a golden age of perfect equality and 
 happiness ; Malthus saw an irremovable difficulty 
 in the way, and he refused to put the telescope 
 to his blind eye. 
 
 There had been Cassandras before Malthus, and 
 even in the same century. Dr. John Bruckner of 
 Norwich had written in the same strain in his Theorie 
 du Systeme Animal, in 1767 ;^ and a few years earlier 
 (in 1761) Dr. Robert Wallace, writing of the Various 
 Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence, had 
 
 ' Preface to first edition of Essay, 1798. 
 
 2 LeyJen, 1767, translated under the title Philosophical Survey of the 
 Animal Creation, Lond., 1708. See especially chs. vii. and x. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 9 
 
 talked of community of goods as a cure for the ills 
 of humanity, and then had found, very reluctantly, 
 one fatal objection — the excessive population that 
 would ensue. Men are always inclined to marry 
 and multiply their numbers till the food is barely 
 enough to support them all. This objection had 
 since Wallace's time become a stock objection, to 
 be answered by every maker of Utopias. It was left 
 for Malthus to show the near approach which this 
 difficulty makes to absolute hopelessness, and to 
 throw the burden of proof on the other side. As 
 the Wealth of Nations altered the standing pre- 
 sumption in favour of interference to one in favour 
 of liberty in matters of trade, so the Essay on 
 Population altered the presumption in favour of the 
 advocates of progress to a presiimption against them. 
 This may not describe the final result of the essay, 
 but it is a true account of its immediate effect. 
 People had heard of the objection before ; it was only 
 now that they began to look on it as conclusive. 
 
 How had Godwin tried to meet it, when it was 
 still in the hands of weaker men, and therefore not 
 at all conclusive ? He could not ignore it. In his 
 Political Justice (1793) he had given the outlines of 
 a "simple form of society, without government," on 
 the principle of Tom Paine, which was also a received 
 Jacobin motto, " Society is produced by our wants,\\ 
 government by our wickedness."^ He says, with the"\ 
 ruling philosophy, that man is born a blank, and his ) 
 outward circumstances make him good or evil. 
 
 ' Common Stn&e,, p. 1, quoted in Fol. Justice, Bk. II. c"h. i. p. 124 (3rd ed.). 
 
10 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk- i. 
 
 Thanks to human institutions, especially lawyers, 
 sovereigns, and statesmen, the outward circumstances, 
 he says, are as bad as they can be. Everywhere 
 there is inequality. There is great poverty alongside 
 of great riches, and great tyranny with great slavery. 
 In the same way the best of his novels, Caleb Williams 
 (1794), tells us how "things as they are" enable the 
 rich sinner to persecute the poor righteous man. But 
 he is no pessimist. The Political Justice does not 
 end with a statement of evils. It goes on to show 
 that in the end truth will conquer ; men will listen 
 to reason, they will abandon their present laws, and 
 they will form a society without law or government 
 or any kind of force ; no such things will be needed 
 when every man listens to reason, and contents 
 himself with plain living and high thinking. There 
 will be no king in Israel ; every man will do that 
 which is right in his own eyes. In our presents 
 society, says Godwin, it is distribution and not! 
 production that is at fault. There is more than 
 enough of wealth for all, but it is not shared amongst 
 all. One man has too much, another little or nothing.! 
 In the new society reason will change all that.- 
 Reason tells us that, if we make an equal division, 
 not only of the good things of this life, but of the 
 labour of making them, then we shall secure a pro- 
 duction quite sufficient for the needs of plain livers, 
 at the cost of perhaps half-an-hour's labour in a day 
 from each of them.' Each of them will, therefore, 
 
 1 Fol. Justice, Bk. VIII. ch. vi. p. 484. On the other hand, Franklin, 
 in his Letter on Luxim-y, Idleness, and Industry (1784), had estimated the 
 
CHAP. I.] PIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 11 
 
 have leisure, which is the true riches, and he will 
 use the time for his own. moral and intellectual 
 improvement. In this way, by the omnipotence of 
 truth and the power of persuasion, not by any 
 violence or power of -the sword, perfection and 
 happiness will in time be established on the earth. 
 Godwin made no essential change in these views 
 in the later editions of the Political Justice (1796 
 and 1798), or in the Enquirer (1797). "Among the 
 faithless, faithful only he," when the excesses of the 
 Terror made even Sir James Mackintosh (not to say 
 Bishop Watson, Southey, and Wordsworth) a luke- 
 warm reformer. Nothing in Godwin's life is more 
 admirable than the perfect confidence with which 
 he holds fast to his old faith in democratic principles 
 and the perfectibility of man. If it is obstinacy, 
 it is very like devotion ; and perhaps the only 
 author who shows an equal constancy is Condorcet, 
 the Girondist, marked out for death, and writing 
 in his hiding-place, almost under the eyes of the 
 Convention, his eager book on the Progress of the 
 Species. Nothing but intense sincerity and sheer 
 depth of conviction could have enabled these men 
 to continue the defence of a dishonoured cause. 
 They had not the martyr's greatest trial, the 
 doubt whether he is right. The great impression 
 made by their works was a sign that, as they felt 
 strongly, they wrote powerfully. Malthus, who 
 refuted both of them, apologized for giving serious 
 
 necessary labour more moderately at four hours. Sir Tlios. More 
 suggested nine. Owen recurred to the half-hour. New Moral World, 
 1836, pp. X, xi. 
 
12 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. L 
 
 criticism to Condorcet's palpable extravagances by 
 saying that Condorcet has many followers who will 
 hold him unanswerable unless he is specially answered.^ 
 Of Godwin, Mr. Sumner, writing in 1816, says that 
 though his book (the Political Justice) was becoming 
 out of date, it was still " the ablest and best known 
 statement " of the doctrines of equality that had ever 
 appeared in England.^ It has been justly called the 
 "first text-book of the philosophical radicals." The 
 actual efl'ect of it cannot be measured by the number 
 of copies sold on its first appearance. Godwin had 
 placed it far beyond the reach of ordinary democrats 
 by fixing the price at three guineas. In 1793 many 
 who would have been his keenest readers could not 
 have paid three shillings for it. But the event 
 proved him wise in his generation. The Privy 
 Council decided they might safely tolerate so dear 
 a book ; and a small audience even of the rich was 
 better to Godwin' than prosecution, which might 
 mean exile and no audience at all.^ Few writers 
 of our own day have so good an excuse for making 
 themselves inaccessible to the poor. Godwin, how- 
 ever, like Ruskin, reached the poor in spite of his 
 arrangements for avoiding them. He filtered down 
 among the masses \ and his writings became a 
 political as well as a literary power in Enoiand, 
 
 1 Hsmy, 1st ed., pp. 161-2, footaote. 
 
 2 Becords of the Creation, vol. i. p. 54, note. 
 
 3 Life by Kegan Paul, vol. i. p. 80. Cf. a curious passage in the 
 EdinhiiA-gh Review, about Godwin's Poptdation: "As the book was dear, 'i 
 and not likely to Ml into the hands of the labouring classes, we had 
 no thoughts of noticing it," July 1821, p. 363. 
 
CHAP. I.] PIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 13 
 
 long before lie had a poetic son-in-law to give him 
 reflected glory. If a species is to be j udged by its 
 best individual, then Godwin represents better than 
 Paine the class of political writers to which they both 
 belong ; and many fell down with Godwin when he 
 fell down before Malthus. 
 
 The Enquirer was less popular than the Political 
 Justice. Part of the charm of the latter undoubtedly 
 lay in the elaborate completeness and systematic 
 order of the whole discussion. The foundations were 
 laid in the psychology of Locke ; and then the build- 
 ing was raised, stone by stone, until the whole was 
 finished. But in the Eiiquirer Godwin's dislike of 
 law had extended even to the form of composition. 
 He had been wrong, he said, in trying to write a 
 systematic treatise on society, and he would now 
 confine himself to detached essays, wholly experi- 
 mental, and not necessarily in harmony with one 
 another. " He (the author) has carried this principle 
 so far that he has not been severely anxious relative 
 to inconsistency that may be discovered between the 
 speculations of one essay and the speculations of 
 another." ^ The contrast between these two styles is 
 the contrast between a whole oratorio and a miscel- 
 laneous concert, or between a complete poem and a 
 volume of extracts. 
 
 The thoughts were the same, though they had lost 
 their attractive expression. The essay on Avarice 
 and Profusion ^ tells us, among other things, that " a 
 state of cultivated equality is that state which, in 
 
 1 Enquirer (1797), Pref., p. 7. ^ p^rt IL, Essay II. 
 
14 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. r. 
 
 speculation and theory, appears most consonant to 
 the nature of man, and most conducive to the exten- 
 sive diffusion of felicity." This was the essay which 
 led Mai thus and his father into their fruitful argu- 
 ment. The essay on Riches and Poverty, and the one 
 on Beggars,^ contain other applications of the same 
 idea, with many moralizing digressions. Godwin has 
 not lost his sweet Utopian \ision ; he has not yielded 
 to the objections that baffled Dr. Robert Wallace ; he 
 thinks he has removed all objections. 
 
 He meets them ^ by saying first of all : " There is a 
 principle in the nature of human society by means of 
 which everything seems to tend to its level," when not 
 interfered with ; and the population of a country when 
 left to itself does not seem to increase beyond the food. 
 But in the second place, supposing things not to find 
 their level in this way, the earth is wide and the evU 
 day is far off. It may take myriads of centuries to 
 till the untilled acres and to replenish the empty 
 earth with people, and much may happen before then. 
 In fact, he views the subject as many of us view the 
 question of our coal supply. Before it is exhausted 
 we may be beyond the need of it.^ The earth itself 
 may have collapsed with all its inhabitants. Don't 
 let us refuse a present blessing from fear of a remote 
 future danger. Besides, it is not very hard to 
 imagine a safeguard. Franklin says that " mind 
 will one day become omnipotent over matter ; " * why 
 
 1 Part II., Essays I. and III. 
 
 2 Folitical Justice, Book VIII. ch. ix. pp. 515-19 (3rd ed.). 
 
 3 Cf. Rich. Jones, Pol. Econ. (1859), p. 596. 
 
 * Qnoted, Political Jxistice, Book VIII. ch. viii. pp. 503, 520, on the 
 authority of Price. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 15 
 
 not over the matter of our own bodies ? Does not 
 the bodily health depend largely on the miud ^ 
 
 " A merry heart goes all the day ; 
 Your sad tires in a mile, ! " 
 
 The time may come when we shall be so full of 
 liveliness that we shall not sleep, and so full of life 
 that we shall not die. The need for marriage will 
 be superseded by earthly immortality, and the desire 
 for it by the development of intellect. On the 
 renewed earth of the future there will be neither 
 marrying nor giving in marriage, but we shall be 
 as the angels. " The whole will be a people of men, 
 and not of children. Generation will not succeed 
 generation, nor truth have, in a certain degree, to 
 recommence her career every thirty years. Other 
 improvements may be expected to keep pace with 
 those of health and longevity. There will be no 
 war, no crimes, no administration of justice as it is 
 called, and no government. Besides this, there will 
 be neither disease, anguish, melancholy, nor resent- 
 ment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardour 
 the good of all." ^ 
 
 This sweet strain had been enchanting the public 
 for four or five years, when Malthus ventured to 
 interrupt it with his modest anonymous Essay on 
 the Principle of Population as it affects the Future 
 Improvement of Society. The writer claims to be 
 as hearty a philanthropist as Mr. Godwin, but he 
 cannot allow the wish to be father to the thought, 
 and believe in future perfection against evidence. 
 
 1 I. c, Book VIII. ch. ix, p. 528. 
 
16 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 To» prove a theory true, he says, it is not enough 
 to show that you cannot prove its contradiction, 
 or that you ca;i prove its usefulness. It would be 
 very useful to have eyes in both sides of our head ; 
 but that does not prove that we are going to have 
 them. If you told me that man was becoming a 
 winged creature like the ostrich, I should not doubt 
 that he would find wings very useful, but I could 
 hardly believe your prophecy without some kind of 
 proof beyond the mere praises of flying. I should 
 ask you to show palpable signs in his body and 
 habits that such a change was going on, that his 
 neck has been lengthening, his lips hardening, and 
 his hair becoming feathery. In the same way, when 
 you tell me that man is becoming a purely intel- 
 lectual being, content with plain living and high 
 thinking, I see there might be advantage in the 
 change, but I ask for signs that it is in progress; 
 I see none ; but, on the contrary, I see strong reasons 
 for believing in its impossibility. Grant me two 
 postulates, and I disprove your millennium. The 
 first is, that food is necessary ; the second, that the 
 instinct for marriage is permanent. No one deniesj 
 the first, and Godwin's denial of the second is purely 
 dogmatic. He has given us no proofs. Men have 
 no doubt made progress in other respects ; they 
 have passed from barbarism to civilization. But in 
 respect of the second postulate they are the same 
 now as they were 4000 years ago. Individual 
 exceptions are individual exceptions still. I am 
 bound, therefore, to believe in the truth of my 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. Vn 
 
 postulates, and I infer from them the impossibility of 
 your millennium. 
 
 You speak of a society, he continues, where the 
 members are all equally co"2il5rfable and at leisure. 
 Suppose it established, it could not last ; it would 
 go to pieces through the principle of population 
 alone. The seven years of plenty* would be at 
 once devoured by seven years of want. The proof of 
 this is short and decisive : — Population, when un^ 
 checked, increases in a geometrical ratio ; subsist- i 
 ence only in an arithmetical. " A slight acquaintance] 
 with numbers will show the immensity of the first 
 power in comparison with the second."^ "The race 
 of plants and animals shrinks under this great 
 restrictive law, and the race of man cannot by any 
 efforts of reason escape from it. Among plants and 
 animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and 
 premature death, among men misery and vice," the 
 former necessary, the latter probable. Now, in the 
 old countries of Europe, population never is un- 
 checked. It is checked by want of room and food. 
 Vice and misery, and the fear of them, are always 
 " equalizing " the numbers of the people with the 
 food of the people. In the New World, "the 
 cynosure of neighbouring eyes," there are fewer 
 hindrances to early marriage ; there is more room and 
 there is more food ; hard work is the only condition 
 of a happy life. But, even there, population is not 
 entirely unchecked ; the hard work will at least 
 interfere with the rearing of children ; ajid the 
 ' Essay, 1st ed., p. 14. 
 
18> 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WOBK. [bk. i. 
 
 people, however comfortable, are not at tlie very 
 highest pitch of comfort, or at the highest pitch of 
 purity and simplicity of life; whereas, by assump- 
 tion, Godwin's imaginary society is all these. If, 
 therefore, the people of old Europe double their 
 numbers once a century, and the people of new 
 America (at least in the United States) once in 
 twenty-five years, we may be sure that in the 
 millennial society of Godwin, 
 
 "Where all are proper and well-heliaved, 
 And all are free from sorrow and pain," 
 
 the increase would be much faster. The "leisure" 
 he talks of would soon disappear, and the old scramble 
 for bread, the old inequality of rank and property, 
 would again become the order of the day. We should 
 have our own kind of society back again, with its 
 masters and servants, landlords and tenants, rich and 
 poor. ^ 
 
 Therefore (argues the writer of the essay) if 
 Godwin's society were once made it could not last. 
 But we grant too much in supposing it could ever 
 be made. We cannot believe this and believe in the 
 second postulate at the same time ; and the second 
 postulate is so certain that we can predict by it. 
 The same causes, then, that would have destroyed 
 Godwin's newly-formed society will prevent it from 
 ever being formed at all. " The passion between 
 the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly 
 the same that it may always be considered, in 
 
 1 1st ed., pp. 20, 173, &c., 7tli ed., Book III. cli. ii. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 19 
 
 algebraic language, as a given quantity."* In spite 
 of tlie whimpering of old men and roues, "the 
 pleasures of pure love will bear the contemplation 
 of the most improved reason and the most exalted 
 virtue." U Godwin views the matter in a dry, intel- 
 lectual light, and asks us to abstract from all acces- 
 sories before we form an estimate of the passion in 
 question. One man or one woman will then be as 
 good as another. But he might as well tell us to 
 strip off all the leaves before we estimate our liking 
 for trees. We do not admire the bare pole, but the 
 whole tree, the tree with all the " attendant circum- 
 stances" of branches and foliage. As well deprive 
 a magnet of its chief powers of attraction, and then 
 ask us to confess it as weak as other minerals.^ Tbe 
 fact is, that man's large discourse, which marks him 
 out from the brutes, makes him hide the marriage 
 instinct under a mass of " attendant circumstances " 
 before he lets himself be drawn by it. He will not 
 obey the instinct simply more ferce, or in animal 
 fashion, because he feels it. But it is not destroyed, 
 only disguised. The love is not purely intellectual. 
 Keason, with its calculation of consequences, can 
 save a man from the abuse of a passion, but cannot 
 destroy the passion itself;* and (he might have 
 added) its " looking before and after " includes fancy 
 as well as thought. Take this passion then as it 
 is, an adoration it may be of an assemblage of acces- 
 sories ; it can never die out of the world. 
 
 1 1st ed., p. 128 ; cf. p. 210. ^ jj^^j p 211. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 215. ' IbO.. p. 215. 
 
 C 2 
 
,20. 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. I. 
 
 From this cheerful premise, what conclusion 
 follows? One not altogether cheerful: Wherever^ 
 Providence sends meat He will send mouths.] 
 Wherever the people have room and food, they will - 
 marry and multiply their numbers, till they press! 
 against the limits of both, and begin a fierce struggle^ 
 for existence, in which death is the punishment of 
 defeat. Godwin and the whole French school are 
 sadly wrong in attributing all inequality to human 
 institutions ; human nature is to blame, and, without 
 any artificial aid, this one passion of human nature 
 will be the standing cause of inequality, the most 
 serious obstacle to the removal of it.-' Dr. Robert 
 Wallace had more wisdom than he wot of. 
 
 Examine the meaning of this argument and its 
 conclusion. It involves an answer to Godwin's first 
 defence against Wallac|» Here is something very 
 like a law of nature, a truth past, present, and future, 
 or, in other words, a truth which, being scientific, 
 ought not to be stated in terms of time at all; 
 " Where goods increase, they are increased that eat 
 them." The "struggle for existence" (Malthus uses 
 the very phrase) is a present fact, as it has been a 
 past fact, and will be a future. , No good is gained 
 by rhetorical references to the A^'ideness of the world 
 and the possibilities of the a^es.^ In our own day 
 and land we see people multij)lying up to the limit of 
 the food, and a " great res'trictive law " preventing 
 
 1 1st ed., p. 17 ; cf. pp. 47-8. 
 
 = Even Comte, who reproves economists for saying that difficulties 
 riprht themselves in the "long run," thinks that this particular difficulty 
 will only occur there. (Pos. Phil, ii. 128 (tr.) ; cf. p. 54.) 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1793. 21 
 
 «. 
 
 them, as it prevents all otlier animals, from multiply- 
 ing beyond that limit.'' Iq our own day and country, 
 men marry when they cannot support a family ; the 
 children whom they cannot support die of hunger or 
 sickness, if the charity of the public does not interfere ; 
 — or else the fear of misery makes men avoid a mar- 
 riage for which they have not the means, and their 
 celibacy, whether pure or impure, keeps the numbers 
 of the people on a level with the food.^ Godwin 
 himself had written in so many words : " There is a 
 principle in humaa society by which population is 
 perpetually kept down to the level of the means of 
 subsistence." ^ Why did he not take one step more, 
 and discover what that principle is ? * 
 
 The fact is that Godwin was at once intellectually 
 sanguine and emotionally cold, His ideal would 
 have been a man " of large brain and no affections ; " 
 and when he wrote the Political Justice he was not 
 aware of his own defect. At a later time he was not 
 only aware of it, but anxious to remove it. In his 
 Memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft (1798), and 
 in the story of 81. Leon (17'99), the man who found 
 the philosopher's stone, and became, to his own 
 sorrow, immortal on earth, he confesses that he has 
 hitherto taken too little thought of feeling as an 
 element in human action. If Mary had been too 
 much of a AVerther, her husband had been too little. 
 
 1 1st ed., pp. 15, 16. 2 jjici. pp. 19^ 62—66. 
 
 3 Pol. Just, VIII. iii. 466. 
 
 « Essay, Ist ed., pp. 175-6, 193 ; 7th ed., pp. 272, 277. Cf. Gibbon, 
 ch. L., quoted in Essay, 2ud ed., p. 94 ; 7th ed., p. 65 : "The measure 
 of population is regulated by the means of subsistence." 
 
22 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 / 
 
 Like Conclorcet (cand like Buckle), he had believed 
 civilization to be a purely intellectual movement. 
 He had dogmatized on the omnipotence of trutli 
 and reason, and inferred the growth of a perfect 
 society. He had dogmatized on the development of 
 intellect, and inferred an earthly immortality. More- 
 over, in the Memoir, and in St. Leon, if he had 
 added a little to his doctrines, he had recanted little 
 or nothing, even in regard to immortality. 
 
 St. Leon is miserable only because his gift is 
 peculiar to himself; an immortality that is common 
 to all would be acceptable to all. A Methuselali 
 would not be melancholy among antediluvians. Such 
 was probably Godwin's position. The mere belief 
 \ in the possibility of earthly immortality was not 
 uncommon ; Godwin is carefal to number Bacon 
 among its supporters.^ Malthus was probably riglit 
 in tracing it to the unconscious influence of Christi- 
 anity,^ though the progress in Godwin's days of the 
 new science of chemistry had perhaps more to do 
 with it, and Godwin's religion was never more than 
 a bare Theism.^ It was held by Holcroft, one of 
 Godwin's most intimate friends,* and it was an 
 important part of Condorcet's Sketch of the Proffress 
 of the Human Sjnrit. 
 
 In the days of the Terror (1794) Condorcet, from 
 his hiding-place in the Rue Servandoni, had written 
 of the " organic perfectibility of man." He looked 
 
 1 Pol. Just., Book VIII. ch. ix. p. 520 n. (3rd ed.). 
 
 '' Essay, 1st ed., pp. 240-1. 
 
 =< Due to Coleridge. See Godwin's Life, i. 357. * Ibid. i. 25. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 23 
 
 to medicine, and to the arts and sciences in general, 
 to banish disease and prolong human life "indefi- 
 nitely."^ Godwin trusted to the inward development., 
 of the mind, not to outward appliances.^ But by ' 
 different ways they arrive at the same terminus, and 
 receive from their great critic very much the same 
 reception there. Malthus points out to Godwin that 
 there is no sign that the body is becoming subjugated 
 to the mind. Even philosophers, said he (and he 
 wrote feelingly, as he had the malady at the time of 
 writing), cannot endure the toothache patiently,' and 
 even a merry heart will not enable a weak man to 
 walk as fast and as far as a strong man. There 
 is no change in the human body, and little or no 
 change in the relation of the mind to it. To Con- 
 dorcet he simply points out that, while the arts have 
 made the lengthening of life ' ' indefinite," that does 
 not mean " infinite." Gardeners can grow carnations 
 " indefinitely " large ; no man can ever say that he 
 has seen the largest carnation that will ever be 
 grown ; but this he can say, that a carnation will 
 never be as large as a cabbage. The limit is there, 
 though it is undefined, and there is a limit also to 
 the lengthening of human life, though no one can 
 fix it to a year. Condorcet therefore has proved an 
 earthly immortality only by a misuse of the word 
 " indefinite." He has shown no organic change in 
 man which would prove the possibility of perfection 
 
 ' Esquisse d'un tablemi historique des progrh de V esprit Jiumain (3rd 
 ed., 1797), pp. 384 seq. 
 2 Political Justice, VIII. ix. 520 n. ^ :Essay, 1st ed., p. 227. 
 
24 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 in this world. Neither has Condorcet repelled the 
 objection which troubled Dr. Wallace. It is true 
 that, like Godwin, he faces the dilliculty and admits 
 the importance of it.^ The growth of population 
 will always, he says, cause inequality ; there will 
 always be a rich leisured class and a poor industrial 
 class ; and to lighten the hardships of the latter 
 there ought to be a State Insurance fund, which 
 will make all the poorest citizens sure of support. 
 But one cannot help thinking, if all are sure of 
 support, all will marry, and if all marry, will not 
 the difficulty be increased 'i ^ Yes, Condorcet grants 
 this ; the numbers will soon be too great, and so 
 throughout the ages there will be an "oscillation" 
 between the blessings of progress and the evils of 
 overcrowding, now the one predominating, now the 
 other. In despair he clutches at the old fallacy, 
 "the day is distant," but he feels it fail -him, and 
 must needs add a new and startling solution of his 
 own which Malthus freely denounces.' This is not 
 the place to discuss the questions associated in our 
 own times with Neo-Malthusianism.* But it is 
 beyond all doubt that the Neo-Malthusians are the 
 children not of Eobert Malthus, but of Robert Owen. 
 Malthus was not Malthus because he said, " The 
 people are too many ; thin them doMm " — any more 
 than Darwin was Darwin because he said, " Species 
 
 1 Esquisse, pp. 362 seq. 2 Essay, 1st ed., pp. 146, 150. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 154 ; Condorcet, Esquisse, pp. 364—373. 
 
 ' The locus classicus in Malthus is Essay, Append, (of 1817) p. 512 • 
 cf. III. iii. 286, IV. xiii. 474. The pages are those of the 7th edition 
 (Reeves and Turner), a reprint of the 6th. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 25 
 
 are not made, but grow." If Darwinians are to be 
 judged by Darwin, Malthusians must be judged by 
 Mcilthus ; and the originality of neither Malthus nor 
 Darwin can be explained by a single phrase. We 
 cannot understand the meaning of an author's words, 
 far less of his work, till we know tbe context in whicb 
 they are set. Once know the context and wo under- 
 stand the text. The devil, citing Scripture for his 
 purpose, only succeeds because he never quotes in full. 
 
 It follows that, to understand the full meaning 
 of the essay, we must go beyond its efficient cause, 
 and take a view of its material cause, or the whole 
 circumstances in which it was written. If the text 
 of the sermon was Godwin and Condorcet, the 
 application was to the poor of England and the 
 philanthropists who were trying to relieve thenLT* 
 
 The early life of Malthus, coinciding, as it largely 
 does, with the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 coincides with England's greatest industrial revolution. 
 Malthus was born in 1766, three years after the Peace 
 of Paris. There was an end, for the time, to foreign 
 wars, and trade was making a brave start. The 
 discoveries of coal and iron in Northern England, 
 going hand in hand with the inventions of cotton- 
 spinning and weaving, were beginning to convert the 
 poorest counties into the richest, upsetting the 
 political balance. The new science of chemistry had 
 begun to prove its usefulness. Wedgwood was per- 
 fecting his earthenware, Brindley cutting his canals, 
 Telford laying out his roads. Watt building his steam- 
 engines. England in Koman days had been a granary ; 
 
26 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 in later ages alie had been a pasture-ground ; slie was 
 now becoming the land of machinery and manufacture, 
 as well as the centre of foreign trade. In other words, 
 she had begun an industrial change, which was the 
 greatest till then in her history, and rich in the most 
 magical improvements. But in the early stages of 
 the change, the evils of it were nearly as much felt 
 as the blessings. The sufferings of displaced workmen, 
 and the anarchy of the new factory system, supplant- 
 ing home labour, and making the word "manu- 
 facturer" forget its etymology,^ were real evils, 
 however transient. Combined with the general 
 democratic influence of an expansive manufacturing 
 industry, they might easily have caused a social 
 convulsion in these days of no extraordinary virtue ; 
 and the country owed its escape in some degree to 
 the evangelical movement under Whitefield and the 
 Wesleys, which was fatal at once to religious torpor 
 and to political excitement.^ The annoyances of a 
 meddlesome tariff and the futile attempts to exclude 
 foreign food were to vanish away before a hundred 
 years had passed ; but in the boyhood of Malthus 
 the voice of Adam Smith raised against them in the 
 Wealth of Nations (1776) was a cry in the wilderness. 
 There was a general agreement that, whether the high 
 prices prevailing after the Peace of Paris were caused 
 by the growth of the population, or by the lessened 
 value of silver, or by the troubles in Poland, the 
 
 1 Malthns sometimes uses the ■word in tlie earlier sense, and Adam 
 Smith seldom in the later. 
 
 2 Leeky, Mist, of Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 638. 
 
CHAP. I.] riEST THOUGHTS, 1798. 27 
 
 remedy was not to lie in a free corn trade. The poor 
 were not to have cheap corn, they were to have large 
 allowances. Legislation had gone backwards in this 
 matter. In 1723 a new law had introduced a wise 
 workhouse test of destitution, which might have pre- 
 vented wilful poverty by reducing out-door relief; but 
 the clause was repealed by Gilbert's Act in 1782 ; the 
 poor were to be " set on work" at their own houses ; 
 and the new stringency gave place to the old laxity, 
 with the usual results. The close of the century saw 
 the troubles of a European war added to the list, and 
 the tide of political reform ebbed for forty years 
 (1792 — 1832). Because the French reform had gone 
 Itoo far, the English reform was not allowed to take 
 Uts first steps. 
 
 It is a commonplace with historians that the French 
 Eevolution would have been very different without 
 Voltaire and Rousseau to prepare the way for it. 
 ,|Junger and new ideas are two advocates of change 
 which always plead best in each other's company ; 
 hunger makes men willing to act, and the new ideas 
 give them matter for enactment.7;^^ In France, when 
 the crisis came in 1789, the new ideas were not far 
 to seek. Writers of Utopias, from Plato to More, 
 and from Eousseau to Ruskin, have always adopted 
 one simple plan : they have struck out the salient 
 enormities of their own time and inserted the 
 opposite, as when men imagine heaven they think 
 of their dear native country with its discomforts left 
 out. Inequality at home had made Frenchmen ready 
 to dote on a vision of equality when Eousseau 
 
28 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 presented it to them, and the state of Nature was 
 the state of France reversed. Philosophically, the 
 theorists of the Revolution traced their descent to 
 Locke, and their ideas were not long in recrossing the 
 Channel to visit their birthplace. 
 
 Even if Enoiishmen had not had in America a 
 visible Utopia, or, at least, Arcadia, there was hunger 
 enough in Ena;land to recommend the new ideas to 
 every rank in society. This is the reason why, in 
 1793, Godwin's book was so successful. It was not 
 only a good English statement of the French doctrines 
 of equality, and therefore a book for the times, but 
 it had a vigour of its own, and was no mere transla- 
 tion. Rousseau and Raynal had thought it necessary 
 to sacrifice universal improvement to universal 
 equality ; they saw (or thought they saw) that the 
 two could not go together, and they counted equality 
 so desirable that they were willing to purchase it at 
 the expense of barbarism. Now, they were perhaps 
 more logical than Godwin ; equality may mean bar- 
 barism. But Godwin's ideal was at least higher than 
 theirs ; he thought of civilization and equality as 
 quite compatible, for he thought that when all men 
 were truly civilized they would of their own accord 
 restore equality. As he left everything to reason and 
 nothing to force, his book was in theory quite harm- 
 less ; but the tendency of it seemed dangerous, for it 
 criticized the British constitution in a free way to 
 which the British nation was not accustomed. In 
 England, moreover, the people have' always confounded 
 ideas with persons. They were not in love with 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 29 
 
 liberty when it took the form of an American " War 
 of Independence" against England, and, even if 
 equality had pleased them in 1789, they would have 
 nothing of it after the Terror. They forsook Fox for 
 Burke, and went to war for a sentiment. At the 
 time when Malthus wrote, the bulk of the English 
 people had lost their enthusiasm for the new ideas. 
 It needed some fortitude to call oneself a Reformer, 
 or even a Whig, when Napoleon had overrun Italy 
 iand was facing us in Egypt. Pitt held all persons 
 seditious who did not believe in the wisdom of the war. 
 But even Pitt, though he now ignored the need of 
 reform, could not overlook the existence of distress. 
 In 1795 there had been a serious .scarcity; war prices 
 had become famine prices. It was the year when 
 " the lower oi'ders " were held down by special coer- 
 cion acts ; ^ it was the year when the king's carriage 
 was stopped by a mob crying " Bread, bread ! " Mr. 
 Whitbread and the rest thouo-ht Parliament ou2;ht to 
 "do something"; and Pitt proposed (1796) to meet 
 the difficulty by amending the Poor Laws. His 
 bill proposed " to restore the original purity of the 
 Poor Laws " by modifying the law of settlement in 
 the direction of greater freedom, and by assisting the 
 working man in other ways. One of these other 
 ways was an attempt of a harmless kind to found 
 schools of industry, another to attach every labourer 
 to a friendly society. But another less innocently 
 proposed to encourage the growth of population by 
 making the poor relief greater where the family was 
 
 ' Cf. Godwin, pref. to Pol. Just. 
 
30 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 larger. "Let us make relief," in such cases, "a 
 matter of right and honour, instead of a ground for 
 opprobrium and contempt. This will make a large 
 family a blessing and not a curse ; and this will 
 draw a proper line of distinction between those who 
 are to provide for themselves by their labour, and 
 those who, after enriching their country with a 
 number of children, have a claim upon its assistance 
 for their support." ^ 
 
 Malthus in 1796 did not doubt the inftiUibility of 
 Pitt in such a matter ; The Crisis gives no hint of 
 objection. But in 1798, with his new light, he could 
 no longer take the recruiting officer's view of popula- 
 tion. If he had had a good case against Godwin and 
 Condorcet, who had simply failed to show how popu- 
 lation could be kept from growing too fast, he had 
 still a better case against Pitt, who proposed to make 
 it grow faster. Besides, their schemes were merely 
 on paper ; they had no chance of realizing them, 
 whereas Pitt's majority would carry any measure on 
 which he had set his heart. The danger from this 
 third quarter was therefore the most imminent. But 
 Malthus needed no new argument for it ; he needed 
 simply to shift round his old argument, and point the 
 muzzle of it at his new enemy. There is no need, he 
 said, to encourage marriage ; there is no need for 
 Government to make population grow faster. Wher- 
 ever Providence has sent meat, He will soon send 
 
 ' Hansard, Pari. Hist, vol. xxxiii. pp. Y03 seq., Feb 12, 1Y96 ; cf. vol. 
 xxxii. pp. 687 seg. The " Speenhamland Act of Parliament " was really 
 an act of the Berkshire magistrates (1795), but had been widely imitated, 
 and had certainly prepared the way for Pitt's bill. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 31 
 
 moutlis to eat it ; and, if bj your artificial encourage- 
 ments you increase the mouths without increasing the 
 meat, you will only bring the people one step nearer 
 starvation, you will only multiply the nation without 
 increasing the joy. If stalwart numbers are strength, 
 starving numbers are weakness.^ 
 
 These commonplaces were then a paradox. Even 
 at the end of the eighteenth century there was no 
 party in the English House of Commons identified 
 with enlightened views on the position of the British 
 workman. Whitbread. had always some measure on 
 hand for helping the labourer out of the rates, or by 
 some other State interference ; it was in opposing 
 one of Whitbread's bills that the Prime Minister 
 promised to introduce his own memorable measure. 
 Fox was free to follow either, not professing to under- 
 stand the new economical doctrines. Pitt, who 
 admired Adam Smith, — Fox, Condorcet, and Godwin, 
 who owed Smith no allegiance,^ — -all were equally 
 purblind in this matter. All Pitt's study of the 
 fourth book of the Wealth of Nations, chapter fifth, 
 had not shown him the fallacy of a bounty on 
 children. Yet Malthus had got his light from no 
 obscure sources, but from " Hume, Wallace, Adam 
 Smith, and Dr. Price," ' who were all well-known and 
 widely-read authors of the day. " The populousness 
 of ancient nations" had been a happy hunting-ground 
 for learned antiquarian essay writers over half a 
 
 1 Cf. Essay, 7th ed., I. vii. p. 65 ; 1st ed., pp. 94, 95, &o. 
 =i Godwin, Pol. Just., VIII. viii. 508 (3rd ed.). 
 
 2 Prefiice to Essay, 2iid ed. 
 
32 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 century. Montesquieu, Wallace, and Price ^ claimed 
 the advantage for the ancients. David Hume, with 
 his usual acute divination, decides for the moderns, 
 though with his usual irony he professes to adopt a 
 sceptical conclusion, and makes several concessions 
 to Wallace.^ This controversy itself might have been 
 expected to bring men nearer to the truth on the 
 subject of population than it actually did. It was 
 left to Malthus to convert Hume's probability into 
 a certainty from a higher vantage-ground ; but the 
 sifting of the arguments by the various writers 
 before him must have simplified his task.^ Other 
 aids and anticipations were not wanting. As early 
 as 1786, Joseph Townsend, the Wiltshire rector, 
 had written a Dissertation on the Poor Laws, which 
 gives an admirable statement of those wise views of 
 charity and poor relief that are only in these latter 
 days becoming current among us. Malthus records 
 his opinion of Townsend's work in the best of all 
 possible ways. From his careful inquiry (in the 
 second edition of the Ussaj/) into the population of 
 European countries, he omits Spain on the ground 
 that Mr. Townsend's Travels in Spain has already 
 done the work for him.* 
 
 The Essay on Population was therefore not original 
 in the sense of being a creation out of nothing, but 
 in the same way as the Wealth of Nations. In both 
 
 1 By ir.i plication. See below, Book I. ch. vii. p. 175. 
 
 2 Moral mid Political Essays, Vol. I., Essay XI., Of the Populousness 
 of Ancient Nations (ed. 1768), written in 1752. 
 
 3 So even Sir James Steuart, Vol. I. Pol. Econ., ch. iii. p. 22 (ed. 1805), 
 might have helped him. Steuart wrote in 1767. 
 
 * Essay, Book II. ch. vi. ; 7th ed., p. 184. 
 
CHAP. I.] PIRST THOUGHTS, 1Y98. 33 
 
 cases tlie author got most of his phrases, and even 
 many of his thoughts, from his predecessors ; but 
 he treated them as his predecessors were unable to 
 do ; he saw them in their connection, perspective, 
 and wide bearings. ''■■' We must not assume antici- 
 pation where there is mere identity of language or 
 partial identity of thought ; the words of an earlier 
 ' writer are not unfrequently quoted by a later away 
 from their logical context, and therefore not as part 
 of an argument of which the writer sees the conse- 
 cutive premises. This is true of Adam Smith when he 
 is compared with Sir Dudley North, Abraham Tucker, 
 or the other prophets of free trade ■^ catalogued 
 by MacCuUoch or Blanqui. They talked free trade 
 almost as Mons. Jourdain talked prose, without know- 
 ing it. Precisely the same is true of Adam Smith 
 himself in relation to Malthus. Of his own general- 
 izations he is complete master. Having reasoned up 
 to them, he can reason down from them. But, when 
 he says, " Every species of animals naturally multiplies ^^ 
 in proportion to the means of their subsistence," j 
 " The demand for men necessarily regulates the pro- 
 duction of men,"^ he has not anticipated Malthus.' 
 His phrases are touching a principle of which he does 
 not see the most important bearings ; and not having 
 reasoned up to it, he makes hardly any attempt to 
 reason down from it. Malthus, on the other hand, 
 
 1 Buckle would include Voltaire. See Civil, in Europe, ii. 304 n. 
 
 2 Wealth of Nations, I. viii. 36, 2 (MacCiiUocli's ed.). These passages 
 are said to have suggested to Malthus the idea of his essay. The article . 
 on Population in Edin. Beview, Aug. 1810, possibly written by Malthus 
 himself, bears out this view. 
 
 / D 
 
34 MALTPIUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 has taken fast hold of a general principle, and is able 
 to solve a number of dependent questions in the way 
 of simple corollaries. Others may have given right 
 answers to the special questions about the Poor Law 
 and the populousness of ancient nations. Malthus is 
 the first to show one comprehensive reason why all 
 these answers must be right. 
 
 This was the secret of his success. As Godwin's 
 Political Justice was successful because systematic, 
 the Essay on Populatioji was successful because it 
 seemed to put chaos in order. The very sadness of 
 his conclusion had a charm for some minds ; but the 
 bulk of his readers did not love him for taking their 
 hopes away, they loved him for giving them new 
 light. Pestilence and famine begin to lose their 
 vague terrors when we know whence they come and 
 what they do for the world. Even if the desire of 
 marriage is itself an evil, it is well to know the truth 
 about it. Ignorance can only be blissful where it id 
 total ; and M'ilful ignorance, being of necessity partial, 
 is a perpetual unrest, not even a fool's paradise. ^_ 
 
 The truth in this case was not all sadness. In the 
 last portion of the essay of 1798 Malthus expounds 
 an argument which he afterwards reproduced in 
 later editions with a more terrestrial application. 
 He uses the style of Paley and the Apologists, and 
 he tries to discover the final cause of the prin- 
 ciple of population, on metaphysical lines that 
 were followed by Mr. Sumner nearly twenty years 
 afterwards, when the discussion had taken a new 
 
 1 Compare Essay, Appendix (to 3rd ed., 1807), 7tli ed., p. 507. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 35 
 
 turn.i The question is how to reconcile the suffering 
 produced by the principle of population with the 
 goodness of God. Malthus answers that the difficulty 
 is only one part of the general problem of evil, the 
 difference between this part and the rest being that 
 in this case we see farther into the causes ; and it is 
 therefore the easier for us to justify the ways of God 
 to man. "Evil exists not to create despair but 
 activity." ^ We ought not to reason from God to 
 nature, but from nature to God; to know how God 
 works, let us observe how nature works. We shall then 
 find that nature sends all sentient creatures through 
 a long and painful process, by which they gain new 
 qualities and powers, presumably fitting them for 
 a better place than they have in this world. This 
 world and this life are therefore in all probability 
 " the mighty process of God," not indeed for the mere 
 " probation " of man (for that would imply that his 
 Maker was suspicious of him, or ignorant of what was 
 in him), but for the " creation and formation " of 
 the human mind out of the torpor and corruption of 
 dead matter,^ "to sublimate the dust of the earth 
 into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of 
 clay." The varied influences of life are the forming 
 hand of the Creator, and they are infinitely diverse, 
 for (in spite of Solomon), there is nothing old under 
 the sun.* Difficulties generate talents.^ " The first 
 
 1 Records of Oreation, 1816. ^ 1st ed., p. 395. 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 353. This anl mncli else were prjbably suggested by 
 Tucker, Light of Nature, Theology, ch. xix. (especially § 20). Cf. 
 below. Book III. 
 
 * Essay, 1st ed., p. 381. ^ Ibid. p. 371. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 awakeners of the mind are tlie wants of the body ; " 
 it is these that rouse the intellect of the infant and 
 sharpen the wits of the savage. Not leisure but 
 necessity is the mother of invention : 
 
 Locke was right ; the desire to avoid pain is even 
 stronger than the desire to find pleasure. In this 
 way evil leads to good ; for pain, which is a kind of 
 evil, creates effort, and effort creates mind. This is 
 the general rule. A particular example of it is, that 
 want of food, which is one of the most serious of 
 evils, leads to good. By contriving that the earth 
 shall produce food only in small quantities, and in 
 reward of labour, God has provided a perpetual spur 
 to human progress. This is the key to the puzzle 
 of population. | By nature man is a lotos-eater till 
 hunger makes him a Ulysses. ^ Why should he toil, 
 the roof and crown of things ? Mainly because, if he 
 does not toil, neither can he live ; the lotos country 
 will soon be overpeopled, and he must push off his 
 bark again. " The first awakeners of the mind are 
 the wants of the body," though, once awakened, the 
 mind soon finds out wants beyond the body, and the 
 devolopment of intellect and civilization goes on 
 indefinitely.^ The people "tend to increase'' more 
 quickly than their food, not in order that men may 
 suffer, but in order that they may be roused to save 
 
 1 Cf. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 65 ; later editions, I. vi. (beginning), where he 
 Bays that sloth is the natural state of man, and his activity is due in the 
 first instance to th™ " strong goad of necessity," though it may be kept 
 up afterwards by habit, the spirit of enterprise, and the thirst for glory. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 37 
 
 themselves from suffering. The partial ill of all 
 such general laws is swallowed up in the general 
 good ; and the general good is secured in two ways : 
 humanity is developed ; the resources of the world 
 are developed. In the first place, the intellect of 
 individual men is developed, for the constancy of 
 nature id the foundation of reasoning, and human 
 reason would never be drawn out unless men were 
 absolutely unable to depend on miracles, and were 
 obliged as well as able to make calculations on the 
 basis of a constant law. To this constancy of nature 
 we owe the immortal mind of a Newton. In the second 
 place, the world must be peopled. If savages could 
 have got all their food from one central spot of fertile 
 ground, the earth at large would have remained 
 a wilderness ; but, as it is, no one settlement can 
 support an indefinite increase of numbers ; the 
 numbers must spread out over the earth till they 
 find room and food. If there were no law of in- 
 crease, a few such careers as Alexander's or Tamer- 
 Iain's might unpeople the whole world ; but the law 
 exists, and the gaps made by any conqueror, or by any 
 pestilence, are soon filled to overflowing, while the 
 overflowing flood passes on to reclaim new countries.^ 
 This is the cosmology of Malthus. " Life is, 
 generally speaking, a blessing independent of a future 
 state." ^ " The impressions and excitements of this 
 world are the instruments with which the Supreme 
 
 1 1st ed., pp. 360 — 366. For the replenishment of the gap made by 
 the Great Plague of 1348, see Prof. Eogers, Six Centuries of Work and 
 Wages (1884), p. 226. 2 igt ed., p. 391. 
 
38 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 Being forms matter into mind." The necessity of con- 
 stant exertion, to avoid evil, and pursue good, is the 
 principal spring of these impressions, and is therefore 
 a sufficient reason for the existence of natural and 
 moral evil, including the difficulties which arise from 
 the principle of population. All these are present 
 difficulties, but they are not beyond remedy. They 
 do not serve their purpose unless human exertion 
 succeeds in diminishing them. Absolute removal 
 Malthus does not promise ; but, while believing in 
 science and reason as strongly as Condorcet or 
 Godwin, declines to regard an earthly immortality as 
 a reasonable hope, and points us instead to a future life 
 and to another world for perfection and happiness.-^ 
 
 Perhaps the great economist went beyond his pro- 
 vince in attacking the problem of evil. In the 
 controversy that followed the essay there are few 
 references to this part of it, and after the appearance 
 of the second edition, where this part is omitted 
 altogether, people forgot the existence of the first 
 edition. From the way in which Sumner speaks of 
 the difference between his point of view and that 
 of Malthus, it might fairly be suspected that he 
 knew nothing of the first edition ; and yet the 
 second of his two learned volumes is simply an 
 expansion of its ideas. ^ The metaphysic itself might 
 
 1 1st ed., pp. 394-6 ; cf. pp. 241-6. Compare Mr. Henry George's epi- 
 logue to Progress and Poverty. It is right to remember that this passage 
 of Malthus was written two years before Paley's Natural Theology, 
 though four years after his Evidences of Christianity, and many 
 more after the Moral and Political Philosophy. 
 
 2 B. ofCr., vol. ii. 103. 
 
CHAP. I.] FIEST THOUGHTS, 1798. 30 
 
 be deep or shallow ; it would be impossible to tell 
 till we heard the sense in which the metaphysical 
 phrases were used, and that we have hardly any 
 means of doing. They point at least to the 
 " monistic " view, that there is no gulf between mind 
 and matter. We might believe them idealistic in a 
 German sense ; but we caimot forget how closely the 
 ethical views of Malthus are connected with those of 
 the English moralists of his century. He cannot be 
 said to have a place in the history of philosophy ; 
 and it is mainly of a curious personal interest to 
 discover that, although he is nominally a utilita- 
 rian, he separates himself from Paley by refusing to 
 allow moral value to action done from either fear of 
 punishment or hope of reward.^ There is no indica- 
 tion that he was a metaphysical genius. His 
 researches in the heavier German literature did not 
 perhaps extend much farther than to the quaint 
 optimist Johann Peter Siissmilch,^ from whose 
 Gottliche Ordnung he freely drew his statistics. 
 
 Malthus at , one time intended to expound his 
 metaphysical views at greater length.' In other 
 words, he meant to write a book in the manner of 
 Price's essays, half economical and half literary. We 
 need not deeply regret the " particular business," 
 whatever it was, that nipped this intention in the 
 bud, besides delaying the publication of the essay as 
 we now have it.* The metaphysical and theological 
 
 1 £ssai/, 1st ed., p. 387. ' See below. Book I. cL v. 
 
 ^ DM. p. 356 note. 
 
 * I. c. He is ready with a similar excuse in the tract on the Measitre 
 of Value, p. 61. Where there is no will there is no way. 
 
40 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 passages, as they stand, liave the look of an episode, 
 though the thought of them is logically enough con- 
 nected with the tenor of the book. The views of 
 the author on the other world, the punishment of 
 the wicked, and the use of miracles, have, like the 
 philosophy, mainly a personal interest. Adam Smith, 
 in the later edition of his Moral Sentiments, had 
 omitted at least one very marked expression of theo- 
 logical opinion (on the Atonement) that had appeared 
 in the first edition,^ and perhaps his disciple did 
 well to follow suit. At the same time, omission is 
 not recantation, and we get light on an author's 
 mind and character by discovering any views in which 
 he once professed to believe. A writer who reached 
 absolute truth at a very early stage of study, has 
 patronized Adam Smith ^ by editing his chief work, 
 and honoured the other economists by tabulating 
 their conclusions in an historical introduction. He 
 extends this favour to Malthus. The reasonings of 
 Malthus he finds, though valuable, are not free from 
 error ; he has " all but entirely overlooked " the 
 beneficial efi'ects of the principle of population as a 
 stimulus to invention and progress.^ This charge is 
 refuted by the essay even in its later form ; but, 
 placed alongside of the cosmology of the first edition, 
 
 ' Part II. sect. ii. pp. 204-6. 
 
 ' MacCuUooli (J. R.), editor of the Commercial Dictionary, and 
 probably tbe original of Carlyle's Macrowdy. No one could have a 
 proper reverence for the Fathers of Political Economy who perpetually 
 referred to the greatest of them without his distinctive prasnomen. 
 
 ^ Introduction to W. of N., p. lii. So the writer of Progress and 
 Foverty tells us " the doctrine of Malthus did not originally and does not 
 necessarily involve the idea of progression " (Bk. II. ch. i. p. 89, ed. 1881). 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 41 
 
 it seems merely grotesque. Malthus is accused of 
 ignoring the very phenomena which Malthus glori- 
 fies as the " final cause " of the principle of population. 
 He thought he had explained not only one of the 
 chief causes of poverty, but one of the chief efi"ects ; 
 if Adam Smith had shown the power of labour as 
 a cause of wealth, Malthus thought he had shown the 
 power of poverty as a cause of labour. No doubt 
 the mistake was a common one ; and (to say nothing 
 of the encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries) 
 there are few economical text-books which do justice 
 to Malthus in this matter.^ But one who speaks 
 with authority should not be content with a borrowed 
 knowledge. The same authority tells us that " the 
 work of Mr. Malthus is valuable rather for having 
 awakened public attention to the subject than for 
 its giving anything like a complete view of the depart- 
 ment of the science of which it treats." ^ Malthus 
 for his part lays no claim to infallibility ; like most 
 pioneers, he is sure of little beyond his leading 
 principles, and he is never ashamed to change his 
 views.^ But, if his Essay on Population, gradually 
 amended and expanded as it was, to keep pace with 
 the searching criticisms of thirty years, has not 
 reached the heart of the matter, surely there is no 
 profit in discussion. 
 
 ' Bagehot (Econ. Studies, p. 136 seq.), W. R. Greg {Enigmas of Life), 
 and Held (Sociale Oeschtchte Englands) may be acquitted, but tbey are 
 not writers of text-books. 
 
 ^ Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. lii. 
 
 3 See e. g. the tract on the Measure of Value, p. 23, and cf. Pol. Ec. 
 (2nd ed.), p. 234. 
 
42 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 The fact is, that though the anonymous small 8vo 
 of 1798 was a mere draught of the completed work 
 of later years, its main fault was not incompleteness, 
 but wrongness of emphasis. When a man is writing 
 a controversial pamphlet, he does not try to briug 
 all truths into the front equally ; he sets the neg- 
 lected ones in the foreground, and allows the familiar 
 to fall behind, not as denied or ignored, but simply 
 as not emphasized. It is alwayo possible, in such 
 cases, that the neglected truths, though unworthy 
 of the old neglect, did not deserve the new pre-emin- 
 ence, and must not be allowed to retain it. Science, 
 seeking answers to its own questions, and not to 
 questions of the eighteenth century, has no toleration 
 for the false emphasis of passing controversy. It 
 puts the real beginning first, the middle next, and 
 tlie end last, not the end in the middle, or the 
 last first. Accordingly it takes up the first essay 
 of Malthus on population, and requires the author 
 to amend it. He must be less critical and more 
 creative, if he is to give a satisfactory answer to the 
 general problem which he has chosen to take in hand. 
 The times and the subject, both, demand a change of 
 attitude, — the times, because political theories have 
 now become less important than social difficulties, 
 and the subject, because he has hitherto, while clearly 
 explaining the difficulties, done little more than hint 
 at the expedients for overcoming them. True, no 
 critic or iconoclast can ever fully vanquish an opponent 
 except by a truth of his own which goes beyond 
 the opponent's falsity; and it is to this he owes 
 
CHAP. I.] FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. 43 
 
 the enthusiasm of his fullowers. But he does not 
 always expound the truth so fully as the error ; and 
 so, beyond the point of negation, his friends often 
 follow him rather by faith than by sight. This, 
 then, was what Malthus had yet to do ; to state 
 what were the trustworthy as well as the delusive 
 methods of raising modern society, and what were 
 the right as well as the wrong ways of relieving 
 the poor. 
 
 The success of the essay, so far, had been very 
 remarkable. It had provoked replies by the dozen, 
 and an unwilling witness tells us it had converted 
 friends of progress by the hundred.^ We find 
 Godwin writing to the author in August 1798,^ and 
 we may conclude that the veil of anonymousness was 
 not very thick, though Malthus used it again in 1800 
 in the tract on High Prices. In a debate in the 
 House of Commons on the 11th February, 1800, 
 Pitt took occasion to say that, though he still believed 
 his new Poor Bill a good one, he had dropped it in 
 deference to the objections of " those whose opinions 
 he was bound to respect." ^ He meant Bentham and 
 Malthus. We cannot tell which had the greater share 
 of the credit, but we know that Malthus regarded 
 Pitt and Paley as his most brilliant converts.* Pitt's 
 declaration that he still believed his bill to be a good 
 
 1 Godwin's Thoiights on Parr's Sermon, 1801, p. 54 ; of. Godwin's 
 Population (1820), Bk. i. 27. 
 
 2 Godwin's Life, by Kegan Paul, vol. i. 321. 
 ^ Hansard, sub dato, p. 1429. 
 
 * Empson in Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1837, p. 483 ; cf. Essay on Popu- 
 lation, 1th ed. p. 473 n. Empson's authorship of that aiticle appears 
 from Maovey Napier's Correspondence, p. 187. See below, Book V. 
 
44 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. I. 
 
 one could only mean that lie still wished to believe 
 it so. It must have been peculiarly galling to a 
 statesman who affected the political economist to 
 find that not only the solemn criticisms of Malthus, 
 but the jocose "Observations" of Bentham/ which 
 threshed the chaff out of the bill clause by clause, 
 had turned his favourite science against himself. 
 
 1 Works, vol. viii. p. 440. 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 45 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 
 
 Exaggerations of the First Essay — Its two Postulates not co-ordinate — 
 Distinctive feature of the Second Essay — Its moderate Optimism — 
 Eough Classification of Checks — Moral Restraint and Mixed Motives 
 — Freedom as understood by Godwin and by Malthus — The two 
 men contrasted. 
 
 While Malthus was making such converts as Pitt, 
 Paley, and Parr, and when even Godwin acknow- 
 ledged the " writer of the essay " to have made a 
 " valuable addition to political economy," ^ the essay 
 was not beyond criticism. There were some familiar 
 facts of which the writer had taken too little account, 
 and they were impressed on him by his critics from 
 all sides. To use the language of philosophy, he had 
 not been sufficiently concrete ; he had gone far to 
 commit Godwin's fault, and consider one feature of 
 human nature apart by itself, instead of seeing it in 
 its place with the rest. The position and prospects 
 of 'civilized society in our own day depend on a 
 combination of political, intellectual, physical, and 
 moral causes, of which the growth or decrease of 
 population may be only an effect. If we are part 
 
 1 Thoughts on Parvus Sermmi, p. 56. 
 
46 MiiLTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 man, part lion, and part hog, it is not fair to assume 
 the predominance of the hog any more thau the 
 predominance of the man. In a herd of animals, as 
 distinguished from a society of men, the units are 
 simply the fittest who have survived in the struggle 
 for existence. The principle of population is in the 
 foreground there ; there is no check to it but famine, 
 disease, and death. We can therefore understand 
 how the study of the Essay on Population led Charles 
 Darwin to explain the origin of species by a generaliz- 
 ation which Malthus had known and named, though 
 he did not pursue it beyond man.^ The "general 
 struggle " among animals "for room and food" means 
 among civilized men something very like free trade, 
 the old orthodox economical panacea for economic 
 evils.; and the essayist agrees with Adam Smith in 
 a general' resistance to legislative interference. Bad 
 as are the eflfects of the irremovable causes of poverty, 
 interference makes them still worse. But at least, 
 when we come to man, the struggle is not so cruel. 
 " Plague take the hindmost " is not the only or the 
 supreme rule. If the fear of starvation, the most 
 earthly and least intellectual of all motives, is needed 
 to force ns to work at first, it need not therefore be 
 necessary ever afterwards. The baser considerations 
 are by their definition the lowest layers of our pile ; 
 we rise by means of them, but we tread them down, 
 and the higher the pile the less their importance. 
 Within civilized countries, in proportion to their 
 
 1 Essay, 1st ed., pp. 17, 47, 48 ; Origin of Species, ch. iii. p. 50. 
 Hence Sir Chas. Lyell even denies the originality of Darwin and 
 Wallace (Antiauitv of Man. ch. xxi. T). 4.'ifiV 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 47 
 
 civilization, the struggle in the lowest stages is 
 abolished ; the weakest are often saved, and the 
 lowest raised, in spite of unfitness.^ View man not 
 as an animal, but as a citizen ; view the principle 
 of population as checked not only by vice, misery, 
 and the fear of them, but by all the mixed motives 
 of human society, and we recognize that Malthus, 
 with the best intentions, had treated the matter too 
 abstractly. Godwin had over-rated the power of 
 reason, Malthus the power of passion. " It is pro- 
 bable," he wrote at a later time, " that, having found 
 the bow bent too much one way, I was induced to 
 bend it too much the other, in order to make it 
 straight." ^ The abstract principle of increase getting 
 more, and concrete humanity less, than justice, the 
 next step was, naturally, to deny the possibility of 
 permanent improvement in this world, and to regard 
 every partial improvement as a labour of Sisyphus.^ 
 
 It could hardly be otherwise, if we began, like 
 Malthus, by setting down the desire of food and the 
 desire of marriage as two co-ordinate principles.^ 
 They are not really co-ordinate. It is true not merely 
 
 ' Cf. A. R. "Wallace, ConU-ibutions to Theory of Natural Selection, 
 and the disenssions raised thereupon, 1868. See also JEssays in Philo- 
 sophical Criticism (1883), Essay VIII., The Struggle for Existence, in 
 which some of the mixed motives are further described. 
 
 2 Appendix to 5th ed., 1817 ; 7th ed., p. 526. Cf. Bacon (Essay 
 XXXVIII.), " to bend nature like a wand to a contrary extreme where- 
 by to set it aright." Adam Smith had used the simile of a bent stick 
 to describe the reaction of the French Economists against the Mercantile 
 theorists {Wealth of Nations, TV. ix. 300). 
 
 ' Essay, 1st ed., p. 367. Cf. Senior's Lectures on Population, p. 79, 
 and p. 75, where he compares such progress to the exploits of the snail 
 which every day climbed up a wall four feet and fell back three. 
 
 * Essay, 1st ed., p. 10. 
 
48 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 of most men, but of all men without a single exception, 
 that they cannot live without food. Even if a man 
 survive an abstinence from solid food for forty days, 
 he cannot deny himself water, and he is for all useful 
 purposes dead to the world during his fast. The 
 second postulate of the first essay is, on the contrary, 
 true only of most men, and even then under qualifi- 
 cations. It is not true of any till manhood, and it 
 is not true of all men equally. Some are beyond its 
 scope by an accident of birth, and a still larger 
 number, whether priests or laymen, put themselves 
 beyond its scope for moral reasons.^ Coleridge puts 
 the case pertinently enough : " The whole case is this : 
 Are they both alike passions of physical necessity, 
 and the one equally with the other independent 
 of the reason and the will ? Shame upon our race 
 that there lives the individual who dares even ask 
 the question."^ 
 
 Malthus saw that he had been hasty, and he did 
 not republish the essay till he had given it five 
 years of revision, and added to it the results of foreign 
 travel and wider reading. In 1799 he went abroad 
 with some college friends. Otter, Clarke the antiquarian 
 and naturalist, and Clarke's pupil Cripps,^ and visited 
 Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and part of 
 Russia, these being the only countries at that time 
 open to English travellers. After his return he 
 
 1 Cf. St. Matth. xix. 12. 
 
 2 MS. notes on p. vii of S. T. Coleridge's copy of tlie 2nd ed. of the 
 Essay, in Brit. Museum (from the library of his executor, Dr. Joseph 
 H. Green). 
 
 3 See Otter's biographical preface to Malthus' Pol. JEc. (1836), p. xxxvi, 
 and Otter's Life of Clarke (1825), i. 437. &c. 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 49 
 
 published his tract on the High Price of Provisions 
 (1800),-' and at the conclusion of it he promised 
 a new edition of the Bssay on Population, Some 
 people, he says, have thought the essay " a specious 
 argument inapplicable to the present state of society," 
 because it contradicts preconceived opinions ; but 
 two years of reflection have strengthened his con- 
 viction that he has discovered " the real cause of 
 the continued depression and poverty of the lower 
 classes ; " and he will not recant his essay : " I have 
 deferred giving another edition of it in the hope of 
 being able to make it more worthy of the public 
 attention, by applying the principle directly and 
 exclusively to the existing state of society, and 
 endeavouring to illustrate the power and universality 
 of its operation from the best authenticated accounts 
 that we have of the state of other countries." But 
 he was not satisfied with the accounts of other people. 
 When the Peace of Amiens let loose thousands of 
 pleasure-seekers on the Continent, Mai thus went to 
 France and Switzerland on no errand of mere plea- 
 sure ; and he was luckily at home again, and passing 
 his proof-sheets through the press, before Napoleon's 
 unpleasant interference with English travellers. 
 
 It was a happy coincidence that in the dark 
 fighting days of 1798, Malthus should write only of 
 vice and misery, while in the short gleam of peace 
 in 1802 and 1803, when the tramp of armed men 
 had ceased for the moment, he should recollect 
 himself, and write of a less ghastly restraint on 
 
 1 See below, Book II. chap. iv. 
 
50 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 population, a restraint which might perhaps, like 
 the truce of Amiens, hold out some faint hope for 
 the future. For the sake of the world let us hope 
 that the parallel goes no further. The wonder is not 
 that he forgot there was such a thing as civilization, 
 but that amidst wars and rumours of wars he should 
 ever have remembered it. 
 ;^*- In the preface to the new edition (June 1803), 
 he says he has " so far differed in principle " from 
 the old edition " as to suppose the action of another 
 check to population which does not come under the 
 head either of vice or misery," and he has "tried 
 to soften some of the harshest conclusions of the 
 first essay." There was really more change than 
 this. The first essay contained much of the imper- 
 fection of the sudden magazine-article ; and if the 
 writer had lived half a century later he would 
 probably, instead of writing a small book, have con- 
 tributed a long article to a monthly or quarterly 
 magazine, giving a review of Godwin's political 
 writings, with incidental remarks on the Poor Bill 
 of Mr. Pitt. This was evidently the light in which 
 he himself regarded his first work, or he would not 
 have handled it so freely in republication. The new 
 edition had new facts, new arrangement, and new 
 emphasis. He had not written a book once for all, 
 leaving the world to fight over it after his death. 
 He took the public into partnership with him, and 
 made every discussion a means of improving his 
 book. This gives the Essay on Population a unique 
 character among economical writings. It leads the 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 51 
 
 author to interpret his thoughts to us from many 
 various points of view, leaving us, unhappily, often 
 in doubt whether an alteration of language is or is 
 not an alteration of thought. Malthus adds to the 
 difficulty by omitting and inserting instead of re- 
 writing in full. His chapters cease to be old without 
 becoming new. 
 
 The very face of the book revealed a change. In 
 1798 it was An Essay on the Principle of Population 
 as it affects the Future Improvement of Society ; in 
 1803, An Essay on the Principle of Population, or 
 a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human 
 Happiness. J The dreams of the future are now in 
 the background, and the facts of the present in the 
 foreground. In 1798 Malthus had given Godwin 
 the lie : — 
 
 " Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture, 
 He to a matter of fact still softening, paring, abating, 
 He to tlie great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and ideal, 
 He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing." 
 
 He must do more now, or his political economy is 
 a dismal science. He must show how we can cling 
 to the matter of fact without losing our ideal. It is 
 not enough to refer us to the other world. How far 
 may we have hope in this world ? Let Malthus 
 answer. 
 
 The second essay is his answer ; and if second 
 thoughts are the best, then we may rejoice over the 
 second essay, for it lifts the cloud from the first. It 
 tells us that on the whole the power of civilization is 
 greater than the power of population ; the pressure of 
 
 E 2 
 
52 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 the people on the food is therefore less in modern than 
 it was in ancient times or the middle ages ; there 
 are now less disorder, more knowledge, and more 
 temperance.^ The merely physical checks are falling 
 into a subordinate position. There are two kinds 
 of checks on population. A check is (a) positive, 
 when it cuts down an existing population, (d) pre- 
 ventive, when it keeps a new population from grow- 
 ing up. Among animals the check is only misery, 
 among savage men vice as well as misery, and, in 
 civilized society, moral restraint as well as, till now, 
 both vice and misery. Even in civilized society there 
 are strata which moral restraint hardly reaches, for 
 there are strata which are not civilized. On the 
 whole, however, it is true that among animals there 
 is no sign of any other check than the positive, while 
 among men the positive is gradually subordinated to 
 the preventive. Among men misery may act both 
 positively and preventively. In the form of war or 
 disease it may slay its tens of thousands, and cut 
 down an existing population. By the fear of its own 
 coming it may prevent many a marriage, and keep a 
 new population from growing up. Vice may also act 
 in both ways : positively as in child murder, prevent- 
 ively as in the scheme of Condorcet. But in civilized 
 society the forces of both order and progress are 
 arrayed against their two common enemies ; and, if 
 we recognized no third check, surely the argument 
 that was used against Godwin's society holds against 
 all society; its very purification will ruin it, by 
 
 * 2nd ed., Book IV. chap, xii.; 7tli ed., p. 477. 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 53 
 
 forbidding vice and misery to check the growth of 
 population, and by thereby permitting the people to 
 increase to excess. There is, however, a third check, 
 which Malthus knows under the title of moral restraint. 
 Moral restraint is a distinct form of preventive 
 check. It is not to be confused with an impure 
 celibacy, which falls under the head of vice ; and yet 
 the adjective " moral " does not imply that the 
 motives are the highest possible.^ The adjective is 
 applied not so much to the motive of the action as to 
 the action itself, from whatever motives proceeding ; 
 and in the mouth of a Utilitarian this language is 
 not unphilosophical. f Moral restraint, in the pages 
 of Malthus, means simply continence ; it is an absti- . 
 nence from marriage followed by no irregularities.^ J 
 He speaks of the " moral stimulus " of the bounty on 
 corn, meaning the expectations it produced in the 
 minds of men, as distinguished from the variations it 
 produced in the prices of grain ; ' and the word 
 "moral" is often, like "morale," used in military 
 matters to denote mental disposition, as distinguished 
 from material resources. The vagueness of the word 
 is perhaps not accidental, for nothing is vaguer 
 than the mixed motives which it denotes ; but 
 continence, which is unambiguous, would seem the 
 better word. 
 
 1 2nd ed., I. ii. 10, 11 ; cf. xiv. 180; 7th ed., pp. 8 note, 262, &c. 
 , 2 2nd ed., p. 11. 
 
 ' 7tli ed., p. 351; so I. ix. 82, "moral impossibility" of increase, in a 
 case where there is plenty of food, but bad distribution makes it unat- 
 tainable. The impossibility is due not to physical law but to human 
 institutions (mores). 
 
54 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 With the enunciation of the third check the theory 
 of Malthus entered definitively on a new phase ; and 
 in sketching the outlines of his work we shall no 
 longer need to treat it as paradoxical and overstrained, 
 but as a sober argument from the ground of accepted 
 facts. The author's analysis of human nature has 
 been brought into harmony with common sense. He 
 confesses that it had hitherto been too abstract, and 
 had separated the inseparable. 
 
 The mind of man cannot be sawed into quan- 
 tities ; and, even if it is possible to distinguish the 
 mixed motives that guide human action, the fact 
 remains that they only operate when together. It 
 is probable that no good man's motives were ever 
 absolutely noble, and no bad man's ever absolutely 
 bestial. Even the good man is strongest when he 
 can make his very circumstances war against his 
 power to do evil. Mixed from the first of time, 
 human motives will, in this ■ world, remain mixed unto 
 the last, whether in saint, sage, or savage. But 
 civilization, involving, as it does, a progressive change 
 in the dominant ideas of society, will alter the cha- 
 racter of the mixture and the proportion of the 
 elements. The laws of Malthus will be obeyed, 
 though the name of Malthus be not mentioned, and 
 the checks, physical or moral, be never brought to 
 mind. Society, moving all together, if it move at all, 
 cannot cure its evils by one single heroic remedy ; 
 but as little can it be content with self-denying ordin- 
 ances, prohibitions, or refutations. It needs a positive 
 truth, and an ideal, that is to say, a religion, to give 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 55 
 
 new life to the bodily memljers by giving new hope 
 to the heart. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning 
 of wisdom, but the end of wisdom is the love of the 
 Lord and the admiration of moral good." ^ It follows 
 that an economist, if he knows nothing but his 
 economy, does not know even that. 
 
 No economists are more reproached with their 
 want of idealism than Malthus and his brethren. 
 As the French Revolutionists were said to believe 
 that the death of their old rulers would of itself bring 
 happiness and good government, so these writers were 
 said to teach that the mere removal of hindrances 
 would lead to the best possible production and dis- 
 tribution of the good things of this life. The ideal 
 state then, as far as wealth was concerned, would be 
 anarchy plus the police constable. Godwin would 
 have dispensed with the constable. "Give a state 
 liberty enough," he says, " and vice cannot exist in 
 it."^ But neither he nor the economists desired a 
 merely negative change or removal of hindrances. 
 Their political reformation was to be, like the Pro- 
 testant, only successful as it went beyond image- 
 breaking. Malthus, it will be seen,' is far from 
 being an unqualified advocate of laissez /aire ; and, 
 in all cases where he did desire it, he wished to 
 make the state small only to make public opinion 
 great. Godwin was not far away from him here. 
 If he was wrong in attributing too much evil to 
 
 ' Malthus, Essay, 1st ed., p. 387. 
 
 ' In an unpublislied MS. quoted in his Life, i. 76. His published 
 writings contain nothing quite so strong. 
 3 See below, Book III. 
 
56 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 institutions, and too little to liuman nature, he has 
 furnished his own correction. The Political Justice 
 disclaimed all sympathy with violence ; it taught 
 that a political reform was worthless unless effected 
 peacefully by reason ; and Malthus ^ has the same 
 cure for social evils — argument and instruction. The 
 difference between them is, that Malthus takes more 
 into account the unreasonableness as well as the 
 reasonableness of men. In essentials they are agreed. 
 The thorough enlightenment of the people, which 
 includes their moral purification as well as their 
 intellectual instruction, is to complete the work of 
 mending all, in which men are to be fellow-workers 
 with God — so runs the teaching of Malthus and all 
 the greatest economists of the last hundred years. 
 Whether the evils of competition are many or few, 
 serious or trifling, depends largely on the character 
 of the competitors ; and the more free we make the 
 competition, the more thoroughly we must educate the 
 competitors. Adam Smith was well aware of this ; 
 he recommended school-boards a hundred years before 
 the Acts of 1870 and 1872;^ and Malthus was not 
 behind him.^ They are aware that the more com- 
 pletely we exclude the interference of Government, 
 the more actively Ave must employ every other moral 
 and social agency. Whether Malthus was prepared 
 to exclude the interference of Government entirely, 
 even under this condition, we shall see by-and-by. 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., B. IV. chap. vi. and ix. 
 
 2 Wealth of Nations, B. V. ch. i. Pt. iii. Art. 2. 
 ^ Essay, Book IV. ch. ix. of 7th ed., esp. p. 439. 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 57 
 
 The characters of the two men, Malthus and God- 
 win, are a striking contrast. Malthus was the student, 
 of quiet settled life, sharing his little wealth with his 
 friends in unobtrusive hospitality, and constantly 
 using his pen for the good, as he believed, of the 
 English poor, that ia these wretched times they might 
 have domestic happiness like his own. There never 
 was a more singular delusion than the common 
 belief in the hard-heartedness of Malthus. Besides 
 the unanimous voice of private friends, he has left 
 testimony enough in his own books to absolve him. 
 While Adam Smith and others owe their errors to 
 intellectual fallibility, Malthus owes many of his to 
 his tender heart. His motive for studying political 
 economy was no doubt a mixed motive ; it was partly 
 the interest of an intelligent man in abstract ques- 
 tions ; but it was chiefly the desire to advance the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number. In his 
 eyes the elevation of human life was much more 
 important than the solution of a scientific problem. 
 Even when in 1820 he wrote a book on the "Princi- 
 ples of Political Economy" he took care to add on the 
 title-page, " considered with a view to their practical 
 application" refusing to consider in abstractness what 
 always exists in the concrete. His keen sympathy 
 for the sufferings of displaced workmen led him to 
 fight a losing battle with Say and Ricardo in favour 
 of something like an embargo on inventions, and in 
 protest against a fancied over-production.^ His private 
 
 1 Cf. even Essay, 1st ed., pp. 33, 34, and 324. But see later, B. II. 
 chaps, ii. and iii. 
 
58 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 life showed the power of gentleness ; Miss Martineau 
 could hear his mild, sonorous vowels without her ear- 
 trumpet, and his few sentences were as welcome at 
 her dinner-table as the endless babble of cleverer 
 tongues. He felt the pain of a thousand slanders 
 " only just at first," and never let them trouble his 
 dreams after the first fortnight, saying, with a higher 
 than stoical calmness, that they passed by him like 
 the idle wind which he respected not.^ He outlived 
 obloquy, and saw the fruit of his labours in a wiser 
 legislation and improved public feeling. 
 
 With Godwin all was otherwise. There were fight- 
 ings within and fears without. With an immovable 
 devotion to ideas he combined a fickleness of afi'ection 
 towards human beings. He heeded emotion too little 
 in his books and too much in his own life, yielding 
 to the fancy of the moment, quarrelling with his best 
 friends twice a week, and quickly knitting up the 
 broken ties again. He loved his wife well, but hardly 
 allowed her to share the same house with him, lest 
 they should weary of one another.'' He was the 
 sworn enemy of superstition, and himself the arch- 
 dreamer of dreams. 
 
 Yet when we contrast the haphazard literary life 
 of the one, ending his days ingloriously ^ in a Govern- 
 ment sinecure, unsuccessful and almost forgotten, 
 with the academical ease of the other, centred in 
 
 1 7t}i ed., Append., p. 495. Cf. Mias Martineau's Autob., vol. i. p. 211; 
 cf. pp. 209, 210. 
 
 2 Life, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 233. 
 
 ' Inglorionsl)-, because of the severe chapter he wrote in the Political 
 Justice, ' Of Pensions and Salaries ' (ch. ix. of Bk. VI.). 
 
CHAP. II.] SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. 59 
 
 the sphere of common duties, and passing from the 
 world with a fair consciousness of success, we feel 
 a sympathy for Godwin that is of a better sort than 
 the mere liking for a loser. It is a sympathy not sad 
 enough for pity. It is not wholly sad to find Godwin 
 in his old age a lonely man, his friends dropping off 
 one by one into the darkness and leaving him solitary 
 in a world that does not know him. The world that 
 had begun to realize the ideas of Malthus had begun 
 to realize the ideas of Godwin also. It was a world 
 far more in harmony with political justice than that 
 into which Godwin had sent his book forty years 
 before. It was good that Malthus had lived to see 
 the new Poor Law, but stUl better that both had lived 
 to see the Reform of '32. 
 
 They passed away within two years of each other, 
 Malthus in the winter of 1834, Godwin in the spring 
 of 1836, the year of the first leagiie of the people 
 against the Corn Laws. In their death they were 
 still divided, but, " si quis piorum manibus locus," 
 they are divided no longer, and they think no hard 
 thoughts of each other any more. 
 
60 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THESES. 
 
 Position stated in. the Essay — Tendency of Life to increase beyond 
 Food — Problem not tbe same for Humanity as for the lower forms 
 of Life — Man's Dilemma — Tendency to increase not predicable of 
 Food in same sense as of Life — The Geometrical and Arithmetical 
 Eatios — Position stated in Encyclopedia Britannica — Milne's Con- 
 firmation of the Geometrical Eatio — Arithmetical Eatio proved 
 differently — Private Property a condition of great Production — ■ 
 Fallacy of confusing possible with actual Production. — Laws of Man 
 as well as of Nature responsible for necessity of Checks — Position 
 stated in " Summary View " — The Checks on Population classified 
 (a) objectively and (b) subjectively — Eelation to previous Classifi- 
 cation — Cycle in the movement of Population. 
 
 The second essay applies the theory of the first to new- 
 facts and with a new purpose. The author, having 
 gained his case against Godwin, ceases to be the critic 
 and becomes the social reformer. Despairing to 
 master all the forms of evil, he confines his study to 
 one of them in particular, the tendency of living! 
 beings to increase beyond their means of nourishment. 
 This phenomenon is important both from its cause 
 and from its effects. Its cause is not the action of 
 Governments, but the constitution of man; and its 
 effects are not of to-day or yesterday, but constant 
 and perpetual;^ it frequently hinders the moral 
 
 1 Of. Essay, 7th ed., 11. xiii. p. 259. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 61 
 
 goodness and general happiness of a nation as weli as 
 the equal distribution of its wealth. 
 
 This is the general position, which the several 
 chapters of the essay are to expound in detail. It 
 is not by itself quite simple. '•' The constant tendency 
 in all animated life [.sfc]^ to increase beyond the 
 nourishment prepared for it" is in one sense common 
 to humanity with plants and animals, but in another 
 sense is not common to any two of the three. It is 
 certainly true of all of them that the seeds of their 
 life, whencesoever at first derived, are now infinitely 
 numerous on our planet, while the means of rearing 
 them are strictly limited. In the case of plants and 
 animals the strong instinct of reproduction is "inter- 
 rupted by no reasoning or doubts about providing for 
 oflFspring,"^ and they crowd fresh lives into the world 
 only to have them at once shorn away by starvation. 
 With the exception of certain plants which ape their 
 superiors, like the drosera, and certain men who ape 
 their inferiors, like the cannibals, the lines of difier- 
 ence between the three classes of living things are 
 tolerably distinct. The first class, in the struggle 
 for room and food, can only forestall each other and 
 leave each other to die ; the second deliberately prey 
 on the first and on each other ; while the third prey 
 on both the rest. But with man this "tendency to 
 increase beyond the food " difi"ers from the same 
 instinct in the other two cases by more than the fact 
 that man has larger resources and is longer in reachino- 
 
 O CO 
 
 his limit. The instinct is equally strong in him, but 
 
 1 Essay, 2nd ed., p. 2. ' 2nd ed., p. 3. 
 
62 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 he does not ■unquestioningly follow it. " Reason 
 interrupts his career," and asks him whether he may 
 not be bringing into the world beings for whom he 
 cannot provide the means of support/ If he brushes 
 reason aside, then he shares the fate of plants and 
 animals ; he tends to multiply his numbers beyond 
 the room a,nd food accessible to them, and the result 
 is that his numbers are cut down to these limits by 
 suffering and starvation. There is nothing in this 
 either more or less contrary to the notion of a 
 benevolent Providence than in the general power 
 given to man of acting rationally or irrationally 
 according to his own choice in any other instance. 
 On the other hand, if he listens to reason, he can no 
 doubt defeat the tendency, but too often he does it at 
 the expense of moral purity. The dilemma makes 
 the desire for marriage almost an " origin of evil." 
 If man obeys his instincts he falls into misery, and, 
 if he resists them, into vice. Though the dilemma 
 is not perfect, its plausibility demands that we should 
 test it by details, and to this test Malthus may be 
 said to have given his whole life. His other econo- 
 mical works are subordinate to the essay, and may be 
 said to grow out of it. Though we cannot omit them 
 if we would fully understand and illustrate the central 
 work, still the latter must come first ; and its matured 
 form requires more than the brief summary which 
 has been given in the two'preceding chapters. 
 
 The body of the book consists of historical details, 
 and particular examples showing the checks to popu- 
 
 ^ Essay, 2iid ed., p. 3. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 63 
 
 lation in uncivilized and in civilized places, in present 
 and in past times. The writer means to bring his 
 conclusions home to his readers by the " longer way " 
 of induction. As this, however, was not the way in 
 which he himself reached them, or even stated them 
 at first, he will ask us first of all to look at the terms 
 of the dilemma in the light of his two original 
 postulates^ — (a) food is necessary, {b) the desire of 
 marriage is permanent. What is the quickest possible 
 increase of numbers in obedience to the second, and 
 of food in obedience to the first ? In the most crucial 
 of the known instances, the actual rapidity of the 
 increase of population seems to be in direct proportion 
 to the easy possession of food ; and we can infer that 
 the ideally rapid increase would take place where all 
 obstacles (whether material or moral) to the getting 
 of food and rearing of a family were removed, so 
 that nature never needed to remonstrate with in- 
 stinct. " In no state that we have yet known has 
 the power of population been left to exert itself with 
 perfect freedom."^ We can guess what it would be 
 from the animal and vegetable world, where reason 
 does not as a matter of fact interfere with instinct in 
 any circumstances, so far as we can judge. Benjamin 
 Franklin, in a passage quoted by Malthus in this 
 connection,^ supposes that if the earth were bared of 
 other plants it might be replenished in a few years 
 
 1 1st ed.; see p. 16, above. "Food" in such propositions includes all 
 the outward conditions necessary to life. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 4 ; 7tli ed., p. 3. 
 
 ' I. c. Franklin's Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, 
 1751. 
 
64 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 with fennel alone^ Even as things are now, fennel 
 would fill the whole earth if the other plants 
 would only allow it ; and the same is true of each of 
 the others. Townsend's goats and greyhounds on 
 Juan Fernandez are a better instance, because not 
 hypothetical.'' Juan Fernando, the first discoverer, had 
 covered the island with goats from one pair.^ The 
 Spaniards resolved to clear it of goats, in order to make 
 it useless to the English for provisioning. They put 
 on shore a couple of greyhounds, whose offspring soon 
 caused the goats to disappear. But without some 
 few goats to eat all the dogs must have died ; and the 
 few were saved to them by their inaccessible refuges 
 in the rocks, from which they descended at risk of 
 their lives. In this way only the strongest and 
 fleetest dogs and the hardiest and fleetest goats 
 survived ; and a balance was kept up between goat 
 food and hound population. Townsend thereupon 
 remarks that human populations are kept down by 
 want of food precisely in the same way. 
 
 There is nothing to prevent the increase of human 
 numbers if we suppose reason to have no need (as 
 in the lower creatures it has no opportunity) to inter- 
 fere. To understand the situation, however, it is 
 best not to assume the truth of this parallelism, but 
 to take the actually recorded instances of human 
 increase under the nearest known approaches to abso- 
 lute plenty combined with moral goodness, that is to 
 
 1 Dissertation on the Poor Laws hy a well-wislier to Mankind (1786), 
 pp. 42—45, 53. He is quoting Dampier's Voyages, vol. i. pt. ii. p. 88. 
 
 2 It is fair to say that Ulloa, B. II. ch. iv., says " two or three goats." 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 65 
 
 say, with a state of society in which vice is at a 
 minimum. " In the northern states of America, where 
 the means of subsistence have been more am.ple, the 
 manners of the people more pure, and the checks to 
 early marriages fewer than in any of the modern states 
 of Europe, the population was found to double itself 
 for some successive periods every twenty-five years." * 
 From this near approach to an unchecked increase, 
 we infer that the unchecked would mean a doubling 
 in less than twenty-five years (say twenty, or perhaps 
 fifteen), and that all population, in proportion as it 
 is unchecked, tends towards that rate of increase. 
 
 If it is difficult to find an unchecked increase of 
 population, it is still harder to find an unchecked 
 increase of food ; for what is meant is not that a 
 people should find their food in one fertile country 
 with as much ease as in another, but that, for a new 
 people, new supplies should always be found with the 
 same ease as the old ones. Now it is not necessary 
 to suppose that the most fertile land is always used 
 first ; ^ very often it might only be used late after 
 the rest, through political insecurity, imperfect agri- 
 culture, incomplete explorations, or the want of 
 capital ; but, when it is once occupied, the question 
 is, will it supply new food to new comers without 
 any limit at all ? This would be an ideally fertile 
 land corresponding to the ideally expanding popu- 
 lation. And on some such inexhaustible increase 
 
 1 and ed., p. 4 ; cf. 7th ed., p. 3. 
 
 ^ Carey (H. C.) has certainly made a good case for the reverse. See 
 Princ. of Social Science, vol. i. ch. iv. (1858). 
 
r 
 
 66 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i 
 
 of food an unchecked increase of population would 
 depend, unless men became able to live without 
 food altogether. 
 
 Malthus afterwards pointed out, in the course of 
 controversy,^ that there is strictly speaking no 
 question here of the comparison of two tendencies, 
 for we cannot speak of a tendency to increase food 
 in the same sense as a tendency to increase popula- 
 tion. Population is increased by itself; food is in- 
 creased not by food itself, but by an agency external 
 to it, the human beings that want it ; and, while the 
 former increase is due to an instinct, the latter is (in 
 a sense) acquired. Eating is instinctive, but not the 
 getting of the food. We have, therefore, to compare an 
 increase due to an instinctive desire with an increase 
 due to labour, and " a slight comparison will show 
 the immensity of the first power over the s^ond." 
 Malthus allows that it is difficult to determine this 
 relation with exactness ; ^ but, with the natural liking 
 of a Cambridge man for a mathematical simile,' he 
 says that the one is to the other as an arithmetical 
 to a geometrical ratio, — that is to say, in any given 
 time (say a century) the one will have increased by 
 multiplication, the other only by addition. If we 
 represent both the population and the food at the 
 beginning of that century by ten, then the population 
 
 1 Letter to Senior, Appendix to Senior's Lectures on Population, pp. 
 60—72. 
 
 ^ Essay, 2nd ed., p. 5. 
 
 ^ He might have been warned from such by " ov ytw/ieT-piicaic dXX' 
 IpuiTiKalg avayicaie" (Plato, BeptMic, v. 458). But Bacon had applied the 
 same figure still more widely : " Custom goes in arithmetical, Nature 
 in geometrical progression" (Advancement of L., VI. iii. 259). 
 
CHAP, ni.] THESES. 67 
 
 will double itself ia twenty-five years ; the ten will 
 become twenty in tbe first twenty-five years, forty in 
 the second, eighty in the third, one hundred and sixty 
 in the last, while the food will only become twenty 
 in the first, thirty in the second, forty in the third, 
 fifty in the fourth. If this is true, it shows the 
 tendency of population to outrun subsistence. But 
 of course it needs to be shown from experience that, 
 while the strength of the desire remains the same in 
 tbe later stages of the growth of population as in the 
 earlier, the laboriousness of the labour is greater in 
 the later stages of the increase of food than in the 
 earlier. It is the plain truth, says Malthus, that 
 nature is niggardly in her gifts to man, and by no 
 means keeps pace with his desires. If men would 
 satisfy their desire of food at the old rate of speed, 
 they must exert their mind or their body much more 
 than at first.^ An obvious objection presents itself. 
 Since man's food consists after all of the lower forms of 
 life, animal and vegetable, and since these admittedly 
 tend to increase, unchecked by themselves, in a geo- 
 metrical ratio, it might be thought that the increase 
 of human population and the increase of its food 
 could proceed together, with equal ease. But the 
 answer is that this unchecked geometrical increase of 
 the first could go on only so long as there was room 
 for it. It could only be true, for example, of wheat 
 in the corn-field at the time when the seed of it was 
 sown, and the field was all before it. The equality 
 of the two ratios would only be true of the first 
 
 1 Of. what is said of the cosmology of Malthus above, pp. 34 seq^- 
 
 F 2 
 
68 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 crop.^ At first there miglit be five or sixfold the 
 seed ; but in after years, though the geometrical 
 increase from the seed would tend to be the same, 
 there could be no geometrical increase of the total 
 crop by unassisted nature. The earth has no tendency 
 to increase its surface. There is a tendency of animals 
 and vegetables to increase geometrically, in their 
 quality of living things, but not in their quality of 
 being food for man. The same amount of produce 
 might no doubt be gained on a fresh field, from the 
 seed yielded by the first, and at the same geometrical 
 rate ; but this assumes that there is a fresh field, 
 and we should not then be at the proper stage to 
 contra,st the two ratios. The contrast begins to show 
 itself as soon as the given quantity of land has grown 
 its crop, and its animal and human population have 
 used all its food. The question is then how any 
 increase of the said population, if they are confined 
 to their own supplies, is at all to be made possible ; 
 the answer is, only by greater ingenuity and greater 
 labour in the getting of food ; and, however possible 
 this may be, it can hardly be so easy as the increase 
 of living beings by their own act. 
 "~ The degree of disparity between the two will of 
 course depend on the degree of rapidity with which 
 an unchecked population is supposed to double itself. 
 Sir William Petty,^ with few trustworthy statistics, 
 
 ' Or, keeping in view Mr. Carey's exception, we should say not perhaps 
 the first crop, but the earliest in which the farmer did justice to the known 
 resources of the best land. 
 
 2 Political Arithmetic — Essay on the Multiplication of Mankind, 1682, 
 pp. 7, 13 seq^., especially p. 21 (ed. 1755). 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 69 
 
 had supposed ten years ; Euler, with somewhat better, 
 twelve and four-fifths ; but Malthus prefers to go by 
 the safe figures of the American colonies, which he 
 always regarded as a crucial proof that the period was 
 not more than twenty-five. He admits the risk of his 
 own mathematical simile when he grants that it is 
 more easy to determine the rate of the natural increase 
 of population than the rate of the increase of food 
 which is in a much less degree natural (or spon- 
 taneous) ; and he argues from what had been done in 
 England in his own time that the increase would 
 not even be in an arithmetical ratio, though agricul- 
 tural improvement (thanks to Arthur Young and the 
 Board of Agriculture, and the long reign of high 
 prices) was raising the average produce very sensibly. 
 If the Napoleonic times were the times of a forced 
 population in England, they were also the times of 
 a forced agricultural production. Yet we ourselves, 
 long after this stimulus, and after much high farm- 
 ing unknown to our fathers, have reached only an 
 average produce of twenty-eight bushels per acre of 
 arable land as compared with twenty-three in 1770,^ 
 while the population has risen from about six millions 
 to thirty-five. It may be said that applies only to 
 wheat. But until lately wheat-growing was the chief 
 object of all our scientific agriculture ; and this is 
 the result of a century's improvements. It is far 
 from an arithmetical increase ; and, evL'U had the 
 produce been multiplied sevenfold, along with the 
 population, this would not overthrow the contention 
 
 1 Sir James Caird, Landed Interest, 4tli ed., 1880, p. 177. 
 
70 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. I. 
 
 of Malthus, for he is not speaking of any and every 
 increase of food, but of such an increase made by 
 the same methods and by the same kind of labour 
 as raised the old supplies.^ Once it is acknowledged 
 that to raise new food requires greater labour and 
 new inventions, while to bring new men into the 
 world requires nothing more than in all times past, 
 the disparity of the two is already admitted. The 
 fact that the two processes are both dependent on the 
 action of man, and both practically illimitable, does not 
 prevent them from being essentially unlike.^ Objec- 
 tors often suppose that the tendency of population to 
 outrun subsistence is contradicted by the existence of 
 unpeopled or thinly-peopled countries, just as if the 
 tendency of bodies to attract each other were con- 
 tradicted by the incompressibility of matter. The 
 important point to notice is that the one power is 
 greater than the other. The one is to the other as 
 the hare is to the tortoise in the fable. To make the 
 slow tortoise win the race, we must send the hare to 
 sleep.^ 
 
 Carey {Social Science, vol. i. ch. iii. § 5) represents 
 the view of Malthus by the following propositions : — 
 1. "Matter tends to take upon itself higher forms," 
 passing from inorganic to vegetable and animal life, 
 and from these to man. 2. Matter tends to take on 
 itself the vegetable and animal forms in an arithmetic 
 ratio only. 3. It tends to take its highest form, mau, 
 in a geometrical ratio, so that the highest outstrips 
 
 1 But see below, Bk. II. ch. i. 2 2nd ed., I. i. p. 8 ; 7tli ed., p. 6. 
 3 Essay, IV. iil., 7th ed., p. 407. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 71 
 
 the lowest. In short he believes that Malthus holds 
 the geometrical increase to be true of man alone, and 
 only the arithmetical to be true of animals and 
 vegetables. But Malthus really attributed the 
 tendency to geometrical increase to all life whatso- 
 ever, and arithmetical to all food, as such. J 
 
 In Macvey Napier's Supplement to the Encydopcedia 
 Britannica (1824) Malthus has left his mature state- 
 ment of his cardinal principles, and, at the risk of 
 repetition, that account may be added here. The 
 main difference from the essay is in arrangement of 
 the leading ideas ; and we may learn at least what 
 he conceived to be their relative importance towards 
 the end of his life. 
 
 He begins by observing (l) that all living tldngs, 
 of whatever kind, when furnished with their proper 
 nourishment tend to increase in a geometrical ratio, 
 whether (as wheat) by multiplying sixfold in one year, 
 or (as sheep) by doubling their numbers in two years, 
 tending to fill the earth, the one in fourteen, the other 
 in seventy-six years. But (2) as a matter of fact they 
 do not so increase, and the reason is either man's 
 want of will or man's want of power to provide them 
 their proper soil or pasture. The actual rate of 
 increase is extremely slow, while the power of increase 
 is prodigious. (3) Physically man is as the rest ; 
 and if we ask what is the factor of his geometrical 
 increase, we can only tell it, as in the case of wheat 
 and sheep, by experience, (4) In the case of other 
 living beings, where there are most room and food 
 there is greatest increase. These conditions are best 
 
72 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 fulfilled for man in tlie United States, where the 
 distribution of wealth is better than in other equally- 
 fertile places, and the greater number share the 
 advantages. The American census shows for the 
 three decades between 1790 and 1820 a rate of 
 increase that would double the numbers in 22g-, 
 22^, and 23^ years respectively, after we deduct as 
 immigrants ten thousand on an average every year. 
 
 A striking indirect confirmation of this view of 
 the American increase was supplied to Malthus ^ by 
 Joshua Milne, the author of the Treatise on Annuities. 
 His calculations were founded on the new Swedish 
 table of mortality. This table had been drawn up 
 from the registers of the first' five years of the century, 
 years of unusual healthiness ; and might therefore be 
 presumed to represent the normal condition of a new 
 and healthy country like the United States better 
 than the old table drawn up from the years before 
 sanitary reform and vaccination. MiJne took the 
 Swedish table as his guide, and one million of people 
 as his unit of measurement ; he calculated in what 
 proportions the component individuals of the million 
 must belong to childhood, youth, mature life, and old 
 age, in order that by the principles of the Swedish 
 table the million might double itself by natural 
 increase in twenty-five years ; and he arrived at a 
 distribution so like that given by the American 
 census, that he was bound to conclude the American 
 rate of increase to be at the lea,st very like one that 
 doubles a population in twenty^-frve years. But the 
 
 ^ Eiicycl. Brit., art. Population. Cf. Essay, 7tli ed., p. 236 n. 
 
CHAP. III.] 
 
 THESES. 73 
 
 Swedish law of mortality could not be exactly true 
 of the United States, which are healthier as a whole 
 than Sweden even in Sweden's best years.^ The 
 United States themselves are not the very healthiest 
 and wealthiest and happiest country conceivable ; 
 and their increase is therefore not the fastest con- 
 ceivable. If the observed fact of increase is the best 
 proof of the capacity for increase, the observed 
 presence of checks leads to an a fortiori reasoning, 
 whereby we infer the capacity for a greater increase 
 than any actually observed. To sum up the whole of ' 
 this first branch of the argument,- — -"taking into 
 consideration the actual rate of increase which appears 
 from the best documents to have taken place over a 
 very large extent of country in the United States of 
 America, very variously circumstanced as to healthi- 
 ness and rapidity of progress, — considering further 
 the rate of increase which has taken place in New 
 Spain and also in many countries of Europe, where 
 the means of supporting a family, and other circum- 
 stances favourable to increase, bear no comparison 
 with those of .the United States, — and advertins; 
 particularly to the actual increase of population which 
 has taken place in this country during the last twenty 
 years 2 under the formidable obstacles which must 
 press themselves upon the attention of the most 
 
 ' Sweden -was a favourite -witli statisticians because S-weden alone at 
 that time furnished sound statistics. For an account of the American 
 population down to 1880, and its probable future, see Mr. Giffen's 
 Address on the Utility of Common Statistics (Stat. Soc, Dec. 1882). 
 
 2 1804-2.4, or simply from the first census, 1801, to the third, 1821. 
 The increase wa such as would double the population of England in fifty- 
 one years at the least (Essay, II. ix., 7tb ed., p. 217). 
 
74 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk, i. 
 
 careless observer, it must appear that the assumption 
 of a rate of increase such as would double the popula- 
 tion in twenty-five years, as representing the natural 
 progress of population when not checked by the 
 difficulty of procuring the means of subsistence or 
 other peculiar causes of premature mortality, must 
 be decidedly within the truth. It may be safely 
 asserted, therefore, that population when unchecked 
 increases in a geometrical ratio of such a nature as to 
 double itself every twenty-five years." ^ 
 
 The problem is only half stated ; it is still to be 
 shown what is the rate of the increase of Food. The 
 case does not admit the same kind of proof. We 
 can suppose an unchecked increase of men going 
 on without any change in human nature ; we have 
 only to suppose for the future the same encourage- 
 ment to marriage and the' same habits of life, to- 
 gether with the same law of mortality. But with 
 the increase of food the causes do not remain the 
 same. If good land could be got in abundance, the 
 increase of food from it would be in a geometrical 
 ratio far greater than that of the men ; that of wheat, 
 for example, would be sixfold, as we have seen. But 
 good lands are comparatively few ; they will in the 
 nature of things soon be occupied ; and then the 
 increase of the food will be a laborious process at a 
 rate rather resembling a decreasing than an increasing 
 geometrical ratio. " The yearly increment of food, at 
 least, would have a constant tendency to diminish ; " 
 and the amount of the increase in each successive ten 
 
 ' Encyd. Brit., 1. c. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. V5 
 
 years would probably be less and less. In practice, 
 the inequalities of distribution may check the in- 
 crease'of food with precisely the same efficacy as an 
 actual - arrival at the physical limits to the getting 
 of the food. "A man who is locked up in a room 
 may fairly be said to be confined by the walls of it, 
 though he may never touch them."^ But the main 
 point is, that, inequalities or no inequalities, there is 
 a tendency to diminished productiveness. Under 
 either coiidition the quantity yielded this year will 
 not be doubled or trebled for an indefinite period with 
 the same ease as it was yielded this year. In a 
 tolerably well-peopled country such as England or 
 Germany the utmost might be an increase every 
 twenty-five years equal to the present produce. But 
 the continuance of this would mean that in the next 
 two hundred years every farm should produce eight 
 times what it does now, or, in five hundred years, 
 twenty times as much ; and even this is incredible, 
 though it would be only an arithmetical progression. 
 No doubt almost all parts of the earth are noAV more 
 thinly peopled than their capacities might allow ; but 
 the difficulty is to use the capacities. That this view of 
 Malthus need not imply any ignorance or any disre- 
 gard of the resources of high farming may be judged 
 from the fact that our highest agricultural authority, 
 who recognizes the power of English farming to pro- 
 vide on emergency even for our entire annual wants, 
 admits at the same time that, " where full employ- 
 ment and the means of subsistence are abundant, 
 
 1 Essay, III. xiv., 7th ed., p. 387. 
 
76 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 population increases in geometrical progression, and 
 therefore in a far more rapid proportion than the 
 increased productiveness of the soil, which after a 
 certain point is stationary."^ "It follows necessarily" 
 (sums up Mai thus) " that the average rate of the actual 
 increase of population over the greatest part of the 
 globe, obeying the same law as the increase of food, 
 must be totally of a different character from the rate 
 at which it would increase if unchecked." On no 
 single farm could the produce be so increased as to 
 keep pace with the geometrical increase of population ; 
 and what is true of a single farm is true in this case 
 of the whole earth. Machinery and invention can do 
 less in agriculture than in manufacture, and they can 
 never do so much as to make preventive checks 
 unnecessary.^ 
 
 This is the argument of the Enci/dopcedia so far as 
 it relates to the theses of the essay. Malthus follows 
 it up by a remark on the institution of property. 
 The alternatives to his mind are always private 
 property as we now have it, and common property as 
 desired by Grodwin. He upholds the first because, 
 " according to all past experience and the best observ- 
 ation which can be made on the motives which operate 
 upon the human mind," the largest produce from the 
 soil is got by that system, and because (what is 
 socially much more important), by making a man feel 
 his responsibility and his dependence on his own 
 efforts, it tends to cause prudence in marriage as well 
 as industry in work. Common property has not 
 
 1 Caird, Landed Interest, pp. 18, 46. ^ Encycl. Brit, 1. c. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 77 
 
 been successful, historically ; and the widest extension 
 of popular education would not make men the fitter 
 for it. There is indeed a sense in which common 
 property might tend to carry production farther than 
 private property ; cultivation, not being for profit but 
 for mere living, would not, like the present, stop at the 
 point where production ceased to be a good invest- 
 ment. But this would mean ^ that the whole energies 
 of the society were directed to the mere getting of 
 food ; neither the whole society nor any part of it 
 would have leisure, for intellectual labour or enjoy- 
 ment. Whereas private property not only secures 
 the leisure, but, by stopping at the point of profit- 
 ableness, it keeps an unused reserve, on which society 
 may fall back in case of need. Malthus therefore 
 would stand by private property, though he thinks 
 that private proprietors may damage the national 
 wealth by game-preserving, and injure the poorer 
 classes by not spending enough on what they make.^ 
 
 The actual increase of population (he goes on) and 
 the necessity of checks to it depend on the difficulty 
 of getting food, from whatever cause, whether the 
 exhaustion of the earth or the bad structure of 
 society; and the difficulty is not for the remote 
 future but for the present. 
 
 It is chiefly the contrast between the actual and 
 the possible supplies that makes men incredulous 
 about the necessity of checks ; and we may grant that 
 
 1 Apart, he ought to have said, from prudence in marriage, which 
 would allow each man's share to be much more than a bare livina But 
 see below, Bk. II. oh. ii. "" 
 
 ' See below, Bk. II. ch. iii. 
 
78 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 under an ideal government, a perfect people, and 
 faultless social system the produce would at first be 
 so great that the necessity for checks on population 
 would be very much reduced ; but, as the earth's 
 productiveness does not expand with population, it 
 would be a very short time before the pressure of the 
 checks would reassert itself — this time from no fault 
 of man, but from the mere nature of the soil/ The 
 bad government of our ancestors left much produce 
 unused, and in consequence we have for the present 
 a large margin to draw on. But, " if merely since the 
 time of William the Conqueror all the nations of the 
 earth had been well governed, and if the distribution 
 of property and the habits both of the rich and the 
 poor had been the most favourable to the demand for 
 produce and labour, though the amount of food and 
 population would have been prodigiously greater than 
 at present, the means of diminishing the checks to 
 population would unquestionably be less." 
 
 But, though the laws of nature are responsible for 
 the necessity of checks to population,^ " a vast mass of 
 responsibility remains behind, on man and the insti- 
 tutions of society." To them in the first place is due 
 the scantiness of the present population of the earth, 
 there being few parts of it that would not with better 
 government and better morals support twice, ten 
 times, or even one hundred times as many inhabitants 
 as now. In the second place, though man cannot 
 
 1 By the " law " of decreasing returns. See below, Bk. II. ch. i. 
 
 2 Mr. Qiffen, in the Address above quoted, speaks as if Malthus con- 
 sidered the positive checks as the "natural checks" (p. 531). This, 
 however, is against his distinct statement in Essay, 7th ed., App. p. 480. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. '9 
 
 remove the necessity of checks, or even make them 
 press much more lightly in any given place,i he is 
 responsible for their precise character and particular 
 mode of operation. A good government and good 
 institutions can so direct them that they shall be 
 least hurtful to the general virtue and happiness, vice 
 and misery disappearing before moral restraint, though 
 after all the influence of government and institutions 
 is indirect, and everything depends on the conduct of 
 the individual citizens. 
 
 The rest of the article contains little that is not 
 in the Essay on Population (5th ed., 1817) and the 
 treatise on Political Economy (1st ed., 1820). It 
 gives the historical sketches of the former, some small 
 part of the economical discussions {e. g. on wages) of 
 the latter, and a short answer to current objections, 
 together with some tables of mortality and other 
 figures, of more special interest to the professional 
 actuary than to the general reader. The article is 
 an authoritative summary of the author's doctrines in 
 their final form. It was not his last work. From 
 the fact that he undertook the paper in Sept. 1821,^ 
 we may perhaps infer that he placed it in Macvey 
 Napier's hands in the year 1822.^ But it was his 
 last attempt to re-state the subject of the essay in 
 an independent form with anything approaching to 
 fulness of detail, and it shows he had made no change 
 
 1 This is probably the meaning of the author's phrase, "alter the 
 proportionate amount of the checks to population, or the degree in which 
 they press upon the actual numbers " {Encydop., 1. c, p. 415). 
 
 ' See his letter of that date in Macvey Napier's Correspondence, p. 29. 
 
 ' It was not published till 1824. It was certainly written after the 
 results of the Census of 1821 had been published. 
 
80 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 in his position. The Summary View of the Principle 
 of Population (1830) was avowedly an abridgment 
 of the article in the Encyclopedia, and is in fact 
 that article with a few paragraphs omitted and a 
 few pronouns altered. 
 
 The clear statement of the two tendencies was, in 
 his own eyes, the least original part of his work. It 
 had been often perceived distinctly by other writers 
 that population must always be kept down to the 
 level of the means of subsistence. " Yet few inquiries 
 have been made into the various modes by which this 
 level is effected, and the principle has never been 
 sufficiently pursued to its consequences, nor those 
 practical inferences drawn from it which a strict 
 examination of its effects on society appears to 
 suggest." ^ What some people would count the more 
 interesting question remained to be considered — the 
 question that touches individuals and familiar circum- 
 stances more nearly, and is not to be answered by a 
 generality, from which we easily in thought except 
 our own individual selves. Since, at any given time, 
 in any given place, among any given people, there is 
 (1) a tendency of population to outrun subsistence, 
 and there is (2) no such excess as a matter of fact, 
 in what way or ways is the tendency prevented from 
 carrying itself out ? As was said above,^ this is 
 effected in two kinds of ways — (l) by the way of 
 a positive, (2) by the way of a preventive check, the 
 former cutting down an actual population to the level 
 of its food, the second forbidding a population to 
 
 1 Pref. to 2nd ed., pp. iv, v ; 7th ed., p. vi. ^ p. 52. 
 
CHAP. III.] THESES. 81 
 
 need to be cut down, and being, so far as it is volun- 
 tary, peculiar to man among living creatures. Of 
 the positive, all those that come from the laws of 
 nature may be called misery pure and simple ; and 
 all those that men bring on themselves by wars, 
 excesses, and avoidable troubles of all kinds are of a 
 mixed character, their causes being vice and their 
 consequences misery. Of the preventive, that restraint 
 from marriage which is not accompanied by any 
 immoral conduct on the part of the person restraining 
 himself or herself is called moral restraint. Any 
 restraint which is prudential and preventive, but 
 immoral, comes under the head of vice, for every 
 action maybe so called which has "a general tendency 
 to produce misery," however innocuous its immediate 
 effects.^ We find, therefore, that the positive and the 
 preventive checks are all resolvable into vice, misery, 
 and moral restraint, or sin, pain, and self-control, 
 a threefold division that makes the second essay 
 " difi"er in principle " from the first.'' ; 
 
 We have here a twofold alongside of a threefold 
 division of the checks to population. The one is 
 made from an objective, the other from a subjective 
 point of view. The division of checks (l) into posi- 
 tive and preventive has regard simply to the outward 
 facts ; a population is in those two ways kept down 
 to the food. The division of them (2) into vice, 
 misery, and moral restraint has regard to the human 
 agent and his inward condition, the state of his 
 feelings and of his will. For example, the positive 
 
 1 &say, 2nd ed., p. 11 n. ; Yth ed., p. 9 n. 2 2nd ed., Pref. p. vii. 
 
82 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 check viewed subjectively, or from the human being's 
 point of view, is the feeling of pain ; the will is not 
 directly concerned with it. The preventive, from the 
 same point of view, is of a less simple character. First 
 of all, moral restraint involves a temporary misery or 
 pain in the thwarting of a desire ; " considered as a 
 restraint upon an inclination otherwise innocent and 
 always natural, it must be allowed to produce a certain 
 degree of temporary unhappiness, but evidently slight 
 compared with the evils which result from any of 
 the other checks to population," ^ and " merely ^ of the 
 same nature as many other sacrifices of temporary 
 to permanent gratification which it is the business 
 of a moral agent continually to make." The reverse 
 is true of vicious excesses and passions ; in their 
 immediate gratification they are pleasant, but their 
 permanent effects are misery. From the point of 
 view of the will the case is clear, for the state of the 
 will would be described by Malthus, if he ever used 
 such terms, as in the one case good, and in the other 
 case evil, pure and simple. Of course in treating the 
 matter historically we may neglect the subjective 
 point of view, not because it is not necessary for 
 proper knowledge of the facts, but because it leads 
 to a psychological inquiry, the results of which are 
 independent of dates. 
 
 Malthus goes on to say that, in all cases where 
 there is the need for checks at all, it is the sum-total 
 of all the preventive and positive checks that forms 
 the check to population in any given country at any 
 
 1 2iid ed., Bk. I. ch. ii. p. 10. 2 ^^^g the 3rd ed. 
 
CHAP. Ill,] THESES. 83 
 
 given time/ and his endeavour will be to show in 
 what relative proportions and in what degree they 
 prevail in various countries known to us. He assumes 
 further that the preventive and the positive checks 
 will " vary inversely as each other." In countries 
 where the mortality is great the influence of the 
 preventive check will be small ; and, where the pre- 
 ventive check prevails much, the positive check, or in 
 brief the mortality, will be small. ^ 
 
 In society, as it was in the first years of the nine- 
 teenth century, Malthus thinks he can trace out even 
 by his own observation an " oscillation," or what it 
 is the fashion to call a " cycle," in the movement of 
 population. History does not show it well, simply 
 because " the histories of mankind which we possess 
 are in general only of the higher classes," ' and it is 
 the labouring classes to which the observation applies. 
 Their painful experience of the ruder checks has not 
 prevented a " constant effort " in the labouring popu- 
 lation to have larger families than they can well 
 support. The consequence is that their numbers are 
 increased; they must divide amongst eleven and a 
 half millions the food that was formerly divided 
 among eleven millions ; they must have lower wages 
 and dearer provisions. But this state of distress 
 will so check population that in process of tine the 
 numbers will be almost at a standstill, while at the 
 same time, since the demand for food has been greater 
 
 1 3rd ed., p. 21; 7th ed., p. 9. 2 3rd ed. I. c. 
 
 ' 2nd ed., p. 13 ; 7th ed., p. 10. His own book has helped to make 
 this less true. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. t. 
 
 and labour has been cheaper, the application of capital 
 to agriculture will have increased the available food. 
 The result will be the same tolerable degree of comfort 
 as at the beginning of the cycle, and the same, relapse 
 from it as at the second stage. He conceives the two 
 stages to follow each other as naturally as sunshine 
 rain and rain sunshine. The existence of such a 
 cycle may remain concealed from the ordinary his- 
 torian, if he looks merely to the money-wages of the 
 labourer, for it frequently happens that the labourer 
 gets the same sums of money for his wages during 
 a long series of years when the real value of the sums 
 has not remained the same, — the price of bread in 
 what we have called the second stage of the cycle 
 being much dearer than it was in the first, and than 
 it will be in the third.^ Though Malthus expressly 
 qualifies his statements by showing that civilization 
 tends to counteract these fiuctuations, it certainly 
 seemed to be his belief in 1803 that on the whole 
 the working classes of Europe, and especially of 
 England, were powerless to escape from them. How 
 far this view is justified will be seen presently. 
 
 ^ 2ad ed., pp. 14, 15. With this description of the " cycle " compare 
 the view of Marx as given below in Book IV. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 85 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SAVAGE, BAEBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 
 
 Simile supplanted by Fact — Savage Life — Population dependent not on 
 possible but on actual Pood — Indirect Action of Positive Cbecks — 
 Hunger not a Principle of Progress — Otaheite a Crux for Common 
 Sense — Cycle in the Movement of Population — Pitcairn Island — 
 Barbarian and Oriental — Nomad Shepherds — Abram and Lot — 
 Cimbri and Teutones — Gibbon versus Montesquieu — " At bay on the 
 limits of theUniverse '' — Misgovernment an indirect Check on Popu- 
 lation — Ancient Europe less populous than Modem — Civilization 
 the gradual Victory of the third Check. 
 
 The main position of the essay was so incontro- 
 vertible, that when the critics despaired to convict 
 Malthus of a paradox, they charged him with a 
 truism. To the friendly Hallam ^ the mathematical 
 basis of the argument appeared as certain as the 
 multiplication table, and the unfriendly Hazlitt " did 
 not see what there was to discover after reading the 
 tables of Noah's descendants, and knowing that the 
 world is round." ^ If the essayist had done nothing 
 more than put half-truths together into a whole, he 
 would have " entrenched himself in an impregnable 
 fortress " and given his work a great " air of mastery." ' 
 But he would have convinced the understanding 
 
 1 Miss Martineau, Autob., vol. i. p. 210. 
 
 2 Reply to Malthus, p. 20. Cf. below, Book IV. 
 ' Pref to 2nd ed., p. vi. 
 
86 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 without convincing, the imagination. Adam Smith 
 himself would have done no more than half his work, 
 if he had been content to prove the reasonableness of 
 free trade without showing, in detail, the effect of it 
 and its opposites. Even the most competent reader 
 has seldom all the relevant facts marshalled in his 
 memory, ready to command ; and he will always be 
 thankful for illustrations. The Essai/ on Population 
 in its second form certainly excelled all economical 
 works, save one, in its pertinent examples from life 
 and history. 
 
 Imagination in the narrower sense of the word is 
 to be out of court. Malthus, like Adam Smith, not 
 only leaves little to his reader's fancy, but makes 
 little use of his own. His own had misled his readers 
 in the first essay, though it had certainly given that 
 little book much of its piquancy ; and he resolves for 
 the sake of truth to chain it up, as Coleridge chained 
 up his understanding. The self-denying ordinance 
 is only too fully executed. The style of his essay 
 is truly described by himself^ as having gradually 
 " lost all pretensions to merit." Edition follows 
 edition, each with its footnotes, supplements, re- 
 arrangements, and corrections, tiU the reader feels that 
 this writer " would be clearer if he were not so clear." 
 
 But the title-page supplies a guiding thread. From 
 the second edition onwards to the last, "Past" and 
 " Present " appear in large letters, " Future " in small. 
 The entire work may therefore be divided according to 
 the three tenses, with the emphasis on the two former. 
 
 ' 2nd ed., Pref. p. vi. True even then, and much more afterwards. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BAEBAEIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 87 
 
 The first book is devoted to the past, the second to 
 the present, and the third and fourth to the future. 
 
 The First deals with the less civilized parts of the, 
 world as it now is, and the uncivilized past times; 
 the Second with the different states of modern 
 Europe ; the Third criticizes popular schemes of future 
 improvement ; while the Fourth gives the author's 
 own views of the possible progress of humanity. 
 
 After explaining his principles, Malthus takes a 
 survey of human progress, if not from brute to savage, 
 at least from savage to citizen. He shows us how 
 the rude and simple positive checks become compli- 
 cated with the preventive ; and he leads us up from 
 barbarism to civilization till we find ourselves in a 
 society where the citizens think less of check than of 
 chief end, and less of self-sacrifice than of self-devo- 
 tion, to some cause or person, and even the inferior 
 members act, at worst, from mixed motives, containing 
 good as well as evil, These are the two extreme ends 
 of his line. It would be useless to deny that he 
 lingers longest over the less pleasing, and gives Godwin 
 some excuse for questioning his logical right to believe 
 in the more pleasing at all.^ At the same time it 
 would have been (even logically) impossible for him 
 to have attacked Godwin for taking abstract views 
 of human nature, and then to have persisted in an 
 abstraction of his own, after all his own European 
 travel and historical studies. His fault had lain in 
 defective premises, not in false reasoning ; and he 
 remedies the fault. 
 
 1 Godwin, On Population, I. iv. 31, 32. 
 
88 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 Let us take his account in his own order. Be- 
 ginning with present savagery, which with some 
 i qualifications is a picture of our own past, he sifts 
 out the descriptions of Cook, Vancouver, and other 
 travellers, to see what checks to population operate 
 in different grades of savage humanity. At the very 
 bottom of the scale comes Tierra del Fuego, by 
 general consent the abode of pure misery, and there- 
 fore naturally the home of a sparse population. Next 
 come the natives of the Andaman Islands and of 
 Van Diemen's Land. " Their whole time is spent in 
 search of food," which consists of the raw products of 
 the soil and sea ; the whole time of every individual 
 is devoted to this one labour, and there is neither 
 room nor inducement for any other industries. Vice 
 is hardly needed ; misery in the shape of perpetual 
 scarcity and famine keeps down the people to the food. 
 Third in the scale of human beings are the New 
 Hollanders, the original inhabitants of North- West 
 Australia, among whom can be traced not only the 
 check of misery, but the check of vice. The women 
 are so cruelly treated at all times, and the children 
 have so harsh an upbringing, that there is no difficulty 
 in understanding how population does not even reach 
 the full limit of the scanty food. War and pestilence 
 make the assurance doubly sure. As savages are 
 entirely innocent of sanitary science, the dirt of their 
 persons and their houses deprives them of " the 
 advantage which usually attends a thinly-peopled 
 country," comparative exemption from pestilence.^ 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 31 ; 7tli ed., p. 23. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 89 
 
 Even the Nortt American Indians, who are one step 
 higher than the New Hollanders, come under the 
 same condemnation for overcrowding, and for much 
 else besides. The account which Malthus gives of 
 them may be compared with that of De Tocqueville 
 half a century later. Eomance has clung to them 
 only because they were the nearest and best-known 
 savages of their kind, and their necessary labours 
 were in Europe rich men's pleasures. But hunting 
 and river-fishing cannot yield much food unless pur- 
 sued over a wide area. A hunter is so far like the 
 beast of prey which he pursues, that he must go long 
 distances for his food, and must either fly from or 
 overcome every rival. The North American Indian 
 must therefore either go West after his old food, or 
 else he must stay where he is, to beat off the 
 Europeans, or to adopt their food and their habits. 
 " The Indians have only two ways of saving them- 
 selves, war and civilization. They must either 
 destroy the Europeans or become their equals." ^ As 
 the civilization of a nation of hunters is almost 
 impossible, their extinction seems inevitable. The 
 question remains. How is this population cut down 
 to the level of its food ? 
 
 In Malthus' answer to the question occur three 
 remarks of great general importance. First, what 
 limits the numbers of a people is not the possible 
 but the actual food." Second, want destroys a 
 
 1 Bdmocratie en, Amdriqiie, Pt. II. cli. x. p. 278. TLe author is in 
 thorough agreement with Malthus. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 39 ; 7th ed., p. 28. 
 
90 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 population less often directly by starvation than 
 indirectly through the medium of manners and 
 customs/ Third, the mere pressure of impending 
 starvation does not lead to progress.^ 
 
 Mai thus is never tired of insisting on the first of these 
 remarks ; and a proper understanding of it is essential 
 to a fair judgment on his doctrine. He never says 
 that it is the tendency of a population to increase up 
 to the limits of the greatest possible amount of food 
 that can be produced in a given country. The valley 
 of the Mississippi when highly cultivated may possibly 
 support a hundred millions ; but the question is not 
 what it would do when highly cultivated, but what 
 it can do when cultivated as it now is and as men 
 now are. " In a general view of the American 
 continent as described by historians, the population 
 seems to have been spread over the surface very 
 nearly in proportion to the quantity of food which 
 the inhabitants of the different parts in the actual 
 state of their industry and improvements could as a 
 matter of fact obtain ; and that with few exceptions 
 it pressed hard against this limit, rather than fell short 
 of it, appears from the frequent recurrence of distress 
 for want of food in all parts of America."' What is 
 said here of the Indians a hundred years ago applies 
 to the Colonists now. " The actual state of industry " 
 is of course a much more improved one ; but the 
 population the land will bear is still in propor- 
 tion to it, and the amount could not have been 
 
 — __j _ _ ^^ — ^, _ 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 25; 7tli ed., p. 18. ' Ibid. p. 43; 7tli ed., p. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 39; 7th ed., p. 28. 
 
 31. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THK SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 91 
 
 increased till the actual state of the industry had first 
 been bettered. One cause of the decay of the numbers 
 of the Indians was that their method of industry, so 
 far from becoming better, became worse by their con- 
 tact with Europeans, and therefore the limit of popula- 
 tion was actually contracted instead of being extended.^ 
 This explains how it is that their diminishing numbers 
 do not bring them greater comfort. Whether the 
 numbers in any given case are too great or too small 
 depends always on the quantity of the food that is 
 divided among them ; and, where the food decreases 
 faster than the population, a population that has 
 become smaller numerically becomes actually larger 
 in proportion to the food. The statement that 
 England or any other country could bear millions 
 more than it does now is a mere reference to un- 
 explored possibilities, landing us in the infinite. It 
 may be answered in the same way as the Eleatic 
 puzzles about motion ; land infinitely improvable 
 does not mean land infinitely improved, as matter 
 infinitely divisible does not mean matter infinitely 
 divided. ' The position of Malthus is therefore as 
 follows : given a people's skill, and given its stand- 
 ard of living at any time, its numbers are always 
 tending to be the utmost that can be furnished by 
 that skill with a living up to tha.t standard, — that is 
 to say, with what, according to that standard, are the 
 necessaries of human life. Either a diminution of 
 that skill or an increase in that standard would cause 
 over population. The question is always a relative one. 
 
 1 2ild ed., p. 44 ; 7tli ed., p. 32. 
 
92 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 The human as distinguished from the animal 
 character of the problem appears not only in that 
 relativity (which affects mainly the preventive checks), 
 but in the indirect way in which the positive checks, 
 if we may say so, prefer to act. It is as if they 
 were always desirous of resolving themselves as far 
 as might be into preventive. The ultimate check, 
 Malthus says, is starvation ; but, he adds, it is seldom 
 the immediate one. The higher up we go in the 
 scale, the more it is hidden away out of sight. Starv- 
 ation is interpreted, by all grades of society above 
 the lowest, to mean the loss of what they conceive to 
 be the necessaries not of a bare living but of endur- 
 able life ; and even the lowest, instead of apprehending 
 some pain, apprehend some bringer of it. They do 
 not allow famine to kill them ; they create manners 
 and customs that do the work for it, keeping the 
 famine itself afar ofi". " Both theory and experience 
 uniformly instruct us that a less abundant supply of 
 food operates with a gradually increasing pressure for 
 a very long time before its progress is stopped. It is 
 difficult indeed to conceive a more tremendous shock 
 to society than the event of its coming at once to the 
 limits of the means of subsistence, with all the habits 
 of abundance and early marriages, which accompany a 
 largely increasing population. But, happily for man- 
 kind, this never is nor ever can be the case. The 
 event is provided for by the concurrent interests and 
 feelings of individuals long before it arrives ; and the 
 gradual diminution of the real wages of the labouring 
 classes of society slowly and almost insensibly generates 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 93 
 
 the habits necessary for an order of things in which 
 the funds for the maintenance of labour are stationary. 
 . . . The causes [of the retardation of population] 
 will be generally felt and [will] generate a change of 
 habits long before the period arrives." ^ "An insuffi- 
 cient supply of food to any people does not show 
 itself merely in the shape of famine, but in other 
 more permanent forms of distress, and in generating 
 certain customs which operate sometimes with greater 
 force in the prevention of a rising population " than in 
 the destruction of the risen. ^ Robertson the historian 
 truly says, that whether civilization has improved 
 the lot of men may be doubtful, but it has certainly 
 improved the condition of women. Among the Indians 
 and almost all savages, " servitude is a name too mild 
 to describe their wretched state." The hard life of 
 the men kills their instinctive fondness for the women ; 
 the latter are therefore less likely to become mothers, 
 while, if they do, their own hardships and heavy tasks 
 are a great hindrance to nursing. It is not surprising 
 that the surviving children are of good physique ; 
 none but the exceptionally strong could weather the 
 cruel discipline of childhood.^ In South America 
 the difficulty of upbringing actually led to an en- 
 forced monogamy, as well as to late marriages and 
 their not unfrequent accompaniment, irregularities 
 before marriage. Such customs diminish numbers. 
 But even the adult savages do not find life easy. 
 They are not the men to think of providing for a 
 
 1 Malthus in Min. Bet}., July 1803, p. 345. 
 2 Essay, 2iid ed., p. 25; Vtt ed., p. 18. ^ jfci^. p_ 29; Tit ed., p. 21. 
 
94 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 rainy day ; in the short moments of plenty they do 
 not think of the long days of want. Intemperate 
 living as well as the rigour and the accidents of a 
 hunting life cut off numbers in their prime. They 
 are subject to diseases and invent no remedies. Their 
 acquiescence in dirt leads to pestilences, but they in- 
 vent no sanitary reforms ; and their thinly -peopled 
 country loses its natural exemption from epidemics. 
 Their wars are internecine, for they are largely 
 prompted by sheer self-preservation, and the thought 
 that if the one combatant lives the other cannot. 
 Cannibalism itself was at first due to extreme M^ant, 
 though what occasional hunger had begun, hate per- 
 petuated in a custom. This and the low cunning 
 and mean strategy, due to a resolve to survive at 
 all costs, are the prime inventions of the struggle for 
 existence on these low levels. 
 
 Such are the causes by which the numbers of the 
 North American Indians are kept down to a very low- 
 figure ; but, low as it is, the figure is high enough for 
 the food. Apart from a difference in the standard of 
 living, the proportion of population to food is similar 
 over the inhabited world ; and in the same neigh- 
 bourhood or among cognate races it will be almost 
 identical. A diminution in one Indian tribe, not 
 being voluntary, will not be the cause of plenty to 
 the survivors ; it has been the effect of want, and it 
 will simply weaken the collective force of the tribe 
 in the struggle against others. i 
 
 The supremacy of want as the ultimate check on 
 
 1 Slid ed., pp. 37, 45 ; 7tli ed., pp. 27, 32. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 95 
 
 population is illustrated by tlie instant expansion of 
 population which is produced in these grades of 
 humanity by an accession of plenty. When a tribe 
 falls upon fertOe land, its numbers swell, and its col- 
 lective might, depending on numbers, becomes greater. 
 The increase of food, however, seems in this case to 
 lead to nothing else than increase of numbers. There 
 is a melancholy equality of suffering between tribe and 
 tribe, as well as between members of the same tribe. 
 There is no distinction of rank, but only of sex and 
 bodily strength, as regards endurance of hardships. 
 
 It is in this connection that Malthus throws some 
 light on the question how progress could ever take 
 place at all. His answer is not unlike Adam Smith's* 
 remark about the connection of high wages with good 
 work. He says, that beyond a certain limit, hard 
 fare and great want depress men below the very 
 capacity of improvement ; comfort must reach a 
 certain height before the desires of civilized life can 
 come into being at all. If the American tribes, he 
 says, have remained hunters, it is not simply because 
 they have not increased in numbers sufficiently to 
 render the pastoral or agricultural state necessary to 
 them. Eeasons which Malthus does not pretend to 
 particularize,^ and which he allows to be unconnected 
 with mere increase or decrease of numbers, have pre- 
 vented these tribes from ever trying to raise cattle 
 or grow corn at all. " If hunger alone could have 
 prompted the savage tribes of America to such a 
 
 ^ Though, like Coleridge (MS. note in another place), he mentions 
 hrandy. 
 
96 MALTHIJS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 change in their habits, I do not conceive that there 
 would have been a single nation of hunters and fishers 
 remaining ; but it is evident that some fortunate 
 train of circumstances, in addition to this stimulus, 
 is necessary for this purpose ; and it is undoubtedly- 
 probable that these arts of obtaining food will be first 
 invented and improved in those spots which are best 
 suited to them, and where the natural fertility of the 
 situation, by allowing a greater number of people to 
 subsist together, would give the fairest chance to the 
 inventive powers of the human mind." " A certain 
 degree of [political] security is perhaps still more 
 necessary than richness of soil to encourage the change 
 from the pastoral to the agricultural state." ^ Hese 
 passages are remarkable because they seem to con- 
 tradict the general tenor of the author's writings. 
 We were told with great emphasis in the first edition 
 of the essay that difiiculties generate talents,' and 
 even the second and later are full of approving com- 
 mentaries on the proverb, " Necessity is the mother 
 of invention." ^ The contradiction is soon solved. 
 Malthus has no faith in the civilizing power of com- 
 petition when it means a struggle among starved 
 men for bare life, but much faith in it when it means 
 the struggle for greater comfort among those who 
 already have the animal necessaries.* The signifi- 
 
 1 2nd ed., pp. 43, 92 ; 7th ed., pp. 31, 64. Cf. I. vi., 2nd ed., p. 82 n. ; 
 Vtli ed., p. 57 n. 
 
 ^ See above, pp. 35, 36. 
 
 s E.g. 2nd ed., II. ii. 199; 7th ed., p. 135. 
 
 * Compare the suggestive remarks of Eogers, Six Centuries, pp. 270, 
 271. He thinks that a movement like Lollardism could not have 
 succeeded in times of utter depression. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBAEIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 97 
 
 cance of his admissions will be noticed later. Mean- 
 while it must be observed that the passage jusfc 
 quoted is not perfectly precise. The larger the 
 society, the greater might be the division of labour 
 and consequent stimulus to invention ; but a tribe 
 might be large and yet have little in it of a society, 
 and still less of a division of labour. Without 
 such favouring circumstances as Malthus mentions 
 the progress cannot take place ; but even with them, 
 it need not ; they are therefore not the real motive 
 power. 
 
 The account of the state of population among the 
 South Sea Islanders,^ which comes next in order to 
 the chapter on the American Indians, is an illustration 
 of these remarks. These savages live in a fertile 
 country and yet they make no progress. As this 
 is not the only point illustrated, it is worth while 
 to look at the chapter in detail. 
 
 Malthus begins by observing that population must 
 not be thought more subject to checks on an island 
 than on a continent. The Ahh6 Raynal, in his book 
 on the Indies, had tried to explain a number of 
 modern customs that retarded population ^ by refer- 
 ring them to an insular origin. He thought that 
 they were caused at first by the over-population 
 of Britain and other islands, and were imported 
 therefrom into the continents, to the perplexity of 
 later ages. But as a matter of fact population on 
 the mainlands is subject to the same laws as on 
 the islands, though the limits are not so obvious to 
 
 Book I. ch. V. 2 ^ g_ cannibalism and late marriages. 
 
 H 
 
98 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 common observation, and the case is not put so neatly 
 in a nutshell. A nation on the continent may be as 
 completely surrounded by its enemies or its rivals, 
 savage or civilized, as any islanders by the sea ; and 
 emigration may be as difficult iu the one case as in the 
 other. Both continent and island are peopled up to 
 their actual produce. " There is probably no island 
 yet known, the produce of which could not be further 
 increased. This is all that can be said of the whole 
 earth. Both are peopled up to their actual produce. 
 And the whole earth is in this respect like an island."^ 
 The earth is indeed more isolated than any island of 
 the sea, for no emigration from it is possible. The 
 question, therefore, to be asked about the whole earth 
 as about any part of it, is, " By what means the 
 inhabitants are reduced to such numbers as it can 
 support ? " 
 
 This was the question which forced itself on Captain 
 Cook when he visited the islands of the Pacific and 
 Indian Oceans. Some of his experiences there, espe- 
 cially in New Zealand, show that the native popu- 
 lation was kept down in nearly the same way as the 
 American. Their chief peculiarity is the extreme 
 violence of their local feuds. The people of every 
 village he visited petitioned him to destroy the 
 people of the next, and "if I had listened to them 
 I should have extirpated the whole race." A sense 
 of human kinship is impossible at so low a level 
 of being ; and the internecine wars of the New 
 Zealanders were the chief check to their numbers, 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 46 ; 7th ed., p. 33. Cf. pp. 290 and 339. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBAEIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 99 
 
 which, from the distressing effects of occasional 
 scarcities, would seem always at the best to have 
 been close to the limits of the food. 
 
 The first impression of common sense is that dis- 
 tress is natural where food is scanty, and unnatural 
 where it is plentiful. But " if we turn our eyes from 
 the thinly-scattered inhabitants of New Zealand to the 
 crowded shores of Otaheite and the Society Islands " 
 we find no such phenomenon. "All apprehension 
 of death seems at first sight to be banished from a 
 country that is described to be fruitful as the garden 
 of the Hesperides." But reflection tells us that 
 happiness and plenty are the most powerful causes 
 of increase. We might, therefore, expect a large 
 population in Otaheite; at its first start it might 
 double itself not in twenty -five but in fifteen years. 
 Captain Cook estimated it (on his second voyage in 
 1773) as 204,000. How could a country about one 
 hundred and twenty miles in circuit support an 
 increase that doubled these numbers in twenty-five 
 years? Emigration is impossible, for the other 
 islands are in the same situation. Further cultiva- 
 tion is inadequate, for scientific invention is quite 
 wanting. The answer is that the increase does not 
 take place, and yet there is no miracle. Licentious- 
 ness among the higher classes, and infanticide 
 amongst all classes, are freely practised. The free 
 permission of infanticide no doubt, as Hume remarks,^ 
 tends as a rule rather to increase than to diminish 
 
 1 In ^Essays, vol. i., Essay XI., Populomness of Ancient Nations, p. 
 444 (ed. 1768). 
 
 H 2 
 
100 MALTHUS AND HIS WORE. [bk. i, 
 
 population, for "by removing tlie terrors of too 
 numerous a family it would engage many people in 
 marriage," and such is the force of natural affection, 
 that comparatively few parents would carry out their 
 first intentions. But in Otaheite in its old state 
 custom had made infanticide easy, and it was a real 
 check. War against other islands was a third check, 
 frequently destroying the food as well as the peoj^le, 
 thus striking down two generations at once. All 
 these checks notwithstanding, the population was up 
 to the level of the food, and there was as much 
 scarcity and keen distress as on any barren island. 
 
 Such at least was the state of things discovered by 
 Captain Cook in his three voyages (the last in 1778) 
 and Captain Vancouver (in 1791). On the other hand, 
 the author of A Missionary Voyac/e to the South Pacijic 
 Ocean in 1796-8 (London, 1799) found a people very 
 scanty as compared with the food. The accuracy of 
 both accounts is borne out by the description of the 
 habits of the people at these two periods. Captain 
 Cook says they were careful to save up every scrap of 
 food, and yet suffered often from famine. The mission- 
 aries observe the frequency of famine in the Friendly 
 Islands and the Marquesas, but say of the Otaheitans 
 that they are extremely wasteful, and yet never seem 
 to be in want. Even in the intervals between one 
 of Cook's voyages and another the state of the island 
 had altered. Malthus sees here an illustration of two 
 facts. The one is that, . apart from changes in the 
 standard of living, population fluctuates between 
 great excess and great defect, great numbers with 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 101 
 
 great mortality, and great comfort witli rapid multi- ] 
 plication of numbers. The other, which explains the 
 first, is that any cause affecting population, either 
 towards increase or towards decrease, continues to 
 act for some time after the disappearance of the 
 circumstances that first occasioned it. For example, 
 over-populousness would lead to wars,^ and the 
 enmities of these wars would long survive their first 
 occasion. Again, over-populousness would lead to 
 greater infanticide and vice, which would become 
 habitual. New circumstances would, no doubt, after 
 a time bring new habits, and, to use the author's 
 words, would "restore the population, which could not 
 long be kept below its natural level without the most 
 extreme violence. How far European contact may 
 operate in Otaheite with this extreme violence and 
 prevent it from recovering its former population is a 
 point which experience only can determine. But, 
 should this be the case, I have no doubt that on 
 tracing the causes of it, we should find them to be 
 aggravated vice and misery." = As a matter of fact 
 either European contact has caused a diminution, or 
 exacter inquiry has made a lower estim.ate of the 
 population of all Polynesia. The people of the whole 
 Society Islands is reckoned at between 15,000 and 
 18,000,' which is a long way from Cook's estimate 
 of 204,000 for Otaheite alone. We can hardly 
 believe, however, that the vice and misery of Otaheite 
 are more than ten times as great as they were in 
 
 1 Cf. Plato, Bepuh., ii. 2 2nd eel, p. 57; Vtli ed., p. 41. 
 
 2 Behm and Wagner (BevoLk. d. Erde, 1882) give it at 16,300. 
 
102 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 1773 ; and perhaps we may suppose Malthus to mean 
 that, if the European influences were of the same 
 character at the end as they were at the beginning, 
 and were as pernicioiis to the Polynesian as to the 
 Red Indian, the language of pessimism would be 
 justified. The passage at least shows how unfair it 
 is to suppose Malthus to desire at all costs a small 
 population ; he is careful to say that, while vice in 
 Otaheite by reducing the numbers caused a transient 
 plenty among the survivors, still " a cause which may 
 prevent any particular evil may be beyond comparison 
 worse than the evil itself." ^ Life itself may be 
 bought too dear. 
 
 No good is done, however, by denying that ex- 
 cessive numbers are an evil, or by optimistic asser- 
 tion that if men are only good they will be happy. 
 There is at least one Polynesian island whose past 
 history gives a picturesque proof of the contrary. 
 Pitcairn, " the lonely isle of the Mutineers," was a 
 moral contrast to Otaheite. The inhabitants owed 
 nothing good to their parents, who were the muti- 
 neers of H.M.S. ' Bounty,' and the women of Otaheite 
 that came with them in 1790, when they first took 
 refuge in Pitcairn Island. They owed all to the 
 religious teaching of John Adams, which made them 
 so good, that there were few like them on the 
 earth.^ But in latitudes just touching the tropics, 
 with a single square mile of poor soil, surrounded 
 by wide ocean, they had no outlet for trade and 
 
 > 2nd ed., p. 57 n. ; 7th ed., p. 40 n. 
 
 2 Report of Admiral D'Hors3y to the Admiralty, 1878. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 103 
 
 modern arts. Like the inhabitants of Godwin's 
 Utopia,^ they soon peopled the little country to the 
 full extent of the food that could be got by the old 
 methods, and, unlike the Utopians, they had not 
 skill to invent new. If they had not drawn the 
 line for themselves, misery would have done it for 
 them. Their little colony at its first founding con- 
 sisted of fifteen men and twelve women. Fourteen 
 men and many women died ofi" in the course of the 
 ten years which passed before the time of moral 
 regeneration. But they left many children ; and, 
 when the patriarch John Adams was visited by a 
 passing ship in 1814, he was surrounded by a happy 
 circle of devout families. Eapidly outgrowing the 
 resources of the place, these simple folk removed in 
 1831 to Tahiti, eighty-seven strong. Some remained 
 there ; others had no pleasure in their new abode, 
 and came back to suffer affliction with the people 
 of God, believing with Malthus that "a cause which 
 may prevent any particular evil may be beyond all 
 comparison worse than the evil itself." The evU was 
 real, however, and, in default of celibacy or new ways 
 of bread winning, their only cure seemed emigration. 
 So in 1855, Tahiti seeming ineligible, they journeyed 
 further west to Norfolk Island. Though there are 
 more than four hundred and forty to the square 
 mile in England and Wales, two hundred people of 
 this primitive sort had been certainly too many for 
 the single square mile of Pitcairn Island ; and they 
 did not leave a moment too soon. Home sickness 
 
 1 See above, pp. 17, 18. 
 
104 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 brought back two entire families (of seventeen 
 persons) in 1859. One or two stray travellers joined 
 them five years afterwards ; but, with allowance for 
 these, we find that the increase of population on Pit- 
 cairn Island reaches the highest estimate of Malthus. 
 When the English Admiral D'Horsey visited the 
 place in 1878, the quarter of a hundred had grown in 
 nineteen years, at the moderate cost of twelve deaths, 
 to a population of ninety^ persons. The primeval 
 virtues will avail little without the modem arts. 
 
 Eeturning to Malthus, we find him following an 
 order of his own, in rough conformity with the 
 orthodox progress from deer to sheep, and from 
 sheep to corn. He takes us from Polynesian savages 
 to the nomad pastoral nations of ancient Europe.^ 
 The vast migrations and their momentous historical 
 eff"ects he ascribes to the "constant tendency in the 
 human race to increase " beyond its food, and thinks 
 that when history has been rewritten it will contain 
 more of this.^ " The misfortune of history is, that 
 while the particular motives of a few princes and 
 leaders are sometimes detailed with accuracy, the 
 general causes which crowd their standards with 
 willing followers are totally overlooked." * At first 
 sight the phenomenon of civilized agricultural 
 nations unable to repel the invasion of shepherds 
 seems incredible ; a country in pasture cannot 
 possibly support so many inhabitants as a country 
 
 * Behm and Wagner say ninety -three. 
 
 2 Essay, Book I. ch. vi. 3 gee above, p. 83. 
 
 * 2ncl ed., p. 68 n. ; 3rd ed., p. 115 n. He afterwards altered " totally " 
 to " often entirely," Tth ed., p. 47 n. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 105 
 
 in tillage. A shepherd, it is true, is nearer to the 
 skilled labourer than a hunter; he does not simply 
 take what nature gives him, where nature puts it ; 
 he keeps the desired objects of consumption under 
 his own control, and his life is stronger because more 
 social. Early African colonization, as Adam Smith 
 pointed out, was less successful than early American, 
 because the natives, being shepherds and even farmers 
 rather than fishermen, were stronger in their resources 
 and more united than the American aborigines, so 
 that the European intruders were not able to displace 
 them.^ We should have expected the Scythian, 
 Cimbrian, and Gothic invaders of ancient times to 
 have had a similar rebuff'. " But what renders 
 nations of shepherds so formidable is the power 
 which they possess of moving altogether, and the 
 necessity they frequently feel of exerting this power 
 in search of fresh pasture for their herds." ^ They 
 have always in their breeding stock a reserve of food 
 for an emergency. The mere consciousness that their 
 mode of life does not bind them to one place gives 
 them less anxiety about providing for a family. 
 Therefore, when they exhaust one region and begin 
 to feel the pinch of want, they make an armed 
 emigration on the scale of whole tribes at once, for 
 the occupation of more fruitful regions, and, as a rule, 
 the conquest of them by force. The law of their life 
 is a series of periodical " struggles for existence " ' 
 between one nation and another, in which the fittest 
 
 ' Wealth of Nations, Book IV. ch. vii. Part iii. p. 286 (ed. MaoC). 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 66 ; 7th ed., p. 46. 
 
 ^ His own word : 2nd ed., p. 67 ; 7th ed., p. 47. 
 
106 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 survive at the cost of a prodigious waste of human 
 life. 
 
 The milder initial stage of this process is illustrated 
 by the separation of Abram and Lot in the book of 
 Genesis.'^ Abram "was very rich in cattle." "Lot also 
 had flocks and herds and tents. And the land was 
 not able to bear them that they might dwell together, 
 for their substance was great, so that they could not 
 dwell together. And there was a strife between the 
 herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's 
 cattle." They agreed, therefore, to separate, Lot choos- 
 ing the fertile valley of the Jordan, Abram going to 
 the left into the land of Canaan. Migrations of the 
 same sort, more or less peaceable, are described by 
 modern M'riters as extending the Eussian people from 
 time to time farther and farther to the south and 
 east.^ In the instances best known to history the 
 migrations were far from peaceable, and the puzzle 
 has been to account for their recurrence. The 
 slaughter of the German barbarians by Marius, 
 Ctesar, Drusus, Tiberius, Germanicus did not prevent 
 the reappearance of similar hordes of invaders a 
 generation later. Claudius destroyed a quarter of a 
 million of Goths ; Aurelian and Probus had the same 
 work to do again. Under Diocletian the barbarians, 
 finding the conquest of Rome too much for them, 
 slaughtered one another in frontier wars. No losses 
 seemed to exhaust the permanent possibilities of 
 population in those quarters. At last in the fourth 
 
 1 Gen. xiii. 1 — 9. Essay, 2nd ecL, p. 65 ; Yth el., p. 45. 
 
 ^ See e. g. Mackenzie Wallace : Russia, vol. ii. pp. 48, 90, &c. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 107 
 
 century " clouds of barbarians seemed to collect from 
 all parts of the northern hemisphere. Gathering 
 fresh darkness and terror as they rolled on, the 
 congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of 
 Italy and sunk the Western world in night." ^ 
 
 Why were the resources of the North so inex- 
 haustible ? Simply because the power of increase is 
 inexhaustible. The North was not, it is true, more 
 densely peopled then than now. " The climate of 
 ancient Germany has been mollified and the soil 
 fertilized by the labour of ten centuries from the 
 time of Charlemagne. The same extent of ground 
 which at present maintains in ease and plenty a 
 million of husbandmen and artificers, was unable to 
 supply a hundred thousand lazy warriors with the 
 simple necessaries of life. The Germans abandoned 
 their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, 
 employed in pasturage the most considerable part 
 of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a 
 rude and careless cultivation, and then accused the 
 scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to 
 maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When 
 the return of famine severely admonished them of 
 the importance of the arts, the national distress 
 was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of a 
 third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their youth." ^ In 
 short, the countries were more than fully peopled 
 up to their actual produce ; and, though by agri- 
 culture the actual produce would have been made 
 greater, yet agriculture was not extended. The 
 
 ' Essay, 2nd ed., p. 72; 7tli ed., pp. 50, 51. ^ gnhon, cTi. ix. p. 175. 
 
108 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 passion of the Germans for wine did not lead them 
 to plant vineyards by the Ehine and Danube, but 
 to rob the vintage of Italy. "Pigrum quin immo 
 et iners videtur sudore acquirere quod possis sanguine 
 parare." ^ Malthus supposes that even the Mark 
 system of land-holding, with its absence of cities 
 and its periodical redistributions of land, may have 
 sprung from a political motive, the fear of accustom- 
 ing the people to a settled agricultural life, and the 
 desire to make emigration less irksome to them.^ So 
 long as there were weaker peoples to be plundered, the 
 northern nations might freely double their numbers 
 every twenty-five years, or oftener, and descend again 
 on Italy and the South. Only when the whole was 
 occupied by their own people who were not likely to 
 be less stout for defence than for conquest, were the 
 hordes forced back. Not perhaps till gunpowder was 
 invented was Europe finally safe against them. Long 
 after their last inland invasions, the Norsemen found 
 their way by sea to the shores of England and France. 
 Gibbon's account of the matter is, according to 
 Malthus, substantially true. The only flaw is that 
 he thinks it necessary, in denying the greater popu- 
 lousness of North Europe in ancient times, to deny 
 the possibility of a rapid increase of population.^ The 
 German people were on the whole virtuous and 
 healthy in their manners of living, and, the checks 
 to increase being mainly the positive ones of war 
 and famine, the inci'ease itself was prodigious. But 
 
 1 Tacitus, Germ. 14. 2 2nd ed., pp. 74, V7; 7th ed., pp. 52, 53. 
 
 2 Ch. ix. 176: "indeed the im2yossiUlity of the supposition." 
 
CHAP.iv.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 109 
 
 Gibbon is greatly in advance of Montesquieu, wbo 
 believes with Sir William Temple, Mariana, and 
 Machiavelli, that the northern countries were, as a 
 matter of fact, more densely peopled then than they 
 are now, and that, further, when the Eomans repelled 
 them, a huge multitude was driven far north and 
 remained there biding its time. The same (says 
 Montesquieu) happened under Charlemagne, and 
 would happen again if a modern prince were to 
 make the same ravages in Europe ; " the nations 
 repulsed to the north, backed against the limits of 
 the universe, would there make a firm stand, till the 
 moment when they would inundate and conquer 
 Europe a third time." ^ We are to suppose these 
 immense multitudes living " at the limits of the 
 universe " on ice and air for some hundreds of years. 
 If this is to answer to the question-begging question, 
 why the North is less fully peopled than it once 
 was, it involves a miracle. But nothing more super- 
 natural than ordinary laws is really needed to explain 
 the movements of pastoral nations a thousand years 
 ago. They are the same that govern the Tartars and 
 Bedouins now.^ 
 
 In the modern nomads,' it is true, the compara- 
 tive simplicity of the circumstances and the com- 
 parative thoroughness of our knowledge about them, 
 enable us to see plainly that the local distribution 
 of the people is in strict accordance with the local 
 distribution of the food, in other words, with 
 
 ' Orandeur et Bdcadetice des Romains, cli. xvi. p. 138, ed. 1876. 
 2 Kco^,, 2nd ed., p. 76 ; 7tli ed., p. 53. s Ibid. Bk. I. ch. vii. 
 
110 
 
 MALTHUS AXD HIS VOrJC, [bk. i. 
 
 " tlie quantity of food tiie people can obtain in tlie 
 actual state of their industry and habits." We 
 should see the same thing of the rest of the world's 
 inhabitants, if the complicated commerce of civilized 
 nations did not make it less gross and palpable. The 
 power of the earth to support life may be compared 
 with the power of a horse to carry burdens. He is 
 strong in proportion to the strength of his weakest 
 part, as a chain to the strength of its weakest link ; 
 and the earth's powers of nourishment are great in 
 proportion to their greatness in the worst seasons of 
 the year.^ Again, owing to imperfect facilities for 
 distribution, one part of a society may suffer want 
 when another is in plenty.^ Among the Tartars and 
 the Arabs this is plainly seen ; and it is clear, too, 
 how the waste of life from war not only acts as a 
 direct check on population, but checks it indirectly 
 by repressing productive industry. Its fruits would 
 have no chance of preservation. " Even the con- 
 struction of a well requires some funds or labour in 
 advance, and war may destroy in one day the work 
 of many months and the resources of a whole year." ^ 
 When once warlike habits have become fixed, the two 
 evils, war and scarcity, reproduce and perpetuate one 
 another. The encouragements held out to large 
 families by the Mohammedan religion, have a like 
 effect. " The promise of Paradise to every man who 
 had ten children would but little increase their 
 numbers, though it might greatly increase their 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 99; 7th ed., p. 68. 2 7th ed., p. 82. 
 
 ' 2nd ed., p. 92; 7th ed., p. 63. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND OETENTAL. Ill 
 
 misery." ^ It could only increase their numbers if 
 it increased their food, and it could not increase their 
 food without changing their warlike habits into habits 
 of industry. Failing this, it simply creates a constant 
 uneasiness (through want and poverty) that multi- 
 plies occasions of war. Fortunately for himself, the 
 Arab often proportions his religious obedience to the 
 extent of his resources,^ and in hard times, " when 
 there is a pig at hand and no Koran," he thinks best 
 to eat what God has given him. 
 
 Nothing but increase of food will permanently 
 increase population, and where there is food the in- 
 crease will reach up to it. In those parts of Africa 
 that have furnished the Western slave supplies, there 
 has been no discernible gap from the " hundred years' 
 exportation of negroes which has blackened half 
 America." ^ Even in Egypt, where there is a striking 
 contrast between natural fertility and human lethargy, 
 the cause is not any deficiency in the principle of 
 increase. It is that property is insecure, the govern- 
 ment being despotic and its exactions indefinite. It 
 is not the want of population that has checked 
 industry, but the want of industry that has checked 
 population ; and it is bad government that has occa- 
 sioned the want of industry. "Ignorance and despot- 
 ism seem to have no tendency- to destroy the passion 
 which prompts to increase, but they effectually destroy 
 the checks to it from reason and forethought. . . . 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 94; Vth ed., p. 65. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 104 ; Ith ed., p. 72. 
 
 ^ Coleridge (MS. notes) reminds our author that Maiomet allowed 
 oblations of sand for water. 
 
112 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. r. 
 
 Industry cannot exist without foresiglit and security ; 
 the indolence of the savage is well known, and the 
 poor Egyptian or Abyssinian farmer without capital, 
 who rents land which is let out yearly to the highest 
 bidder, and who is constantly subject to the demands 
 of his tyrannical masters, to the casual plunder of an 
 enemy, and not unfrequently to the violation of his 
 miserable contract, can have no heart to be indus- 
 trious, and, if he had, could not exercise that industry 
 with success. Even poverty itself, which appears to 
 be the great spur to industry, when it has once 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 passage repeats an idea 
 expressed in every book of the essay.* Government 
 can retard the increase of population both directly 
 and indirectly, but can only advance it indirectly, 
 namely, by encouraging industry, more especially 
 agriculture. For example, industrious agriculture 
 has made China capable of bearing a great population, 
 though other causes of a more equivocal character 
 have made it exceed its great capacities^ and its 
 excessive numbers are cut down by famine and child 
 
 1 Cf. above, p. 96, &o. 
 
 2 2nd ed., III. xi. 474-5; 7th ed., III. xiv. 381. 
 
 ' Especially Book I. ch. x., the chapter on Turkey. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 113 
 
 murder.'^ The Eoman emperors found it impossible 
 by legislation to promote the increase of tbe old 
 Eoman stock, because they found it impossible to 
 restore the old Roman habits of industry, though 
 believers in the superior populousness of ancient 
 nations used to mistake their intentions for accom- 
 plished facts. 
 
 In the eighteenth-century dispute about the popu- 
 lousness of ancient nations (one particular skirmish 
 in the general battle of the books) we have seen that 
 Malthus declares for the moderns. He gives his 
 opinion in detached passages ; but, putting together 
 the different parts wherever we can find them, we 
 discover his proof to depend on two principles, which 
 are corollaries of the primary doctrine of the essay. 
 The first is, that without the extension of agriculture 
 or the better distribution of its fruits there can be 
 no increase of population ; ^ the second is, that what- 
 ever is unfavourable to industry is to that extent 
 unfavourable to population. 3 
 
 Now in the early days of Greece and Rome * the 
 population ought on these principles to have been 
 a large one, for not only was agriculture actively 
 prosecuted, but property and wealth were more 
 equally divided among the people than in later 
 times. On the other hand, the numbers were always 
 up to the level of the resources ; and the smallness of 
 the political divisions made law-givers like Solon, and 
 
 ' Mssay, Bk. I. cli. xii., ' CMna and Japan.' 
 2 2nd ed., p. 162; 7tli ed., p. 112. 3 Ibid. p. 175 ; Ytli ed., p. 120. 
 
 * See Essay, Bk. I. chs. xiii., xiv. 
 
 I 
 
114 MALTHUS AND HIS WOKK. [bk. i. 
 
 theorists like Plato and Aristotle, conscious of the 
 risk of over-population and full of plans to provide 
 against it. It is one of Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's 
 Republic that Plato has not sufficiently met this 
 difficulty, or realized that a community of goods or an 
 equal distribution of property is impossible without a 
 limitation of families. If every one may have as 
 many children as he pleases, the result will soon be 
 poverty and sedition. Of the preventive checks 
 actually recommended by the highest wisdom of the 
 Greek world, the mildest is late marriages ; the rest 
 include exposure and abortion. Colonization was 
 rather adopted in practice than recommended in 
 theory. Frequent wars and occasional plagues were 
 the chief positive checks. 
 
 In Eome even more evidently than in Greece i the 
 causes that produced inequality of property led also 
 to thinness of population. In our own days the 
 absorption of small proprietors by large would have 
 this effect in a less degree, because the large would 
 need to employ the labour of the small. In Rome 
 the labour was done by slaves; and the wonder was not 
 that the number of free citizens should decrease, but 
 that any should exist at all, except the proprietors.'^ 
 
 Yet the legislation of Augustus in favour of 
 marriage, and the universal lamentation of the later 
 Roman writers over the extinction of the old Roman 
 stock, are no more than a presumption that the 
 population was decreasing, not a proof of its actual 
 
 ^ Sparta is the chief Greek instance. 
 2 2nd ed., p. 172 ; 7th ed., p. 118. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. 115 
 
 smallness, while the prevalence of war and infanticide, 
 so often used to prove the same point, tend really 
 to do the opposite. They are for the time positive 
 encouragements to marriage, for people will not 
 hesitate to bring children into the world, if they are 
 either free to kill off the superfluous or certain to 
 find sad vacancies ready for them.' In the former 
 case, as we noticed, parental feeling will often inter- 
 fere with the infanticide, and save rather too many 
 than too few.^ Wars, on the other hand, may injure 
 the quality of the population by removing the most 
 stalwart and even the most intelligent men ; but there 
 is as much food as before, there is more room, and 
 there are therefore more marriages, till all the gaps 
 are filled, even to overflowing.' Livy need not have 
 wondered that in the Volsciau wars the more were 
 killed the more seemed to come on. The like is true 
 of plague and famine ; epidemics, like the. small-pox, 
 have never permanently lessened the population, 
 though they have increased the mortality of the in- 
 fected countries.* To take only one instance (from 
 Siissmilch) — a third of the people in Prussia and 
 Lithuania were destroyed by the plague in 1710, 
 and in 1711 the number of marriages was very nearly 
 double the average.* Emigration in like manner may 
 drain off the best blood of a nation, but cannot reduce 
 its numbers for any length of time, unless the nation 
 
 1 2nd ed.,p. 150 ; cf. pp. 164, 172-3. 7tli ed., p. 104 ; cf. pp. 113, 118. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 99. 
 
 ' 1st ed., p. 119 ; 7tli ed., Appendix, p. 515. * Mswy, 7th ed., p. 122. 
 
 6 2iid ed., p. 254 ; 7th ed., p. 246. Cf. 2iid ed., pp. 172, 175, and 67; 
 7th ed., pp. 118, 120, and 47. Cf. Hume, Pop. of Anc. N., pp. 487, and 
 especially 504. 
 
116 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 is learning a new standard of comfort. Greece and 
 Rome were not less populous because they were great 
 colonizers.^ The known existence of a number of very 
 active checks to population, instead of proving that 
 the population was absolutely small, might more 
 naturally, other things being equal, prove it to have 
 been absolutely large. It might be argued that, if 
 the population had not been great, fewer and less 
 potent checks would have done the work.^ 
 
 But other things were not equal. We know that 
 the gratuitous distribution of foreign corn had ruined 
 Roman husbandry.^ We know that even the labour 
 of the slaves who had supplanted the free labourers 
 of Italy had not been sufficiently (or sufficiently 
 well) directed to agriculture. Moreover, the increase 
 by marriage in the number of slaves did not even 
 balance the decrease in the number of the free men ; 
 else why should the Romans need to import fresh car- 
 goes of slaves every year from all parts of the world 1 * 
 
 In short, the Roman habits had become " unfavour- 
 able to industry, and therefore to population." The 
 very necessity for such a law as the Papia Poppsea 
 would indicate a moral depravity inconsistent with 
 habits of industry. This strong argument had 
 escaped even Hume, who thought that the people 
 would increase very fast under the Peace of Trajan 
 and the Antonines, forgetting that the people could 
 
 — 1 7th ed., pp. 163, 387, 394 ; 2nd ed., pp. 113, 287, 292. Cf. 1st ed., 
 
 pp. 118-19, 12311. 
 
 ' 2nd ed., p. 178 ; 7tli ed., p. 122. = 7tli ed., p. 380, top. 
 
 * 2nd ed., p. 175; 7tli ed., p. 120. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL. j|[ll7» 
 
 not unlearn tlieir habits in so short a time ; unlearn- 
 ing is harder than learning, especially for a whole 
 people; and, "if wars do not depopulate much when 
 industry is in vigour, peace does not increase popu- 
 lation much when industry is languishing. " ^ Con- 
 trariwise, it might be argued that the prevention of 
 child-murder in India will not cause over-population, 
 when it is part of a general policy accustoming the 
 people to European habits. 
 
 Allow, then, that general viciousness is inconsistent 
 AA'ith general industry, and it follows that those 
 ancient nations in which the first prevailed were less 
 populous than the modern. This seems to be the 
 argument of Malthus brought to a focus. From the 
 absence of censuses,^ it is strictly deductive ; there 
 could not have been so many people as now, and 
 therefore there were not.^ 
 
 Expressed in more technical language, the meaning 
 is, that where there is nothing present but the posi- 
 tive check and the lower kind of preventive, the 
 habits of the people are necessarily such as to hinder 
 an increase of food and thereby of population. When 
 Europe was less civilized, it was not more, but less 
 thickly peopled.* 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 175 ; 7tli ed., p. 120. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 180 ; 7th ed., p. 124. " It is therefore upon these causes 
 alone,— independently of [2nd ed. says ' besides ' ] actual enumerations,— 
 on which we can with certainty rely." 
 
 2 Dr. Wallace, Dissertation, p. 55, had given Attica in its palmy days 
 a population of 608 to the square mile ; England in the nineteenth 
 century has only 445, and crowded Belgium 487. 
 
 * Essay, 1st ed., p. 54 ; 7th ed., pp. 120, 122 ; cf. pp. 262, 434. Cf. 
 Wealth of Nations, IV. vii. 254, 255. 
 
118 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 This argument seems to be weakened by one 
 consideration— that the poor in our day put more 
 into their idea of necessaries; they have a higher 
 standard of living than the poor 2000 years ago. It 
 might therefore be said with justice that over-popula- 
 tion (a peopling beyond the food) begins much sooner 
 with us than with them, for it begins at a point 
 much farther removed from starvation, and that 
 therefore with the ancients a given amount of food 
 would go farther and feed more. But, if we look 
 only to the poor in each case, the difference between 
 the ancient standard of comfort and the modern 
 is unhappily much smaller than the difference 
 between their meagre industrial resources and our 
 ample ones, for our powers of production have grown 
 far more rapidly than the comfort of our labouring 
 population. Such difference as there is in the 
 standards is only made possible by moral restraint, 
 which has a closer affinity with modern civilization 
 than with ancient or mediaeval.^ The history of 
 modern civilization is largely the history of the gradual 
 victory of the third check over the two others ; and, 
 as one of the chief allies of the third has been com- 
 mercial ambition, the victory of moral restraint, by 
 causing a larger industry, has caused in the end not 
 a smaller, but a larger population.^ The increase by 
 being' deferred has been made only the more certain 
 and permanent. 
 
 ' Essay, 2nd ed., p. 598 ; 7tli ed., p. 476. 
 
 2 I. c. cf. 2iid ed., pp. 175, 178 ; 7th ed., pp. 120, 122. 
 
CHAP, v.] NOETH AND MID EUEOPE. 119 
 
 CHAPTBE V. 
 
 NORTH AND MID EUEOPE. 
 
 Different Effects of Commercial Ambition in different Countries — No 
 single safe Criterion of National Prosperity — Siissmilch'e " Divine 
 Plan " — Malthus in the Eegion of Statistics — His Northern Tour 
 — In Norway the truth brought home by the very nature of Place 
 and Industries— In Sweden less obvious — In Eussia quite ignored — 
 Foundling Hospitals indefensible — Tendency of People to multiply 
 beyond, up to, or simply with the Food — Author tripping — Facts 
 the Interpreters and the Interpreted — Holland — The best pater 
 patricB — Emigration in various Aspects — Evidence of the Author 
 before Emigration Committee — ^Switzerland, St. Cergues and Leysin 
 — The ^o«s asinomm of the subject. 
 
 The broad diflference between a savage and a civil- 
 ized population is, that the positive checks prevail in 
 the one, the preventive in. the other, — and between 
 ancient and modern civilizations, that vice and misery 
 prevail in the one, moral restraint in the other. ^ ^ Yet 
 every civilized nation in modern times has not only 
 passed through these three stages in the course of 
 its past history, but contains them all within it now 
 as a matter of observation. Its early history was 
 an endeavour after independence or bare life, its 
 later history an endeavour after full development ; 
 but there are strata in it to which civilization 
 has not descended, and in which the struggle for 
 bare existence prevails, alongside of strata in which 
 
 1 Essay on Population, 2nd ed,, p. 180 ; 7th ed., p. 124. 
 
120 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 the struggle is towards ideals of commercial ambition 
 and social perfection. 
 
 The view which Malthus takes of commercial am- 
 bition is substantially that of Adam Smith. As 
 soon as commerce is separated from slavery, as soon 
 as wealth is a man's own acquisition, got by the 
 sweat of his own brow, then the desire of wealth 
 has a new social aspect. It becomes what Adam 
 Smith calls " the natural desire of every man to better 
 his own condition ; " and as such it creates modern 
 commercial society, as opposed both to the ancient 
 society built upon slavery, and to the feudal built 
 upon war. 
 
 This vis mediatrix reipuhlicce, the desire of rising 
 in the world, so glorified in the Wealth of Nations^ 
 and in the Essai/ on Population,"^ is really not easy 
 to define. It is a very composite motive ; and 
 the same differences of race (whatever their origin), 
 which lead to differences of intellect and language 
 also affect a nation's standard of comfort, as soon as 
 it can be said to have one. By the influence of good 
 climate and much intercourse with foreigners, along 
 with advantages of upbringing, and perhaps of race, 
 a nation of Southern Europe comes to put into its 
 notion of happiness a great many more elements than 
 a northern nation, which has to hew its model out of 
 much poorer materials. The Norwegian standard will 
 be simpler than the Parisian. But there is more 
 behind. The question is not simply one of like and 
 
 1 E. g. II. iii. 152, 1 ; IV. ix. 304, 2 (ed. MacC). 
 2 jE^. g. Tth ed., pp. 307, 434, 473 4. 
 
CHAP. V.J NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 121 
 
 unlike elements, or of many and few elements, but 
 of the treatment of them by the human subject. 
 The English notion of comfort differs from the French 
 in its elements, which are probably more in number 
 as well as other in quality, and have a third peculi- 
 arity quite distinct from the other two, their effect 
 on the habits of the persons concerned. 
 
 French writers have noticed that the English 
 farmer works hard for such an income as will give 
 him the innumerable little luxuries of toilet, dinner- 
 table, and drawing-room, that make up the English 
 idea of comfort, while the French farmer works hard 
 that he may be able to buy another farm.'' The one 
 lives up to his income ; and in his efforts to preserve 
 it he is enterprising and persevering ; he is always 
 striving to rise to the class above him. The other, 
 on the contrary, is more content with his position in 
 society ; and simply wishes to make it stronger, by 
 gaining more property. His willing privations in 
 time of plenty are rewarded by his secure provision 
 in time of want ; he has always his land to sell. 
 
 Both are moved by the civilizing " desire to better 
 one's own condition " ; but it leads in the one case 
 to simple saving, the old stocking, the piece of land, 
 or the rentes, in the other to active using, the steam- 
 plough first, that the piano and pony-carriage may 
 follow afterwards. There is some truth in M. Taine's 
 paradox, "The Englishman provides for the future 
 not by his savings but by his expenses." ^ If capital- 
 izing means using as well as saving, there is a sense 
 
 1 Taine, Angleterre, pp. 176, 232-3. 2 lUd. p. 233. 
 
122 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 in which the French and English divide the two 
 functions between them. 
 
 This is what prevents the economist from making 
 any exact predictions about the effect of the vis media- 
 trix reijjublicce. He maj, like Adam Smith, find it 
 doing good work in the undermining of feudalism/ 
 and he may point out that at any rate it would 
 make a better guide to the world than military glory, 
 which means unhappiness to one half the world, and 
 a very mingled happiness to the other half. But he 
 cannot predict its effect on men whose characters are 
 unknown to him. He cannot even tell whether a 
 man is wealthy or not, till he knows what his wants 
 are, for wealth exists to satisfy wants, wants change 
 with human progress, the notion of wealth expands 
 with civilization, and the luxuries of one age and 
 one man are the necessaries of another. It is im- 
 possible to treat this relative question as if its 
 conditions were absolute, and to deal with men as 
 we would with figures on a slate. Two and two 
 do not always make four in such a case, but some- 
 times five, and frequently only three. A new vista 
 of comfort spread before difierent men may stimulate 
 one, spoil another, and leave a third unmoved. 
 
 It is not surprising then that the question, "By 
 what various modes is population kept to the level of 
 the food in the states of modern Europe ? " is not a 
 simple one. On some grounds it would seem com- 
 paratively easy to get the answer. There are figures 
 to be had, and in many cases a census ; there is a 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, III. iv. 183, 2, &c. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 123 
 
 general similarity of circumstances which produces a 
 general similarity of habits, and, therewith, of the move- 
 ments of population. But there is no invariable order 
 of mortality and generation. The rates of births and 
 deaths are not the same for all nations ; they depend 
 on the conduct of human beings, and may differ not 
 only in different countries, but in different parts of the 
 same country. In the same way, we have no single 
 statistical criterion of the healthy state of a popula- 
 tion, just as it might be said we have no single criterion 
 of the commercial prosperity of a country, still less of 
 its happiness. The two former stand to the last as 
 the parts to the whole. A healthy population and a 
 prosperous trade are parts of the happiness of a nation, 
 though they do not constitute the whole of it. To 
 ascertain whether a nation is happy or not, we have to 
 take into account these two parts of happiness along 
 with many others. The parts in their turn consist of 
 many parts. We measure the state of trade not only 
 by imports and exports, railway, banking and Clearing 
 House returns, and the gains of the public revenue, 
 but by subscriptions to churches, charities, and schools, 
 by savings banks and benefit societies, sales of books, 
 pictures, and luxuries of all kinds, by the state of 
 workmen's wages, by the poor-law returns, by the 
 number of marriages, emigrants, and recruits for the 
 army ; and we could make little use of most of these 
 figures without the census returns and the reports of 
 the Eegistrar General. In the same way, to measure 
 the healthiness of a population and ascertain whether 
 it is safely under the level of its food, tending to pass 
 
124 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 beyond it, or simply rising up to it, and to ascertain 
 by what ways and means the process is going on, we 
 need instead of one single general criterion a whole 
 array of particular tests. It is in the infancy of 
 statistical science that men yield to appearances and 
 " suppose a greater uniformity in things than is 
 actually found there." ^ 
 
 This was, for example, the failing of Johann Peter 
 Siissmilch, one of the earliest inquirers into the 
 movements of population. A book like Siissmilch's 
 had the same relation to the Essay on T^opulation 
 as astrology to astronomy, or alchemy to chemistry ; 
 it prepared the . way for the more accurate study. 
 Siissmilch first published his researches in 1761, 
 while the Seven Years' War was still in progress. 
 He dedicated it to Frederick the Great, as became a 
 patriot and Church dignitary ; and entitled it. The 
 Divine Plan in the Changes through which the Human 
 Race passes in Birth, Death, and Marriage. The Divine 
 plan is the one set forth in the exhortation to Noah 
 in Genesis — the peopling of the earth ; ^ and the book 
 tries to show the particular arrangements by which 
 the plan is carried out. One condition is, he says, 
 that fertility be greater than mortality ; the births 
 must exceed the deaths. On an average at present 
 each marriage produces four children ; and " the 
 present law of death " is on an average, taking town 
 and country together, 1 in 36 ; out of 36 men now 
 living, 1 must die every year. In the country it is 
 from 1 in 40 to 1 in 45 ; in the town, from 1 in 38 
 
 1 Bacon, Nov. Org., I, xlv. ^ ggg below, Bk. IV. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 125 
 
 to 1 in 32, There is a yearly excess of births repre- 
 sented by 1 in 10 and 5 in 10. The increase must 
 have been faster at first than it is now ; and the 
 raeans God took to effect His end in each case was 
 the lengthening and shortening of human life. In the 
 times of Methuselah there must have been a very 
 different law of mortality, perhaps one death in a 
 hundred ; the length of life was greater ; and prob- 
 ably the power of parentage lasted longer. The 
 average number of children might be about twenty 
 in a family instead of four; and the doubling of 
 population would take place in ten or twenty years, 
 instead of as now in seventy or eighty. Antedilu- 
 vians were long lived because their long lives were 
 needed for the replenishment of the earth ; and the 
 extreme length was shortened so soon as the time 
 came when the same end could be reached in other 
 ways. When we observe the remarkable adaptive- 
 ness of man which enables him alone among the 
 creatures ^ to live in any latitude, and when we 
 observe how he has been preserved while many 
 animals have become extinct, we need have no 
 doubt that the replenishment of the earth was really 
 the Divine purpose. It is remarkable too that, 
 though more sons are born than daughters, death 
 equalizes their numbers before mature life. The 
 " system " which prevails in the increase of man is 
 like the march of a military regiment, in which all 
 the men have their places, actions, and accoutrements 
 determined for them. The proportion of sons to 
 
 * Except the hog, adds Gibbon, Decl. and F., cb. ix. p. 171 n. 
 
136 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 daughters, and deaths to births, Siissmilch regards 
 as a tolerably fixed one ; the discovery of unexpected 
 uniformities overjoys him greatly, and he regards 
 the man who first used the London bill of mortality 
 to detect these uniformities as a sort of statistical 
 Columbus. In short, his book is an economical 
 Theodicee, a long piece of pious deductive reasoning ; 
 and it is curious to find Germany producing two such 
 optimistic books at a time when it was even further 
 from the millennium than its neighbours. 
 
 The facts of Siissmilch, ill-sifted as they were, gave 
 Malthus a much firmer ground of reasoning than 
 the scanty patches of evidence about the population 
 of ancient and barbarous nations. He is at last in 
 the region of statistics as opposed to conjecture, 
 and in the region of the personal observation and 
 travel of men who were at least asking his own 
 questions. But the fate of the bills of mortality 
 and other records, in the hands of Price and 
 Wallace, to say nothing of Petty and Siissmilch, 
 shows how important was Malthus' work as an 
 interpreter of statistics. Statistics were a novelty 
 in his day. As Adam Smith wrote on the Wealth 
 of Nations without any full statistics of the wealth, 
 and none at all of the population, of his own country, 
 Malthus wrote his first essay when there was no 
 census ; and, for some time afterwards, so compara- 
 tively isolated were the nations of Europe, that 
 to be at all certain of his facts, an author needed 
 to verify and collect them by journeying in person, 
 and seeing the scenes with his own eyes. This 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUEOPE. 127 
 
 essential work of an investigator Malthus did not 
 leave undone ; and his chapters on the state of 
 population in modern European nations are to a 
 large extent a record of his own observations. He 
 went for a summer trip in 15'99 with three college 
 friends, Dr. Edward Clarke, Mr. Cripps, and Mr. 
 Otter, afterwards Bishop of Chichester. They went 
 by Hamburg to Sweden, and there the party broke 
 up into two, Clarke and his pupil Cripps going 
 farther north, Otter and Malthus going on through 
 Norway to visit Finland and St. Petersburg.^ These 
 were the only European countries where English 
 travellers could easily make their way in those 
 years.^ In 1802 he saw France and Switzerland,^ 
 but seems not to have left the kingdom again till 
 1825, when the journey was taken for the sake of his 
 wife's health, on the death of one of his children, 
 and he was little in the mood for investigations. 
 The tours of 1799 and 1802 are the only ones 
 that have left substantial traces on his economical 
 work.* 
 
 In all his travels he found the foreigner as ignorant 
 as the Englishman on the subject of population. 
 Only twice did he hear the truth expounded to 
 him ; in Norway during his first tour, and in 
 Switzerland during his second. In the latter case 
 
 ' See aboye, p. 48. 
 
 2 The phrase on p. 216 of 2nd ed. (p. 148 of 7th), "in the preceding 
 summer of 1788," is probably a slip. We do not hear elsewhere of any 
 visit so early. See below, Bk. V. 
 
 ' See above, p. 49. Of 2nd ed., p. 281; 7th ed., p. 173, &c. 
 
 * For his other movements and other details of his life, see Bk. 
 V. (Biography). 
 
]28 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 the enlightenment was confined to one individual ; 
 but in the former the whole nation was wise. 
 While the Swedish Government was continually 
 crying for more people, and trying to "encourage 
 population," the Norwegian Government and people 
 seemed to have understood that the first question 
 must be, "Are there means to feed- more people?" 
 If not, then we multiply the nation without increas- 
 ing the joy. Of course there are cases where we 
 might thin down the nation and still less increase 
 the joy. Mere scantiness of numbers is no advan- 
 tage to a nation, any more than fewness of wants 
 to an individual ; it may mean a low state of civil- 
 ization, in both cases, j It is not by any means so 
 good for a country to be wasted by a pestilence as 
 to be opened up by a new trade. The denser the 
 population, the better; — so says Malthus himself; 
 — but, he adds, let it be a population of strong, 
 comfortable citizens, or let us stand by the small 
 numbers and the slow increase. 
 
 Look now at Norway.^ If we were dealing with 
 uncivilized times under the reign of positive checks, 
 we should expect an overflowing population, a large 
 body of poor, and in times of scarcity a great deal 
 of distress. There had been no wars for half a 
 century, the cold climate kept away epidemics, and 
 what else was left but famine to keep down the 
 population to the limits of the food ? Vice was not 
 taken into the service, and emigration was seldom 
 practised then in these regions. But Malthus visited 
 
 1 Snd and 7tli edd., Bk. II. ch. i. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 129 
 
 the country in one of tlie hardest years ever known 
 in Europe, 1799, and found the Norwegians "wear- 
 ing a face of plenty and content, while their neigh- 
 hours the Swedes appeared to be starving." ^ He 
 found the death-rate lower in Norway than in any 
 country in Europe.^ The population, however, was 
 hardly increasing at all ; and the proportion of mar- 
 riages to the whole numbers of the people was smaller 
 than in any country except Switzerland.^ The posi- 
 tive check was largely superseded by the preventive. 
 The virtue of foresight, he says, is elsewhere forced 
 upon the upper classes by the smallness of their circle 
 and the fewness of openings in business or professions ; 
 in Norway it is forced upon all classes alike by the 
 evident smallness of the country's resources, and by 
 the peculiarities of the national industry. There is 
 almost no variety of occupation or division of labour. 
 The humbler classes are almost all " housemen " 
 (Jiusmand), labourers, who receive from a farmer in 
 quasi-feudal fashion a small house and a little piece 
 of land in return for occasional labour on his fields. 
 In other countries men may easily fall into the fallacy 
 of crediting the whole of the land with a greater 
 power of supporting people than the power possessed 
 by the sum of its parts. In the great towns of Central 
 Europe a man has perhaps some excuse for trusting 
 to the chapter of accidents ; in the great variety of 
 occupations he may have some excuse for thinking 
 
 ' Essay, 2nd ed., p. 189 ; 7th ed., p. 129. 
 
 ^ The Russian figures being incredible. See later, p. 133. 
 
 3 2nd ed., p. 184 ; 7th ed., p. 126. 
 
 K 
 
130 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 there will surely be a vacancy for him, and he may 
 " e'en take Peggie." Norway, however, is to manu- 
 facturing countries what the country districts else- 
 where are to the towns elsewhere. In the country 
 districts an excess of population cannot be hidden, 
 and the superfluities must go to the towns. Those 
 who marry, therefore, when there is no vacancy for 
 them, do so with the alternatives of poverty or 
 migration clearly before their eyes. In Norway 
 every peasant, not to say every farmer, knows quite 
 certainly whether there is an opening for him or not, 
 and, if there is not, he cannot marry.' 
 
 The conditions of the problem were in this way 
 simplified, and the problem itself was satisfactorily 
 answered. The only districts where Malthus saw 
 signs of poverty were on the coast, where the people 
 live by fishing ; the openings for a fisherman are not 
 so distinctly limited in their numbers as the openings 
 for a farmer. 
 
 Time has united Norway and Sweden under one 
 king (1814), and Sweden now presents no unfavour- 
 able contrast with Norway. Even in 1825 -Malthus 
 wrote ^ that the progress of agiiculture and industry, 
 and the practice of vaccination, had caused a steady 
 and healthful increase of population since 1805. 
 He would be pleased to find too by the census that 
 the population of Norway had increased very greatly 
 in proportion to its poor. The improvement con- 
 tinues. The paupers were about one per cent, of 
 
 I and ed., pp. 188, 189 ; 7th ed., pp. 128, 129. Cf. Thornton's chapter 
 (II.) on the "Social Effects of Peasant Proprietorships," Peas. Prop. 
 (ed. 1874), p. 55. 2 In 6th ed., 1826. See 7th ed., p. 144. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 131 
 
 the population in 1869 (when they were nearly five 
 per cent, in England), which seems to have meant a 
 decrease from previous years ;^ but between 1865 and 
 1875 the population had increased fourteen per cent, 
 in spite of considerable emigration.^ Malthus would 
 have recognized with satisfaction that the nation had 
 been " either increasing the quantity or facilitating 
 the distribution " of its food,^ that is to say, improving 
 either its agriculture or its manufactures. It has 
 really done both. Though the growth of the popu- 
 lation has been greater in the centres of manufacture, 
 there has been progress also in the country districts. 
 Many of the old customs and laws that hampered 
 agriculture have ceased to exist.* Malthus himself 
 says that, if Government would remove hindrances 
 to agriculture, and spread sound knowledge about it, 
 it would do more for the population of the country 
 than by establishing five hundred foundling hospitals.® 
 He need not have confined his recommendation to agri- 
 culture ; and elsewhere he states the truth in broader 
 terras : " The true encourag-ement to marriage is the 
 
 o o 
 
 high price of labour, and an increase of employments 
 which require to be supplied with proper hands." ^ 
 Eemove hindrances to trade and spread sound know- 
 ledge of it — that (in his view) is the way to increase 
 the quantity and facilitate the distribution of the 
 products of agriculture ; and, to judge by results, 
 the Norwegian Government has followed it. 
 
 ^ English Blue Book on Foreign Poor Laws, 1875, p. 109. 
 
 2 Statesman's Year Book, 1880, p. 439. 
 
 3 Essay, 7th ed., p 112. * E. g. that of Essay, 7th ed., p. 130. 
 5 Essay, 7th ed., p. 139 ; of. pp. 151, 152. f Ibid. p. 152. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 Sweden,! as it then was, furnished a striking con- 
 trast to Norway. Malthus had the advantage there 
 of the earliest and most regular of European censuses, 
 beginning with the year 1748, and continued at 
 intervals first of three and then of five years. He 
 found that there was a large mortality, though the 
 conditions of life were superficially the same as in 
 Norway. The only explanation he could see was 
 that the size and shape of the country, as well as its 
 mode of government, did not so forcibly bring home 
 to the people the need of restraint as in Norway, while 
 at the same time the hindrances to good farming 
 were even more serious than in the smaller country. 
 From the very contiguity and general similarity of 
 the two countries, they proved Malthus' point, by 
 the Method of Difference, almost as well as a deliber- 
 ate experiment could have done. It was not that 
 Norway had an absolutely small and Sweden an 
 absolutely large population ; considerations of absolute 
 greatness or smallness never enter into this, if into 
 any, economical question. But Norway had a moder- 
 ately large population in proportion to her food, 
 ■while Sweden had in the same regard an excessive 
 population, a population which was sparely fed even 
 in average years, and decimated by famine and 
 disease in years below the average. 
 
 Russia,^ which was the third scene of Malthus' 
 
 travels, had this in common with Norway and Sweden, 
 
 that the movement of its population was unlike that 
 
 of Central Europe, and that the eccentricity was due 
 
 1 Essay, Bk. II. ck ii. 2 Ibid. Bk. II. ch. iii. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 133 
 
 to a clearly definable cause. In Norway the shape 
 and climate of the country and the fewness of the 
 available occupations forced the Government and the 
 people to restrain rather than to encourage the 
 increase of numbers ; in Sweden, under conditions 
 less simple, the habits of the people conspired with a 
 false policy of the Government to produce an exces- 
 sive increase. In both cases we have something 
 difi'erent from the typical modern society of Central 
 Europe, with its full division of labour, its system 
 of large factories, and its extensive substitution of 
 machinery for hand labour. Russia was as old- 
 fashioned as Norway and Sweden in this respect ; 
 and her physical vastness made her a difficult country 
 to know, in these days of slow communication. It 
 is not surprising that the statistics available in the 
 days of Malthus were open to grave suspicion. The 
 death-rate was given as 1 in 60, while in Norway 
 itself it had not been lower than 1 in 48, and it 
 is about I in 53 in England now, yet the number 
 of marriages and of births and the size of families 
 were no smaller than elsewhere.^ These facts by 
 themselves would simply suggest a great rate of 
 increase going on in the country concerned ; and 
 Malthus allows that there is great scope for such in 
 Russia. But there was one other fact that strength- 
 ened his doubts ahout the vital statistics of that 
 country ; contrary to the experience of all other 
 countries, it was said that in Russia more women 
 were born than men. In others, more men are born 
 
 1 2nd ed., pp. 213-14 ; Vth ed., pp. 146, 147. 
 
134 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 than women, and the numbers are only equalized 
 gradually, by the greater risks of masculine life, as the 
 years go on. In Sweden, with a climate not milder 
 than Russia, this had long been observed.^ It turned 
 out on inquiry that the Russian method of registration 
 allowed loopholes for more omissions in the deaths than 
 in the births. Public institutions, including hospitals 
 and prisons, had been left out of account ; and the 
 deaths in the foundling hospitals were alone quite 
 sufficient to alter the average very significantly for the 
 worse'. Malthus' hatred of Foundling hospitals is only 
 equalled by his dislike of Poor laws. The idea of 
 such institutions was, like that of Pitt's Poor Bill, 
 purely philanthropic. They were "to enrich the 
 country from year to year with an increasing number 
 of healthy, active, and industrious burghers," ^ that 
 would otherwise be doomed to death soon after 
 birth. It used to be said of the bounty, granted by 
 the Government of India, on slaughtered snakes, that 
 it really kept up the supply, for the natives bred them 
 to catch the bounty. The foundling hospitals had 
 an opposite efiect. They were meant to multiply and 
 they tended to destroy. They encouraged a mother 
 to desert her child at the precise time it needed the 
 minute and careful attention that only a mother can 
 give. " It is not to be doubted that, if the children 
 received into these hospitals had been left to the 
 management of their parents, taking the chance of all 
 the difficulties in which they might be involved, a 
 
 1 2nd ed., pp. 214-15 ; Vtli ed., p. 147, foot. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 218 ; Vtli ed., p. 150. Cf. above, p. 30. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 135 
 
 much greater proportion of them would have reached 
 the age of manhood and have become useful members 
 of the state." ^ But, besides increasing the mortality 
 of children, they injure the very " mainspring of popu- 
 lation " ^ by discouraging marriage and encouraging 
 irregularities. In his talks with his father, Malthus 
 had no doubt discussed the propriety of Eousseau's 
 conducit in sending his children to the Paris Foundling 
 Hospital. He would certainly have declared against 
 Rousseau. To those who argue that the foundling 
 basket may prevent child-murder, he answers that an 
 occasional murder from " false [?] shame " is saved at 
 a very dear price by the violation of " the best and 
 most useful feelings of the human heart," which the 
 existence of such an institution teaches to the poor. 
 To relieve parents of the care of their children is 
 bad for the parents,' because it takes away from 
 them a responsibility essential to full citizenship and 
 civilizing in its effects on human character ; — and it is 
 unjust to their fellow-citizens, because, like the Poor 
 Laws, it relieves one portion of society (in this case 
 rather the worst than the poorest) at the expense of 
 all the rest, and finds a career for pauper appren- 
 tices to the prejudice of independent workmen and 
 their children.* In the third place, like the Poor 
 Laws, it promises an impossibility — to relieve all that 
 come. If children are to be received without limit, 
 the resources for maintaining them should be without 
 
 ' 2nd ed., p. 219 ; Vtli ed., p. 151. Compare Price, Observations, p. 280 
 note ; and especially Hume, Pop. of Anc. N., p. 445 (ed. 1768). 
 2 Essay, ibid. 3 Essay, 2nd ed., p. 220 ; 7th ed., p. 151. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 221 ; 7tli ed., p. 152. 
 
136 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 limit ; otherwise an excessive mortality is quite 
 unavoidable.^ The second reason is no doubt an 
 economical commonplace; it is the first and third 
 that are most characteristic of Malthus. He never 
 forgets that human wants and human wills are an 
 element in every economical phenomenon, and there- 
 fore considers that the effects of character on actions 
 and of actions on character are of great economical 
 importance. He will not allow that it can be right, 
 even for a Government, to make promises that cannot 
 be performed. These two plain principles give the 
 tone to the later chapters, where he interprets for 
 us the comparatively full statistics of Central Europe 
 and our own England.^ 
 
 The law of population may be described (thougli 
 not in the exact words of Malthus) as among 
 savage peoples the tendency to increase beyond the 
 food, and among civilized to increase up to it. So 
 Professor Rogers founds his estimate of the numbers 
 of the English people in the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries on the principle that "there were 
 generally as many people existing in this country 
 as there have been, on an average, quarters of wheat 
 to feed them with. " 3 
 
 In the case of highly progressive modern nations 
 such statements would be beyond the truth ; and 
 we must either say that they tend to increase not 
 beyond but along with the food, or else we must 
 
 1 Essay, 2nd ed., pp. 216-17 ; 7tli ed., p. 149. 
 
 2 Ibid. 7th ed., Bk. II. chs. iv. to x., as rearranged in the 3rd ed. 
 
 3 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 118, 119. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 137 
 
 define food itself very widely. In the first case 
 "tendency" will mean the abstract possibility de- 
 pending on the one physiological condition ; in the 
 others it is the concrete nett possibility depending 
 on all the various conditions together. In a general 
 preface to his chapters on Central Europe, Mai thus 
 quite recognizes these distinctions and warns us 
 against exact statements. " It seldom happens," he 
 says, " that the increase of food and of population 
 is uniform ; and when the circumstances of a country 
 are varying either from this cause or from any change 
 in the national habits with respect to prudence and 
 cleanliness, it is evident that a proportion which is 
 true at one period will not be at another. Nothing 
 is more difficult than to lay down rules on this 
 subject that do not admit of exceptions." ^ 
 
 After this it is hard to believe what he tells us 
 elsewhere, that "the only criterion of a real and 
 permanent increase in the population of any country 
 is the increase of the means of subsistence."^ It 
 would be at best a negative criterion and sme qud 
 non, — there can be no increase of numbers without 
 increase of food, — though even then it is not true of 
 a " forced population," living down to a lower food.^ 
 But there clearly may be an increase of food without 
 an increase of numbers, unless the character of the 
 people is such that they do nothing with the food 
 except increase by it. Therefore, though, within 
 certain wide limits fixed for us by invariable qualities 
 
 ^ Essay, 2ii(i ed., II. v. p. 245 ; 7th ed., II. iv. p. 159. Cf. 2nd ed., 
 p. 320 ; 7th ed., p. 206. ^ j^yj^ 2nd ed., p. 347 ; 7th ed., p. 260. 
 
 = Ibid. 2nd ed., p. 348 ; 7th ed., p. 260. 
 
138 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 of human nature, predictions are justifiable on the 
 ground of the law of population'^ or any other 
 economical laws, none that specify a particular course 
 of action as a result of a particular event are trust- 
 worthy, till we know the character of the people 
 concerned.^ Mai thus always tries to bear this in 
 mind ; and, when he tells us that the lists of 
 births, marriages, and deaths in Mid Europe give 
 more information about its internal economy than 
 the observations of the wisest travellers,^ he is 
 at once interpreting those figures in the light of 
 a principle, and interpreting the principle by means 
 of the figures. This appears when we look at 
 the four chief conclusions of the general chapter 
 in question. The first is the proposition that in 
 the present state of our industrial civilization the 
 marriages depend very closely on the deaths, and the 
 births on the marriages.^ Montesquieu says that 
 wherever there is room for two persons to live 
 comfortably a marriage will certainly take place. ^ 
 In old countries experience is usually against any 
 sure expectation of the means of supporting a 
 family ; the place for a new marriage is only made 
 by the dissolution of an old. As a rule therefore 
 the number of annual marriages is regulated by the 
 
 ^ See above, p. 18. 
 
 ^ So in substance Cairnes in his rehabilitation of the Wages Fund. 
 Leading Principles, pp. 196 seq. Cliffe Leslie passim. 
 
 3 Essay, 2nd ed., p. 240; Ith ed., p. 155. 
 
 « Ihid. p. 247 ; 7th ed., p. 160. 
 
 5 " Partout ou il se trouve une place ou deux personnes peuvent vivre 
 commod^ment, il se fait un mariage. "—^sprii des Lois, Bk. XXIII. eh. 
 X, (not XXII., as in 7th ed.). 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 139 
 
 number of annual deaths. " Death is the most 
 powerful of all the encouragements to marriage,"^ 
 while on the other hand the marriages are a frequent 
 cause of the deaths. In almost every country there 
 is too great a frequency of marriages, which causes 
 as it were a forced mortality. Which of these two 
 mutual influences is the more powerful depends on 
 circumstances. In last century the proportion of 
 annual marriages to inhabitants was in Holland 
 generally as 1 in 107 or 108. But in twenty-two 
 Dutch villages it was as 1 in 64. Siissmilch ex- 
 plained this anomaly by the number of new trades 
 in Holland and the new openings for workmen. 
 Malthus would not have denied this possibility, his 
 startling paradox about death being only a particular 
 case of the general principle that " the high price of 
 labour is the real encouragement to marriage." ^ But 
 in this case the explanation ought to have applied 
 to all Holland if to any part of it. The real 
 reason came out when Malthus observed that tlie 
 mortality, which was as 1 iu 36 in Holland generally, 
 was as 1 in 22 in those villages. The additional 
 marriages did not really increase the population. 
 They were caused by the high number of deaths 
 which provided openings for the living ; and the high 
 number of deaths was caused by the unhealthiness 
 of the region and of its prevailing industries, which 
 were manufacturing rather than agricultural. The 
 choice in every large population is between having 
 
 ' Mssay, 2nd ed., p. 247 ; 7th ed., p. 160. 
 2 Ibid, and ed., p. 221 ; 7tli ed., p. 152. 
 
140 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 many lives wliicl] end soon, and few which last long. 
 Greater healthiness in the conditions of life will result 
 in the latter. We find as a matter of fact that, where 
 there has been the sanitary improvement as well as 
 simply the "replenishment" of an old country, the 
 marriage-rate goes down at the expense of the death- 
 rate, and there is an economy of human life and 
 suffering. 
 
 Putting the parts of his exposition together, we 
 get something like a deductive scheme of the growth 
 of population in old countries under an industrial 
 revolution like that of the eighteenth century. The 
 first effect of the discovery of new minerals, and 
 even (with some qualifications) of the invention of 
 new machines, is to provide new employment for 
 working men, and many new opportunities for mar- 
 riage ; the jsroportion of marriages therefore becomes 
 at once greater without any alteration (from this 
 cause at least) in the death-rate. But, when the 
 first burst of progress has passed, and the succeeding 
 improvement is not by leaps and bounds, but at a 
 uniform rate, then the proportion of marriages will 
 decrease, as the new situations are filled up and 
 there is no more room for an increasing population. 
 Once the country is really " old " in the sense of 
 fully peopled and unprovided with new sources of 
 employment, then the marriages will be regulated 
 principally by the deaths, and (the habits of the 
 people remaining the same) will bear much the 
 same proportion to each other at one time as at 
 another. It is not, however, exactly the same pro- 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 141 
 
 portion for all old countries, simply because the 
 habits and standards of living are different, to say- 
 nothing of healthiness or unhealthiness of climate 
 and occupation. For similar reasons it is not the 
 same for towns as for country districts.^ " A general 
 measure of mortality for all countries taken together " 
 would be useless if procurable ; but it cannot be 
 procured.^ 
 
 Habits, however, are sufficiently fixed to make us 
 certain that " any direct encouragements to marriage 
 must be accompanied by an increased mortality."^ 
 They spur a willing horse. Montesquieu and Siiss- 
 milch, although they both enlarge on the evils of 
 over-population, still think it a statesman's duty 
 to be, like Augustus and Trajan, the father of his 
 people by encouraging their marriages. But, if many 
 marriages mean many deaths, the princes or statesmen 
 who should really succeed in this patriotic policy 
 might more justly be called the destroyers than the 
 fathers of their people.* 
 
 If Malthus had been asked how a prince could 
 best become a real pater patriae, he would have 
 named two or three ways. The prince might direct 
 bis mind to the improvement of industry, especially 
 of agriculture.^ He might circulate news and know- 
 ledge on these subjects ; " or, as we should say now, 
 he might institute agricultural exhibitions, and regular 
 agricultural statistics of home and foreign production. 
 
 1 Esm'tj, and ed., pp. 248-9 ; 7tli ed., pp. 161-2. 2 IbiA. 
 
 5 2nd ed., p. 246 ; 7th ed., p. 159. The Italics are the author's. 
 ^ Ibid. p. 247 ; 7th ed., p. 160. ^ j^^j^, 
 
 ^ 2ttd ed., p. 205 ; 7th ed., p. 139. 
 
142 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 He would in this way increase tlie population by 
 helping to increase the food. 
 
 In the second place, he might benefit trade every- 
 where by giving it the security of good government 
 and impartial justice, a peaceful foreign policy and 
 light taxation. 
 
 In the third place, he might, together with all 
 these, encourage Emigration. Malthus devotes a 
 special chapter of the essay to this subject; and, 
 though the chapter is in a later part of his work 
 (Bk. III. ch. iv.^), this seems the best place to touch 
 on the subject. Emigration, he says, is, apart from 
 political distinctions, the same thing as migration; 
 and, if it is economically good for a man to go from 
 a poor land at his door to a rich in the next county, 
 it cannot be economically bad for him to go from a 
 poor district of his own country to a rich across the 
 sea. The mere length of the journey or the difference 
 of latitude does not afi'ect the economical nature of 
 the change. 
 
 Economical motives, however, have come very late 
 in all the great European emigrations. It was not 
 the desire of finding room for the over-crowded 
 families at home, but desire of the metal gold, or 
 else it was the simple love of adventure, or ambition 
 of conquest, that first sent the Spanish, Portuguese, 
 English, and Dutch to the far East and far West.^ 
 " These passions enabled the first adventurers to 
 triumph " over obstacles that would have deterred 
 
 ' Essay, and ed., pp. 387 seq. ; Vtli ed., pp. 287 seq. 
 2 Ibid. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 143 
 
 quiet industrial emigrants, "but in many instances 
 in a way to make humanity shudder, and to defeat 
 the very end of emigration. Whatever may be the 
 character of the Spanish inhabitants of Mexico and 
 Peru at the present moment, we cannot read the 
 accounts of the first conquests of these countries 
 without feeling strongly that the race destroyed was, 
 in moral worth as well as numbers, superior to the 
 race of their destroyers." The settlers that followed 
 on the heels of these pioneers, though they were 
 more like real emigrants, went unskilfully to work. 
 They seemed to expect that "the moral and mechani- 
 cal habits " which suited the old country would suit 
 the new,^ and everything would go on as it did at 
 home. At first therefore there would be a redundant 
 population^ in the new country rather than in the 
 old, for, however great the possible produce of the 
 colony, the actual produce would be less than the 
 wants of the new-comers on their first arrival. To 
 all this must be added the fact that, though econo- 
 mically a far and a near place are alike, they are very 
 diflferent to the sentiments of men. Patriotism is 
 no fault, and the breaking of home ties is a real evil 
 to the individuals, however beneficial the emigration 
 may be to the nation. Men are slow to move, not 
 only from the uncertain prospects of success, but from 
 that vis inertice in man which is always counteracting 
 the vis mediatrix of commercial ambition. In addition, 
 therefore, to the mere uneasiness of poverty and the 
 desire of getting a living, there is need of some spirit 
 
 1 Essay, 2nd ed., p. 391 ; Ytli ed., pp. 289-90. 2 Ibid. 
 
144 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 of enterprise, to make men willing and successful 
 emigrants.-^ Those who felt distress most would often 
 have been the most helpless in a new country; 
 they needed leaders who were " urged by the spirit 
 of avarice or enterprise, or of religious or political 
 discontent, or were furnished with means and support 
 by Government ; " otherwise, " whatever degree of 
 misery they might suffer in their own country from 
 the scarcity of subsistence, they would be absolutely 
 unable to take possession of any of those uncultivated 
 regions of which there is such an extent on the earth." 
 Emigration then (according to Malthus) is not likely 
 to happen unless political discontent and extreme 
 poverty have brought the emigrants to such a plight 
 that it is better for their country as well as for them- 
 selves that they should go. " There are no fears so 
 totally ill-grounded as the fears of depopulation from 
 emigration." ^ Emigration is not even a cure for an 
 over-population ; and is much recommended only 
 because little adopted. Gaps made in the population 
 of old countries are soon filled up ; room found ia the 
 new is soon occupied. If emigration is proposed as a 
 means of securing an absolutely unrestricted increase 
 of population by placing old countries in the position 
 of new colonies, the hope will be soon and for ever 
 cut off.^ 
 
 Towards the end of his life, Malthus had an oppor- 
 tunity of explaining his views on this subject to an 
 audience of statesmen. He appeared as a witness 
 
 ' Essay, Snd ed., p. 393 ; 7tli ed., p. 291. 
 2 2nd ed., p. 395 ; 7th ed., p. 292. 3 Ibid. 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 145 
 
 before tlie Select Committee ^ of the House of Commons 
 " to inquire into the expediency of encouraging emi- 
 gration from the United Kingdom," and his influence 
 is traceable in their Reports. They reported ^ that 
 there had been in the United Kingdom a " redundant 
 population," in Ireland agricultural, in Scotland and 
 England manufacturing ; that one cause of it had 
 been the unavoidable displacement of hand labour by 
 machinery ; ' that meanwhile the British colonies in 
 America, Africa, and Australia had few men and 
 plenty of land, and that it would benefit the whole 
 empire if parishes could convert their probable or 
 actual paupers into emigrants, always provided that 
 the remaining population could be induced not to 
 grow so fast as to fill the whole gap thus created.* 
 "The testimony" (said the Committee in their third 
 Report *) " which was uniformly given by the practical 
 witnesses has been confirmed in the most absolute 
 manner by that of Mr. Malthus, and your Committee 
 cannot but express their satisfaction at finding that 
 the experience of facts is thus strengthened through- 
 out by general reasoning and scientific principles." 
 They were more disposed than their witness himself 
 to a priori reasoning, and in many of their leading 
 
 ' Appointed in March. 1826, in the last thirteen months of Lord 
 Liverpool's Government. Malthus came before them on 5th May, 1827. 
 See Third Report of Emigration Committee, pp. 9, 1 0, and for his evidence 
 pp. 311 segf. 
 
 2 1st Report, 1826 (May); 2nd, 1827 (April). The free use of technical 
 terms is not surprising, for political economy was then a popular study. 
 For examples see 1st Report, pp. 46, 57 ; 2nd Report, pp. 63, 102 ; 
 3rd Report, pp. 261, 308. 
 
 ' 2nd Report. * 3rd Report, 1827 (June). ^ p g. 
 
146 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 questions lie declined to follow them.'' But he agreed 
 with their main conclusions, allowing that under 
 certain conditions it would be even a financial advan- 
 tage to remove unemployed workmen to the colonies 
 rather than suffer them to become paupers at home, 
 and adding, that, if he was against the admission of 
 any legal claim to relief in ordinary cases of pauper- 
 ism, still more would he be against it when the 
 pauper had before him the alternative of assisted 
 emigration.^ His own view of emigration had not 
 changed since he wrote in 1803. It was to him a 
 partial remedy ; and it is more useful when spon- 
 taneously adopted by the people ' than when pressed 
 on them by their Government. Under the torture 
 of the question he conceded no more.* 
 
 As a temporary expedient, the essay tells us,* 
 " with a view to the more general cultivation of the 
 earth and the wider extension of civilization, it seems 
 to be both useful and proper," and is to be encour- 
 aged, or at least not prevented, by Governments. All 
 depends on the rate of wages. If wages were high 
 enough to enable people to live with what they 
 counted reasonable comfort at home, we may be sure 
 their domestic and patriotic ties would be strong 
 enough to keep them there. The complaint that 
 emigration raises wages is most unreasonable. At 
 the utmost it prevents wages from falling too low, 
 
 1 Cf. below, ck. vii. (on Ireland), especially pp. 197 and 199. 
 
 2 3rd Report, p. 315, qu. 3257. 
 
 ^ The Emigration Committee recommended that the help of the state 
 should only be given on condition of a local initiative and local 
 contribution. 
 
 1 See e. g. qu. 3370. 6 7th ed., p. 292. 
 
CHAP, v.] NOETH AND MID EUROPE. 147 
 
 and helps to heal the mischief caused by fluctuations 
 in trade. 
 
 We shall find at a later stage that Mai thus is 
 keenly aware of the unhappiness caused in modern 
 industrial societies by changes in the demand for 
 goods, occurring even in the natural (or uninter- 
 rupted) course of trade. A movement in favour of 
 emigration in 1806 and 1807 led him to insert a 
 paragraph in the fourth edition of his essay which 
 explains the relation of emigration to these changes. 
 He accepts the statement of Adam Smith, that " the 
 demand for men, like that for any other commodity, 
 necessarily regulates the production of men;"^ but 
 he adds (as Cairnes added later) that it takes some 
 little time to bring more labour into the market when 
 there is demand for it, and some little time to check 
 the supply when once it has begun to flow.' A 
 family may be reared to catch high wages, and the 
 high wages may have gone before the family has 
 arrived at maturity. Malthus distinguishes between 
 a normal or slight " oscillation " of this kind, and an 
 excessive redundancy caused by an unusual stimulus 
 to production — the stimulus, for example, of the 
 foreign wars and the foreign trade of the years before 
 Waterloo. In the normal case we must submit to 
 the inevitable ; in the exceptional we may find an 
 outlet in emigration. No doubt, even if there be no 
 emigration, in the long run the labour market will 
 
 1 W. ofN., I. viii. 36 (MacC.'s ed.). "Other" is not a slip; the 
 writer is conscious of his cynicism. 
 
 2 Essay, III. iv. 293, of which the concluding paragraph was added in 
 1817. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 right itself ; but the process will be a very painful 
 one to the workmen concerned. Emigration is the 
 humane and politic remedy. 
 
 Tn some cases, such as Norway and the uplands of 
 Switzerland/ there would seem to be no need for 
 Government to teach the people to emigrate. Cir- 
 cumstances should do it for them ; but human beings 
 are influenced by habit and " chance " as much as 
 by any deliberate motive, commercial or otherwise. 
 In the Swiss uplands, as Malthus knew them, "a 
 habit of emigration depended not only on situation 
 but often on accident." Three or four successful 
 emigrations " have frequently given a spirit of enter- 
 prise to a whole village, and three or four unsuccessful 
 ones a contrary spirit." ^ This is illustrated by the 
 contrast of two parishes, both in the Canton de Vaud, 
 St. Cergues in the Jura, and Leysin « in the Bernese 
 Alps near Aigle. The movements of population in 
 Leysin puzzled M. Muret, the Swiss economist, who 
 drew up a paper on the depopulation of Switzerland 
 for the Economical Society of Berne in the year 1766. 
 He found that in this parish of four hundred people 
 there were born every year on an average only eight 
 children, whereas, elsewhere in Canton de Vaud, to 
 the same number of people eleven (in Lyonnais 
 sixteen) children were a common proportion. The 
 difference, he observed, disappeared by the age of 
 twenty, when, if we may say so, the difference died 
 off, the eight in Leysin being healthier than the 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., Bk. 11. ch. v. 2 2nd ed., pp. 275-6 ; 7tli ed., p. 169. 
 ' Or "Leyzin," as Malthus spells it. 
 
CHAP, v.] NOETH AND MID EUROPE. 149 
 
 eleven (or sixteen) elsewhere, Muret infers from 
 this, that "in order to maintain in all places the 
 proper equilibrium of population, God has wisely- 
 ordered things in such a manner as that the force of life 
 in each country should be in the inverse ratio of its 
 fecundity." ^ There is, however, no need to suppose 
 a miracle. The fact was simply that the place and 
 the employments were healthy, that the people had 
 not formed habits of emigration, that their resources 
 were stationary, that, therefore, they married late, had 
 few children, and were long-lived.^ The subsisting 
 marriages were to the annual births as 12 to 1 ; the 
 births were to the living population as 1 to 49 ; and 
 the number of persons above sixteen were to those 
 below as 3 to 1.^ This would show that mere number 
 of births is no criterion of the size of a population, 
 for it took only about half of the ordinary number 
 of births to keep up a population of four hundred in 
 the parish of Leysin. In St. Gergues the subsisting 
 marriages were to the annual births as 4 to 1 (instead 
 of 12 to 1 as at Leysin), the births were to the living 
 population as 1 to 26, and the number of persons 
 above and below sixteen just equal. That is to say, 
 St. Gergues had nearly twice as many births a year 
 in proportion to the population, and more than twice 
 as many marriages ; but, instead of three-fourths of 
 its living population being above sixteen (as at Leysin), 
 those above and those below were equal in number, 
 and St. Gergues had a smaller proportion of adults 
 
 ' Essay, Snd ed., p. 271 ; Vtli ed., p. 166. 
 ^ Average sixty-one years. ^ 2iid ed., p. 274 ; 7tli ed., p. 168. 
 
150 MALTHUS AND HIS WOKK. [bk. i. 
 
 than Leysin. On the other hand, the death-rate was 
 nearly the same ; the healthiness was nearly as great. 
 How came it then that the population of St. Cergues 
 was only one hundred and seventy-one, as against the 
 four hundred and five of Leysin ? What became of 
 the children born ? Seeing that they did not die, 
 and did not appear on the registers of the living, 
 we infer that they left their native village ; that 
 is all. The situation of the parish of St. Cergues, 
 on the high road from Paris to Geneva, suggested 
 emigration ; and, as a matter of fact, the place had 
 become, like most highland hamlets, a breeding-place 
 for the lowlands and the manufacturing towns. The 
 annual drain of adults made room for the favoured 
 remnant to marry and have large families. Even 
 Leysin, though it lay on no high road, might conceiv- 
 ably (says Malthus) have exchanged its stay-at-home 
 character for a habit of emigration, and might then 
 have doubled its birth-rate without raising the death- 
 rate. It is one of the fallacies of old statisticians to 
 infer a large population from a high birth-rate ; in 
 an old country, if the rate of births is high in com- 
 parison with the number of living inhabitants, it 
 means either many deaths or much emigration. 
 
 The people of an old country, if they cannot or 
 will not emigrate, must, according to Malthus, either 
 look for a high death-rate or accustom themselves 
 to late marriages. M. Muret's figures showed that 
 many cantons of Switzerland had adopted this last 
 course in the eighteenth century. In the Canton de 
 Vaud, for example, the proportion of marriages to 
 
CHAP, v.] NORTH AND MID EUROPE. 151 
 
 living inhabitants (1 to 140) was lower than in Nor- 
 way itself. In a pastoral country the limits of human 
 resources are so obvious that the people cannot fail to 
 be impressed with the need of limiting their numbers. 
 Pastoral industry, again, feeds more than it employs,^ 
 and the unemployed must look for employment else- 
 where. This was one reason why there were so 
 many Swiss in foreign service. " When a father 
 has more than one son, those who are not wanted 
 on the farm are powerfully tempted to enrol them- 
 selves as soldiers, or emigrate in some other way, as 
 the only chance to enable them to marry." ^ Malthus 
 was a little disappointed with the condition of the 
 Swiss peasantry when he saw them in 1803. Per- 
 haps, he says, they were still suffering from the wars 
 in which the "Helvetic Republic" had been involved 
 by its French allies ; but more probably they were 
 suffering from the unwise attempts of their Govern- 
 ment in the previous century to " encourage " what 
 they then thought was a declining population.' The 
 peasant who guided Malthus to the sources of the 
 Orbe* talked freely to him on the poverty of the 
 district, which he ascribed to early and imprudent 
 marriages, " le vice du pays " ; he would have a law 
 passed to prevent a man marrying till he was forty, 
 and a woman till she was elderly. He said that at 
 one time the introduction of stone polishing had given 
 the people high wages and led them to expect constant 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 280 ; 7tli ed., p. 173, top. The remark savours of paradox 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 280, foot ; 7th ed., p. 173. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 281 ; 7th ed., p. 173. « See ahove, p. 127. 
 
152 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i 
 
 employment ; changes of fashion ^ had helped to drive 
 the industry away, but the habits taught by it had 
 remained so fast rooted in the people that emigration 
 itself brought no relief to their overflowing numbers. 
 But this self-taught Malthusian had not learned his 
 lesson perfectly. He fancied that the fertile lands 
 of the low countries, with their abundance of corn 
 and employments, could never experience the evil 
 of over population. This was true only in the 
 unhappy sense that they had greater unhealthiness 
 and a greater mortality, providing room for early 
 marriages and many births. 
 
 It is easy to see that Malthus over-valued his 
 prize. The pons asinorum of the subject is the 
 doctrine that over-population is not a question of 
 absolute numbers or absolute quantity of food and 
 fertility of soil, but of the numbers in relation to 
 the food, in whatever place or time ; and the young 
 peasant had not crossed it. 
 
 1 Compare above on " osoillations," p. 147, and below, Bk. II. ohs. ii. 
 and iii. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 153 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 FKANCB. 
 
 French Numbers a Problem to Europe in 1802, because Law of Increase 
 not understood — Effects of War — Lament for the unborn miUions 
 eighty years ago — More fitting now — Good Distribution and Pro- 
 duction sometimes inseparable — The Stationary State — Malthus and 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 In the order of his writing Malthus follows the 
 order of his travels, and takes France ^ after Switzer- 
 land. France presents us with facts of an almost 
 unique kind. But before the Eevolution it had no 
 trustworthy parish registers to show to the English 
 inquirer ; and Malthus would not have lingered over 
 it, if in 1802 the public mind had not been perplexed 
 by a riddle, about French population and its increase 
 during war, of which he had the key.^ 
 
 The essay is not meant for a mere history, and its 
 author is not careful to be full in his historical details 
 if he has a body of facts sufficient for his purpose. 
 He even says, about some conjectures of his own 
 based on French figures, that he had only adopted 
 the figures for the sake of illustration, and had not 
 supposed them to be strictly true. " It will be but 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., Bk. II. chs. vi., vii. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 285 ; 7th ed.,p. 175. 
 
154 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 of little consequence if any of the facts or calculations 
 wliicli have been assumed in the course of this chapter 
 should turn out to be false. The reader will see that 
 the reasonings are of a general nature, and may be 
 true though the facts taken to illustrate them may be 
 inapplicable." ■^ This is not a wary admission. Never- 
 theless, the chapter on France is one of the most 
 telling in the essay. The substance of it may be 
 stated very shortly, 
 
 " It has been seen," he says, " in many of the 
 preceding chapters, that the proportions of births, 
 deaths, and marriages are extremely different in 
 different countries, and there is the strongest reason 
 for believing that they are very different in the same 
 country at different periods and under different cir- 
 cumstances." ^ The truth of this remark is borne 
 out not only by the contrast between the France and 
 the Switzerland of that time, but, as we shall find, 
 by the contrast between the France of 1803 and the 
 France of to-day. It is not singular that Malthus 
 should (wrongly) expect the Swiss to become his 
 pupils more easily than the French, for in his day 
 both the mortality and the number of marriages 
 were greater in France than in Switzerland.^ 
 
 He spends most pains in illustrating the contrast 
 between the France before the Eevolution and the 
 
 1 2nd eel., p. 296 ; cf. 7tli ed., p. 182 n. " Indeed in adopting Sir F. 
 d'lvernois's calculations respecting the actual loss of men during the 
 Eevolution, I never thought myself home out by facts, but the reader 
 will be aware that I adopted them rather for the sake of illustration 
 than from supposing them strictly true." 
 
 2 7th ed., p. 188. 3 Ytt ed., p. 176 ; of. p. 175. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FEANCE. 155 
 
 France at the Peace of Amiens. In many ways it 
 was fortunate tliat he confined himself to the Repub- 
 lican period. It was the time when the moral position 
 of France was highest, and she was warring not for 
 conquest but for defence. Switzerland had exem- 
 plified the fact that Emigration does not permanently 
 check population, but, on the whole, encourages it. 
 France, at the time chosen, exemplified the fact that 
 even the most destructive Wai's have a similar effect 
 on the growth of numbers. What Malthus had 
 proved more or less deductively in regard to ancient 
 nations he was able to show more inductively by 
 statistics in regard to modern. Great surprise was 
 expressed in the early days of this century that, in 
 spite of her enormous losses, France had not dimin- 
 ished in population. Malthus says she had rather 
 increased than diminished. According to the estimate 
 of the Constituent Assembly, which was confirmed 
 by the calculations of Necker, the population in 1792, 
 before the war, was 26,000,000. In 1801 it seems, 
 from the returns of the Prefects, to have been about 
 28,000,000.' In ten years the increase had been 
 2,000,000, or 200,000 a year. Yet at a medium calcu- 
 lation France, in addition to the ordinary deaths, had 
 lost by the war about 1,000,000 of men up to that 
 time,^ or 100,000 a year. How, on the principles 
 of Malthus, were the two facts to be reconciled ? 
 
 To reconcile them he shows, first, how, according 
 to the figures given by Frenchmen themselves, the 
 numbers of the unmarried survivors at home were 
 
 1 lih ed., pp. 177, 181 n. ^ jjjcj.^ p_ i'78 and n. 
 
156 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 more than enough to have kept up io case of necessity 
 the old number of marriages and the old rate of 
 increase ; second, how from general principles there 
 was a presumption in favour of a rapid increase at 
 such a time ; and third, how the social and industrial 
 conditions of the French people since the Eevolution 
 were favourable to an increase of population. First, 
 then, he shows that the entire body of unmarried 
 persons was large enough in spite of the war to fiU 
 the vacancies and keep up the old rate of increase. 
 The body of the unmarried is formed by the " accu- 
 mulation " year by year of the numbers of persons, 
 rising to marriageable age, who are not married (or 
 say briefly of the marriageable unmarried, includiug 
 widows and widowers). This accumulation will only 
 stop when the yearly accessions thereto are no more 
 than equal to the yearly mortality therein. The size 
 of this body will therefore vary with the character of 
 the particular nation considered. In the Canton de 
 Vaud it was equal to the whole number of the 
 married ; but in France both the mortality and the 
 marriage rate were higher than in Switzerland, and 
 the unmarried were therefore a smaller fraction of 
 the total numbers. Assuming from the French 
 authorities ^ a certain birth and death rate, and assum- 
 ing from the same authorities that the unmarried 
 men for the period before the Revolution were one 
 and a half millions out of five millions that were 
 marriageable, it would appear that every year there 
 were 600,000 persons arriving at the marriageable 
 
 1 Not above suspicion. See 7tli ed., p. 176 n. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. ■■ 157 
 
 age, of whom (since about 220,000 is the annual 
 number of marriages) 440,000 marry. The surplus 
 of unmarried is therefore 160,000 persons, or about 
 80,000 men. It follows that for war purposes (if 
 mere numbers be considered) the reserve fund of men 
 would be nearly one and a half millions, and every 
 new annual surplus of 80,000 youths above eighteen 
 might be taken for military service without any 
 diminution in the number of marriages.^ As a 
 matter of fact, it is putting the case somewhat 
 strongly to suppose as many as 600,000 to be taken 
 for service in the first instance, and 150,000 additional 
 troops to keep up the supply every year. But this 
 would still leave in the first instance nearly 900,000 
 for the reserve fund, which with the annual 80,000 
 could bear a drain on it of 150,000 for ten years, and 
 leave a balance of 200,000 altogether, or 20,000 a 
 year. In other words, there would be room for an 
 increase in the number of marriages of nearly 20,000. 
 It would not be miraculous then if the French popu- 
 lation should continue to increase in the face of great 
 losses in war, for the increase before the war had been 
 very much less than the greatest possible. 
 
 In the second place, the circumstances of the 
 civilian population made an increase very likely. 
 Many out of the reserve fund of unmarried men will 
 in the course of ten years be past the military age, 
 but not past the age of marriage. The 150,000 
 recruits would probably be taken from the 300,000 
 
 ' The military advantage of an increasing population is pointed out 
 also in the article on Newenliam's ' Ireland,' Edin. Bev., July 1808, p. 350. 
 
158 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 who every year rose to marriageable age, and the 
 marriages would be kept up from the older unmarried 
 men, in the scarcity of younger husbands. It may 
 be remembered, too, that ia the early years of the 
 war so many youths married prematurely to avoid 
 service,^ that the Directory were obliged (in 1798) to 
 extend the conscription to the married men. But 
 even when the husbands were removed to the war 
 the marriages were not necessarily childless, and 
 would thus, at the least, be a means of adding to the 
 people's numbers that did not exist before the Eevolu- 
 tion. The facility of divorce, too, though bad both 
 in morals and in politics, would at least, in the 
 existing scarcity of men, act somewhat like polygamy, 
 and make the number of children greater in propor- 
 tion to the number of husbands. It is said, too, that 
 there were more natural children born in France after 
 the Kevolution than before it ; and, since the peasants 
 were better off after it than before it, there was a 
 better chance that more of the children than formerly 
 should survive. 
 
 In the third place, there is no doubt, says Malthus, 
 that the division of the domain lands and the creation 
 (or at least the multiplication) of peasant properties 
 have had a great influence both on wealth and on 
 population. They add to population more than to 
 wealth, for they increase the gross produce of food 
 at the expense of the nett surplus. " If all the 
 land of England were divided into farms of £20 a 
 year, we should probably be more populous than 
 
 1 Cf. Josiah Tucker, On Trade, p. 17 (3rd ed., 1753). 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 159 
 
 we are at present, but as a nation we should be 
 extremely poor. We should be almost without dis- 
 posable revenue, and should be under a total inability 
 of maintaining the same number of manufactures or 
 collecting the same taxes as at present." ^ But the 
 division of lands was at least in favour of the gross 
 produce, and even the passing traveller was inclined 
 to think, from the appearance of the fields and the 
 style of the field labour, that, however severely the 
 manufacturing industry of France might have suffered 
 during the war, her agriculture had rather gained 
 than lost.^ The absence of so many strong men with 
 the armies would not only raise wages at home and 
 make the labourers better off, but by pro tanto 
 lessening the demand for food and taking from those 
 at home the burden of supporting so many men, 
 would not raise the price of food with the wages, 
 but would allow real wages to rise. This would 
 co-operate with political causes in making the people 
 desert the towns for the country, and thereby it 
 would reduce the death-rate, which is always higher 
 in towns than in the country. It is attested by 
 Arthur Young (no friend to the Msay on Population) 
 that the high mortality of France before the Eevolu- 
 tion (according to Necker 1 in 30) was caused by an 
 over-population which the changes at the Revolution 
 tended to remove. The probability is, therefore, that 
 
 ' Essay, 2nd ed., p. 297 a ; 7tli ed., p. 185, wMch omits one clause. 
 Cf. 2nd ed., pp. 290-1 ; 7tli ed., pp. 179, 180. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 291 ; 7tli ed., pp. 179, 180. Cf. the often-quoted passages 
 about the bleak rock and the garden, written (be it remarked) before 
 and not after the Revolution, in Arthur Young's Travels in Fraiica 
 (Bury St. Edmunds, 1792), pp. 36, 37, 42 ; cf. p. 341. 
 
160 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk i. 
 
 the births increased and the deaths decreased during 
 the ten years after the Revolution ; and there could 
 be no difficulty in understanding the increase of 
 population in spite of the war. In the later editions 
 of the essay ^ Malthus confesses that his French 
 figures need revision ; the returns of the Prefects 
 for 1801-2 and other Government papers had given 
 a smaller proportion of births than he had thought 
 probable, for the period before the Eevolution. But 
 (he remarks) the Prefects' returns do not embrace 
 the earlier years of the Revolution, precisely the 
 time when the encouragement to marriage would be 
 greatest and the proportion of births highest. In 
 any case they show that the population of France 
 is not less but greater since the Revolution. If in 
 the latter part of this period the increase was affected 
 by the decrease of deaths rather than by increase of 
 births, they not only leave his position untouched, 
 but give him a result that would highly please him. 
 Certainly in England and in Switzerland, and pro- 
 bably in every European country, the rate of mortality 
 has decreased in the last two hundred years, through 
 the greater healthiness of the conditions of life ; and 
 it is not at all surprising that a population should 
 be kept up or even made to increase with a smaller 
 proportion of births, deaths, and marriages than before.^ 
 The French labouring classes at the beginning of 
 the Revolution were seventy-six per cent, worse fed, 
 clothed, and supported than their fellows in England.' 
 
 I E. g. 5th, 1817 ; 7th ed., ch. vii. 2 7th ed., p. 188. 
 
 3 Arthur Young, Travels in Frmice, pp. 410, 437. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 161 
 
 Their wages were lOd. a day (as compared with 
 Is. 5d.), while the price of corn was about the same ; 
 but their condition and their remuneration had been 
 decidedly improved by the Eevolution and the 
 division of the national domains. Wages in money 
 (since Young wrote) had risen to Is. 2d. a day ; and, 
 according to some authorities, the real wages had 
 become even higher than in England.^ The new 
 distribution of wealth had been followed by an 
 immense increase in the production of it, shared by 
 the producers themselves, and making France im- 
 mensely stronger as a nation either for offence or 
 defence.^ Such an improvement in the condition of 
 the people would naturally be followed by diminution 
 in the deaths ; and a diminution in the deaths must 
 lead either to an increase of population or to a 
 decrease in the marriages and births. The latter 
 (which is presumably an increase of moral restraint) 
 has followed. In the ten years after the Peace of 
 Amiens the population seems to have increased only 
 at a very slow rate. " There is perhaps no propo- 
 sition more incontrovertible than this, that in two 
 countries, in which the rate of increase, the natural 
 healthiness of climate, and the state of towns and 
 manufactures are supposed to be nearly the same, the 
 one in which the pressure of poverty is the greatest 
 will have the greatest proportion of births, deaths, 
 and marriages," and vice versd.^ 
 
 Malthus' survey of population in France applies 
 
 1 Msay, 7tK ed., p. 189. 2 qi pyjfg^ j^^d Murope, i. 124. 
 
 3 lissay, 7th ed., p. 189. 
 
 M 
 
162 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 only to his own lifetime, and indeed only to the 
 earlier part of that. To do him full justice we must 
 place his picture of the real losses of war alongside 
 of his description of the compensations. 
 
 The constant tendency of population to increase 
 up to the limits of the food may be interpreted (in 
 the case of war) as the tendency of the births in a 
 country to supply the vacancies made by death. 
 The breaches are not permanent ; they are among the 
 reparable as distinguished from the irreparable mis- 
 chiefs of war. But this does not, from a moral or 
 political aspect, afford the slightest excuse for the 
 misery caused thereby to the existing inhabitants. 
 
 " Can you by filling cradles empty graves ? " 
 
 There is an exchange of mature beings in the "full 
 vigour of their enjoyments"^ for an equal number 
 of helpless infants. Not only is this a waste of the 
 men who died, but it is a deterioration, for the time 
 being, of the quality of the whole people ; they will 
 consist of more than the normal proportion of women 
 and children; and the married will be men and 
 women who in ordinary times would have remained 
 single. When the drain of men for military service 
 begins to exhaust the reserve of unmarried persons, 
 and the annual demands are in excess of the number 
 annually rising to marriageable age, then of course 
 war will actually diminish population.^ Till that 
 point is reached, war may alter the units and spoil 
 the quality of the population, but will not lessen its 
 
 , 1 A characteristic utilitarian touch. 2nd ed., p. 295, top ; 7tli ed., 
 p. 183. 2 Ibid. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 1G.3 
 
 total volume. Sir Francis Ivernois, from whom 
 Malthus took some of his figures, went too far in 
 the other direction when he told us we must not look 
 so much at the deaths in battle or in hospital, when 
 we are counting up the destructive effects of war 
 or revolution, as at the remoter results ; " the number 
 of men war has killed is of much less importance 
 than the number of children whom it has prevented 
 and will still prevent from coming into the world." 
 He supposes one million of men to have been lost in 
 the Revolution itself, and one and a half millions in its 
 wars ; and he says that, if only two millions of these 
 had been married, they would have needed to have had 
 six children eacb in order that a number of children 
 equal to the number of their parents (i. e. four millions) 
 should be alive thirty-nine years afterwards. We 
 ought, he thinks, to mourn not only for the two and a 
 half millions of men killed, but for the twelve millions 
 whom their death prevented from being born. To 
 which Malthus wisely answers that the slain, being 
 full-grown men, reared at no little cost to themselves 
 and their country, may be fitly mourned, but not the 
 unborn twelve millions, whose appearance in the 
 world would only have sent or kept a corresponding 
 number out of it, — and "if in the best-governed 
 country in Europe we were to mourn tbe posterity 
 which is prevented from coming into being, we should 
 always wear the habit of grief." ^ 
 
 If Sir Francis Ivernois could have foreseen the 
 history of French population for seventy years after 
 
 ' 2nd ed., p. 294 ; 7tli ed., p. 183. 
 
 M 2, 
 
1C4 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 the time wlien lie wrote, lie would have had more 
 reason to utter his curious lament. 
 
 " The effect of the Revolution," wrote Malfchus in 
 1817, "has been to make every person depend more 
 upon himself and less upon others. The labouring 
 classes have therefore become more industrious, more 
 saving, and more prudent in marriage than formerly ; 
 and it is quite certain that without these effects the 
 Revolution would have done nothing for them." ^ The 
 country districts which took the least active part in 
 the Revolution have been the most resolute in con- 
 serving the results of it. Over-population in France 
 is known only in the towns. At the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century — say one hundred and fifty years 
 ago (1732) — under Louis XV. the population of France 
 was estimated at twenty millions of people.^ There 
 is good reason to believe that the habits of the people 
 were entirely different from what they are now ; they 
 were even said to be famous for their large families.^ 
 In 1776 their numbers were about twenty- four mil- 
 
 1 Essay, Vth ed., p. 320 (III. vii). 
 
 2 Levasseur, France avec ses Colonies (1875), p. 842. According to 
 Anderson, Chron. Ded., Vol. III. p. xliii, some said twenty, others seven- 
 teen. But Mr. Kitchin cites Vaiiban to show that there had been a decline 
 in population from fifteen to thirteen millions between the beginning of 
 the war of Succession and the end of it (1702, 1713). — Sistury of France, 
 vol. iii. p. 342. Cf. Pox Bourne's Life of Locke, i. p. 350 ; Vauban's 
 Dime Royale, pp. 162-3. 
 
 ^ Josiah Tucker, Essay on Trade (3rd ed., 1753), p. 14. There may 
 be rhetorical exaggeration in his statements. "The subordination of 
 the common people is an unspeakable advantage to the French in respect 
 to trade. By this means the manufacturers [workmen] are always kept 
 indnstrio^ls. They dare not run into debauchery ; to drunkenness they 
 are not inclined. They are [practically by the law of military service] 
 obliged to enter into the married state, whereby they raise up large 
 families to labour, and keep down the price of it ; and consequently, by 
 working cheaper, enable the merchant to sell the cheaper." 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 165 
 
 lions.i at the Revolution of 1789 about twenty-six 
 millions,^ in 1831 thirty -two and a half, and in 1866 
 thirty-eight. At the present time, from loss of terri- 
 tory and from decrease of numbers in certain parts 
 of the country, they are little more than thirty-seven 
 and a half millions — not much more than the popu- 
 lation of Great Britain, a country neither so large nor 
 so fertile. Even in 1815 Malthus spoke of France 
 as having a more stationary and less crowded popu- 
 lation than Britain, though it was richer in corn.* 
 The population of 1881 showed an increase of 766,260 
 over that of 1876, and was in all 37,672,048.* It 
 increases not by augmentation in the number of 
 births, for that has been actually lessening, but by 
 diminution in the deaths. The population of Britain 
 has trebled itself within the present century ; that of 
 France has not even doubled itself in a century and a 
 half, with every allowance for a varying frontier. The 
 fears which Malthus expressed,' that the law of inherit- 
 ance and compulsory division of property would lead 
 to an excessive and impoverished country population, 
 have not been realized. The industrial progress of 
 the country has been very great. Fifty years ago the 
 production of wheat was only the half of what it is 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, IV. iii. pp. 220-1. 
 
 ' See above, p. 1.'55. Levasseur makes it twenty-five ; Arthur Young, 
 who considers Prance over-populated by five or six millions, makes it 
 twenty-six {Travels in France, pp. 468-9 ; of. p. 474). Price had made 
 it thirty. 
 
 ' Grounds of an Opinion, &c., p. 12. See below, Bk. II. ch. i. 
 
 * Census as given in Aimuaire de l'£conomie Politique (1882), p. 899. 
 
 ^ Political Economy (1820), pp. 433 seq. Cliffe Leslie {Mor. and Pol. 
 Essaijs, 1879, p. 424) attributes the few births to the very Law of Suc- 
 cession of which Malthus was afraid. 
 
166 MALTHUS AND HIS WOBK. [bk. i. 
 
 to-day, of meat less than the half. In almost every 
 crop and every kind of food France is richer now 
 than then in the proportion of more than 2 to 1. 
 In all the conveniences of life (if food be the neces- 
 saries) the increased supply is as 4 to 1, while foreign 
 trade has become as 6 to 1. Since property is more 
 widely distributed in France than elsewhere, an 
 increase of production is much more certain to mean 
 a benefit to the whole people. But there are certain 
 classes of goods, chiefly necessaries, of which (even 
 in a land like England, where the great wealth is in 
 a few hands) it is impossible profitably to extend the 
 production without pari passu extending the distri- 
 bution. When articles of food are imported in vast 
 quantities, they cannot, from the nature of things, 
 go entirely to the rich ; the rich can easily eat and 
 drink beyond the normal value, but not much (with- 
 out Gargantua's mouth) beyond the normal quantity; 
 and, at least in the case of our own country, very little 
 is exported again. Generally speaking, it is a true say- 
 ing that, the more the food, the more are fed. But 
 what is true of necessaries in England is true even of 
 other goods in France.-' The "average wealth of each 
 person " is not there, as often elsewhere, a mere arith- 
 metical entity, but a very near approach to the ordi- 
 nary state of the great majority of the people ; and 
 this average wealth is thought by good authorities ^ 
 to have more than doubled since the beginning of the 
 
 ' In the country districts at least. On the relation of luxury to trade, 
 &c., see below, Bk. II. ch. iii. p. 268. 
 
 2 ^. g. by M. Levasseur in La France avec ses Colonies (1875), p. 
 853. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 167 
 
 century. The population, on the other hand, has 
 only increased by one-half ; and the average duration 
 of life has lengthened from twenty-eight to thirty- 
 seven years. In a paper of Chateauneuf's (1826) 
 quoted by MacCuUoch,^ it was said that the French 
 people were improving their condition by diminishing 
 their marriages. The statistician Levasseur, on the 
 contrary, with the facts of another half-century before 
 him, tells us that married people in France are the 
 majority of the population,^ the average age of marriage 
 being twenty-six for the women, and rather more than 
 thirty for the men. The birth-rate, however, is the 
 lowest in Europe,^ being 1 in 37, as opposed to 1 in 
 27 for England. It is by refusing to fill the cradles 
 that they leave the graves empty. Yet France is 
 less healthy than England. Its death-rate in 1882 
 was 22 '2 per thousand, while in England it was 19 6.* 
 
 There are other features which make the case 
 unique. There are few foreigners in France ; the 
 numbers of the French people are neither swelled by 
 immigration nor reduced by emigration. Since the 
 expulsion of the Huguenots and the colonization of 
 Canada, few nations have been so rooted in their 
 own country ; even Algerian and Tunisian conquests 
 are due to no popular passion for colonizing. The 
 peasant properties have made the people averse to 
 movement. 
 
 At present most Frenchmen remain during life in 
 
 ^ Appendix to Wealth of Nations, note iv. p. 465. 
 
 ' Levasseur, I. c. pp. 845, 846 ft. ^ Times, Jan. 1883. 
 
 ^_English Begistrar-GeiieraVs 4.5th Report, for 1882, pp. cii, cvii. 
 
168 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 the same Department in whicli they were born ; ^ 
 and recent observers tell us^ that a military career 
 is becoming distasteful to all classes. Taking the 
 absence of immigration as balanced by the absence 
 of emigration, we are brought to the conclusion that 
 the population of France is stationary by its own 
 deliberate act. 
 
 How far this is in accordance with the views of 
 Malthus it is impossible to say in one word. It is 
 at least the result of the prudence which he was 
 always preaching. But his prudence lay in the defer- 
 ring of marriage ; and this is not the form which 
 prevails in France. Moreover, he thought with Adam 
 Smith that the progressive state and not the stationary 
 was the normal one for humanity ; if the whole world 
 became contented with what it had got, there would, 
 in his opinion, be no progress, and the resources and 
 capacities of human beings and of the world would 
 not be developed. In fact, he retained the aspirations 
 of the Revolution, which the country-folk in France 
 seem in danger of losing ; he wished men to have 
 hopes for the future as well as a comfortable life in 
 the present ; he saw no virtue in mere smallncss any 
 more than in mere bigness of numbers ; he desired as 
 great as possible a population of stalwart, well-in- 
 structed, wise, and enterprising men ; he thought 
 that, without competition, ambition, and emulation, 
 and without the element of difficulty and hardship, 
 human beings would never fully exert their best 
 powers, though he also thought that a time might 
 
 ^ Levasseur, La France, 1. c. ^ j;. g. Times, 1. c. 
 
CHAP. VI.] FRANCE. 169 
 
 come when the lower classes would be as the middle 
 classes, or, in his own words, when the lower would 
 be diminished and the middle increased, and when, 
 mainly through the action of the labourers them- 
 selves, inventions would become a real benefit, because 
 accompanied by lighter labour and shorter hours for 
 the labourers.^ As for that love of humanity, that 
 was so much present in the words and thoughts if 
 not in the deeds of the men of the Revolution, he had 
 a full share of it. He desired a longer life for the 
 living, and fewer births for the sake of fewer deaths. 
 His work was like that of the lighthouse, to give 
 light and to save life. 
 
 1 Essay, 7tli ed., IV. xiii. p. 474 ; 2nd ed., 17. xi. p. 594. 
 
170 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [ek. i. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IKELAND. 
 
 Prevailing Checks — Proposed Census of 1753 — Brown's Estimate — 
 Depopulation of England in Eighteenth Century— Opposing Argu- 
 ments—Census of 1801 — Interpretation of Returns — Relative 
 Nature of the Question of Populousness— Scotland to England as 
 Country to Town — Industrial changes since the Union — Ireland 
 under English rule in Eighteenth Century and after — The Wall 
 of Brass— Virtue without Wisdom — The Potato Standard— The 
 Emigration Committee — The New Departure. 
 
 In dealing with the question of population in his 
 own country,^ Malthus tries to answer at least three 
 distinct questions : — What were the checks actually 
 at work in those days ? Had the numbers of the 
 people increased, or not, in the eighteenth century ? 
 What conclusions on either point may be drawn from 
 the English census ? 
 
 The first question was answered with comparative 
 fulness in the essay of 1798. It is remarked there 
 that in England the middle and upper classes increase 
 at a slow rate, because they are always anxious to 
 keep their station, and afraid of the expense of 
 marriage.^ No man, as a rule, would like his wife's 
 
 1 2nd ed., II. ix. ; 7th ed., II. viii., ix. 2 igt ed., pp. 63, 64. 
 
CHAP. VII.] ENGLAND. 171 
 
 social condition to be out of keeping with her habits 
 and inclinations. Two or three steps of descent will 
 be considered by most people as a real evil. " If 
 society be held desirable, it surely must be free, 
 equal, and reciprocal society, where benefits are con- 
 ferred as well as received, and not such as the 
 dependant finds with his patron or the poor with 
 the rich." So it happens that many men, of liberal 
 education and limited income, do not give efiect to 
 an early attachment by an early marriage. When 
 their passion is too strong or their judgment too 
 weak for this restraint, no doubt they have blessings 
 that counterbalance the obvious evils ; " but I fear 
 it must be owned that the more general consequences 
 of such marriages are rather calculated to justify 
 than to repress the forebodings of the prudent." ^ 
 What Malthus desires, as we infer from the general 
 tenor of his book, is that aU classes without exception 
 should show reluctance to impair their standard of 
 living ; and his hatred of the Poor Laws is due to 
 his conviction that they hinder this end. The subject 
 will be more fully discussed by-and-by.^ In the 
 chapters on England it is little more than mentioned, 
 the author devoting himself chiefly to the statistical 
 data of the census and registers. 
 
 In this connection it was impossible for him to 
 avoid the question that had long agitated the minds 
 of politicians. Had the numbers of the English 
 people been decreasing or increasing since the 
 
 1 1st ed., pp. 65-6 ; cf. 2nd ed., p. 300, and Yth ed., p. 193. 
 2 See below, Bk. II. ch. iv., &c. 
 
172 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 Eevolution of 1688, and especially in tlie course of 
 the eigliteentli century ? Economists of the present 
 day are overloaded with statistics ; but, when Adam 
 Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations, lie was unaware 
 of the numbers of his own nation. To estimate 
 population without a census is to study language 
 without a dictionary ; there had been no census since 
 the coming of the Armada,^ and it was not till one 
 hundred years after that event that statistical studies 
 came much into favour. An annual enumeration of 
 the people was proposed in the House of Commons in 
 1753, as a means of knowing the numbers of our 
 poor.^ But the proposal was resisted as anti-Scrip- 
 tural and un-English, exposing our weakness to the 
 foreigner and spending public money to settle the 
 wagers of the learned. There was probably a fear^ 
 that the tax-gatherer would follow on the heels of the 
 enumerator, as he had done in France. The House 
 of Lords beat off the bill, and left England in 
 darkness about the numbers of its people for another 
 half-century, though something like a census of 
 Scotland was made for Government in 1755.* As 
 without the Irish Famine we might not have had 
 the total Repeal of the Corn Laws, so without the 
 worst of all possible harvests in 1799 we might 
 have had no census in 1801, for Parliament, when 
 
 1 The numbers given then were five millions. — Froude, Kid. of 
 England, i. 3. 
 
 2 See Hansard, Pari. Hist., xiv. 1317. 
 
 2 Not unfelt in 1801. So Arthur Young speaks as if the agricultural 
 interest had not unfrequently regarded the Board of Agriculture as a 
 new instrument of taxation. (Report on Suffolk, p. 16.) 
 
 ^ In charge of Eev. Alexander Webster. 
 
CHAP. VII.] 
 
 ENGLAND. 173 
 
 they passed Mr. Abbot's Enumeration Bill in 1800, 
 looked to an enumeration of the people to guide 
 them in opening and closing the ports to foreign 
 grain. The practical question about the increase or 
 decline of English numbers was connected, in logic 
 as well as in time, with the controversy about the 
 comparative populousness of ancient and modern 
 nations. The same year (1753) which saw the 
 attempt to settle by census the question of England's 
 depopulation, saw also the publication of Dr. Robert 
 Wallace's reply to Hume's Essay on the Fojmlousness 
 of Ancient Nations, in his Dissertations on the Numhers 
 of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times. One of 
 Henry Fox's objections to Hardwicke's Marriage Act 
 (of 1753) was that it would check population.^ We 
 are told^ that the academical discussion roused 
 attention on the Continent, and a French savant, 
 Deslandes, published an estimate of the numbers of 
 modern nations, in which England was made much 
 inferior to France, having only eight millions against 
 twenty. This was too much for English patriotism. 
 Even in our own day a great war and a few reverses 
 usually fill England for a year or two with forebodings 
 of decay. Written in 1757 (at the beginning of the 
 Seven Years' War), Dr. John Brown's Estimate of the 
 Manners and Principles of the Times was only the 
 most popular of a host of gloomy pamphlets too 
 
 1 Farl. Hist., vol. xv. p. 69, quoted by Mahon, Hist of England, 
 sub dato, ch. xxxi. p. 39. Of. Trevelyan, Early Life of Fox, ch. i. 
 p. 14. 
 
 ^ Dr. Adam AndersoTi, Chronological Deduc. of Commerce, Introd., 
 p. xliii ; first printed in 1762. 
 
 \ 
 
174 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 prejudiced to be of much use for statistics.^ Dr. 
 Adam Anderson^ sides with the moderns and the 
 optimists. The contributions of Dr. Brackenridge 
 and Richard Forster to the discussion survive by 
 the mention of them in Price's Observations (pp. 
 182-3) and in George Chalmers' Estimate (ch. xi. 193), 
 this last giving on the M'hole perhaps the most lucid 
 history of the whole depopulation controversy. We 
 know from Goldsmith's Traveller (1764) and Deserted 
 Village (1770), with its charming illogical preface, 
 that even in peace the subject was not out of men's 
 thoughts. A similar panic in Switzerland, which 
 owed its beginning to England,^ seems afterwards to 
 have reacted on England itself. The American War 
 of Independence revived the languishing interest in 
 the controversy. This time it was the English and 
 not the antiquarian topic that fell into powerful 
 hands. Dr. Eichard Price, the Radical dissenter, the 
 friend of Dr. Franklin, and the inventor of Pitt's 
 Sinking Fund, did battle, in his Observations on 
 Reversionary Payments (1769), on behalf of the 
 pessimistic view ; Arthur Young, the agriculturist, 
 the traveller and the talker, led the opposition to 
 him,* and was supported by Sir Frederick Eden, 
 William Wales, John Howlett, and last but not least 
 by George Chalmers.' 
 
 1 See especially Estimate. (Yth ed., 1758;, Vol. I. Pt. II. sect. viii. 
 pp. 186 seg. ^ Ch.ron. Bed., ibid. 
 
 3 I. e. to the disciission described by Dr. Anderson. Of. Maltlms, 
 Essay, Ith ed., p. 164. Muret's pessimistic paper was printed in 1766. 
 
 * In his Political Arithmetic, 1774. 
 
 ' Estimate of the Comparative Streiigfh of Britain during the present 
 and four preceding Beigns, by George Chalmers, F.E.S., S.A., 1st ed., 1782. 
 
CHAP. VII.] ENGLAND. 1V5 
 
 Gregory King ^ and Justice Hale ' in the seven- 
 teenth century, Dr. Campbell^ in the eighteenth, had 
 agreed that the numbers of Norman England must 
 needs have been small, for the government was bad ; 
 Dr. Price, on the contrary, had maintained the paradox 
 that, though the Eevolution of 1688 brought a " hap- 
 pier government," the numbers of the people had 
 ever since declined.* He reasoned from the decreased 
 number of dwelling-houses assessed to window tax 
 and house duty, as compared with those assessed to 
 hearth (or chimney) money before the Revolution.^ 
 Opponents denied the accuracy of his data, and 
 thought his estimate of four and a half or five in- 
 habitants to a house too low. He pointed to the evil 
 influence of a " devouring metropolis," a head too 
 large for the body, and of great cities that were the 
 " graves of mankind." ^ Here, too, both the data and 
 the inference were doubtful. He argued from the 
 decreasing produce of the Excise duties. Opponents 
 answered that, even if the figures were right, a 
 changed public taste had lessened the consumption 
 of many taxable articles, and many taxed ones were 
 supphed free by smuggling.' He laid stress on the 
 
 1 Natural mid Political Ohsermtims, 1696. Apud Davenant and 
 Chalmers. 
 
 ^ Primitive Origination of Maiikind. 
 
 ' Political Survey of Great Britain, 1774. 
 
 * Cf. Chalmers, Mstimate, p. 4, Pref. p. cxxxviii, and John Howlett's 
 Examination of Dr. Price's Essay (Maidstone), 1781. 
 
 ^ Cf. Macaulay, History, ch. iii. 137. 
 
 ^ Observations, supplement, p. 366. Cf. Malthus, Essay, App. p. 519. 
 Arthur Young, France, p. 409. The whole subject will be considered 
 later in connection with Scotland. 
 
 ' See Observations on Smuggling, 1779. 
 
176 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 difficulty the Government found in raising troops in 
 the middle of the eighteenth century as compared 
 with the end of the seventeenth, though he took this 
 as a symptom, not a cause, and complained at the 
 same time quite consistently that the increase of the 
 army and navy and of military expenditure in three 
 great wars had been a potent cause of diminished 
 population. Opponents answered that the first was 
 really a symptom not of decline but of prosperity ; 
 the abundance of other employments kept men from 
 the need of enlisting in the army ; and they answered 
 too often, that the second (the war expenditure) was 
 good for trade. They were safer in urging that for 
 the first part of the century the long peace (1727-40) 
 and the good harvests (1731-50) made the presump- 
 tion of increase very strong.^ Price made much of 
 the emigrations to America and to the East and West 
 Indies. It was answered that the known possibihty 
 of emigration would give men at home the greater 
 courage to have a family. Even the engrossing and 
 consolidation of farms and the enclosure of commons, 
 which he considered to be against population, would, 
 said his opponents, increase the food, and therefore 
 the people, though perhaps not the people on the 
 spot ; ^ and the increase of paupers was thought to be 
 a siffn of overflowina; numbers. He saw a cause of 
 
 1 But see the caveat in the Begiatrar-Oeneral' s 44ft Report (for 1881), 
 p. vi : The price of wheat and the marriage rate do not always vary 
 inversely. 
 
 2 In the same way the returns to the Board of Agriculture at the end 
 of the century are full of (not quite disinterested) praises of enclosures 
 as an encouragement of population. 
 
CHAP, yii.] ENGLAND. 177 
 
 depopulation in the increased luxury and extravagance 
 of the people of England. At the beginning of the 
 century gin-drinking was credited with an evil effect 
 on population.' When the opponents of Price did not 
 meet this with Mandeville's sophism, luxury benefits 
 trade, they answered that what had become greater 
 was not the national vices but the national standard 
 of comfort, the expansion of which implied an in- 
 crease of general wealth and presumably of popula- 
 tion.^ Beyond doubt too (it was argued) the general 
 health was better, and medical science had won some 
 triumphs.' Malthus, however, warns us against this 
 argument; great unhealthiness is no proof of a small 
 population nor healthiness of a large.* In the ten 
 years after the American War of Independence 
 (1783-93) the prosperity of the country seems to 
 have advanced by leaps and bounds, only to make 
 the subsequent depression the more observable. Dr. 
 Price, who did not live to see the relapse, seems to 
 have confessed his error. "In allusion to a dimin- 
 ishing population, on which subject it appears that 
 he has so widely erred, he says very candidly that 
 perhaps he may have been insensibly influenced to 
 maintain an opinion once advanced."^ Yet public 
 
 1 Lecky, Eighteenth Cent, i. 261, 479 seq. Restrictions on the sale 
 were successfully adopted by Pelham in 1751, at the time -when the 
 question of depopulation was coming to the front. 
 
 '' An unsafe presumption. See below, Bk. II. ch. ii., &c. 
 
 ^ E. g. inoculation. 
 
 * Essay, 2nd ed., p. 317 ; 7th ed., p. 198, compared with 7th ed., p. 189, 
 &c., above, pp. 115-16. 
 
 ' Essay, 7th ed., p. 198 note ; first printed in 3rd ed. (1806), p. 
 461 n. 
 
 N 
 
178 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 opinion was not fully convinced till 1801, when 
 " the answers to the Population Act at length happily 
 rescued the question of the population of this country 
 from the obscurity in which it had been so long 
 involved." ^ 
 
 Ir There is no good reason to believe that at the end 
 of last century the fear of depopulation had given 
 place to a fear of over-population.^ Malthus and 
 Arthur Young stood almost alone in their opinion.' 
 Alarm was felt by the agricultural interest, not lest 
 there should be an excessive population, but lest the 
 population should get its food from abroadr The 
 population it was feared had grown beyond the 
 English supplies of food ; but of over-population, in 
 the wider sense of an excess beyond any existing food, 
 the general public and the squires had learned little 
 or nothing in these years.; and we have no reason to 
 attribute to Malthus any share in the merit of passing 
 the Enumeration Bill. It was brought forward in an 
 autumn session of Parliament (Nov. 1800) specially 
 convened because of the scarcity. It was moved 
 by Mr. Abbot,* who had made his name more as 
 a financier than as an economist, and . was chiefly 
 remarkable afterwards as a vigorous opponent of 
 
 1 2ii(i ed., p. 302 n. ; 7th ed., p. 194 n. 
 
 2 This is asserted in the Preliminary Bepmi to the last English 
 census (1881). Against the idea, see the Ammal JRegister's reviews of 
 Eden's work on the Poor (1797), and of his Estimate of English numbers 
 (1800). The Register had numbered Burke and Godwin among its 
 writers, and was not likely to be behind public opinion. 
 
 '' See the review of Arthur Young's Question of Scarcity plahdy 
 stated, 1800, in Ann. Register, sub dato. 
 
 * Chairman of tlie Committee on the Public Finances 1797, Speaker of 
 the Commons 1802, Lord Colchester 1817. 
 
CHAP. VII.] ENGLAND. 179 
 
 Catholic Emancipation. The motion was seconded 
 by Mr. Wilberforce ; and the combination of finance 
 and philanthropy was irresistible. Malthus, though 
 he is the true interpreter of the census, neither caused 
 it in the first instance nor found it of immediate 
 service in spreading his doctrines. 
 
 The first census would hardly have justified him 
 in treating as obsolete the old quarrel about depopu- 
 lation ; it had decided only the absolute numbers 
 in the first year of the nineteenth century, not the 
 progress or relapse during the eighteenth. Besides 
 giving the actual numbers of the people in 1801, 
 the census no doubt gave " a table of the population 
 of England and Wales throughout the last century 
 calculated from the births." But the births, thoush 
 a favourite, were an unsafe criterion ; and, for the 
 population at the Eevolution of 1688, Malthus would 
 depend more on " the old calculations from the number 
 of houses." ^ He finds no difiiculty of principle in 
 admitting with Mr. Eickman, the editor of the census 
 returns and observations thereon, that the rapid in- 
 crease of the English people since 1780 was due to 
 the decrease of deaths rather than to the increase of 
 births.^ Such a phenomenon was not only possible 
 but common, fol- the rate of births out of relation to 
 the rate of deaths could give no sure means of 
 judging the numbers. After a famine * or pestilence, 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 318 ; 7tli ed., p. 204. Cf. 2nd ed., p. 317 ; 7tli ed., pp 
 192, 203, 206, 219, &c. 
 
 2 2iid ed., p. 311 ; 7tli ed., pp. 201, 202, foot. Compare 44<A iJepi. 
 of Beg.-Qen. (England), p. v. 
 
 ^ As e. g. in 1800-1 compared with 1802-3 ; 7th ed., p. 214. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 for example, tlie rate of births might be twice as high 
 as usual, and by the standard of births the numbers 
 of the people would be at their maximum, when a 
 comparison with the rate of deaths or an actual 
 enumeration would show them to be at the mini- 
 mum,-' whereas a low rate of births, if lives were 
 prolonged by great healthiness, might certainly mean 
 an increase, perhaps a high increase, of numbers. 
 But at the particular time in question the factory 
 system was coming into being, and manufacturing 
 towns were growing great at the expense of the 
 country districts. The conditions of life in towns are 
 at the best inferior to those in the country ; new 
 openings for trade would add not only to the marriages 
 but to the deaths and the births.^ The presump- 
 tion was not all in favour of healthiness; and the 
 registers at that particular time could not tell the 
 whole truth ; — the drain of recruits for foreign service 
 would keep down the lists of burials at home, while 
 allowing an increase of births and marriages.^ For 
 these and other reasons, Malthus, while he agrees 
 with Eickman that the general health has improved, 
 trusts little to his calculations from registers ; and 
 concludes that even the census gives us no clear 
 light on the movement of population in the eigh- 
 teenth century. We can be certain that population 
 increased during the last twenty years of it, and 
 
 * 2nd ed., p. 319 ; Vtli ed., p. 205. Cf. passages cited on last page. 
 
 2 Cf. Unsay, 2nd ed., pp. 308-9 ; 7tli ed., pp. 198-9. 
 
 ' 2nd ed., pp. 312-13 ; 7th ed., p. 201, The 2nd ed. has a reference to 
 "the late scarcities" wanting in the later edds. Registration, he it 
 remembered, was then of baptisms and burials, not births and deaths. 
 
CHAP. TIL] ENGLAND. 181 
 
 almost certain that the movement was not down- 
 wards but upwards since the Peace of Paris ; and we 
 have good ground for believing that it was rather 
 upwards than downwards even in the earliest years 
 of the century, during the good harvests and the long 
 peace of Walpole,^ and that over the whole country 
 the movement of population was less fluctuating in 
 England than on the Continent.^ The author's admis- 
 sion, that the proportions of the births, deaths, and 
 marriages were very different in our country in his 
 time from what they used to be,' seems to put the 
 census of 1801 out of court altogether in the question 
 of depopulation, especially as there were no previous 
 enumerations with which to compare it. The figures 
 from the parish registers for the whole of the century, 
 that were included in the "returns pursuant to 
 the Population Act," in addition to the enumeration, 
 turned out on examination to be unsatisfactory.* 
 
 Malthus, however, was able to prove some solid 
 conclusions from the census of 1801. It had shown, 
 for example, as regards marriages, that the proportion 
 of them to the whole numbers of the people was, in 
 1801, as 1 to 123j, a smaller proportion than any- 
 where except in Norway and Switzerland,^ and the 
 more likely to be true, because Hardwicke's Marriage 
 Act had made registration of marriages more careful 
 
 1 See atove, p. 176. Cf. on the other hand the concession, 2nd ed., p. 
 317 ; 7th ed., p. 203, middle. 
 
 2 Essay, 2nd ed., p. 319 ; 7th ed., pp. 205-6. 3 vtlj ed., p. 188. 
 
 ' Eickman himself allowed their defectiveness. See Essay, 2nd ed., 
 p. 304 ; 7th ed., p. 196. Cf. above, p. 179. 
 
 ^ 2nd ed., p. 302 ; 7th ed., p. 194. By the Registrar-General's Report 
 for 1882 it was as 1 in 64J in that year. 
 
182 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 than of burials and baptisms. In tbe early part of 
 the eigliteentb century, the pessimist, Dr. Short, had 
 estimated the proportion (with much probability) as 
 1 to 115 ; and it would appear, therefore, that at 
 neither end of the century were the marriages in a 
 high proportion to the numbers, or had population 
 increased at its highest rate. Again, Malthus thinks 
 it proved by the census that, since population has 
 as a matter of fact increased in England in spite of a 
 diminished rate of marriages, the increase has been 
 at cost of the mortality, the fewer marriages being 
 partly a cause, partly a consequence, of the fewer 
 deaths of the later years. ^ Those that married late 
 might have consoled themselves with the reflection 
 that they were lessening not the numbers but the 
 mortality of the nation. It was no doubt difiicult to 
 estimate the extent to which such causes operated, 
 or the degree in which the national health had been 
 improved. In any case the census guides us better 
 than the registers,^ for it carries us beyond the 
 inferred numbers to numbers actually counted out 
 at a given time. Neither the census nor the registers 
 can be rightly interpreted without a knowledge of 
 the social condition, government, and history of the 
 people concerned. In undeveloped countries, like 
 America and Russia, or in any old countries after 
 special mortality, a large proportion of births may be 
 a good sign ; " but in the average state of a well- 
 peopled territory there cannot well be a worse sign 
 than a large proportion of births, nor can there well 
 
 1 2nd ecL, p. 303 ; 7tli ed., p. 195. ' 7th ed., p. 205. 
 
OHAP. VII.] ENGLAND. 183 
 
 be a better sign than a small proportion." Sir 
 Francis d'lvernois had very justly observed that, if 
 the various states of Europe published annually an 
 exact account of their population, noting carefully in 
 a second column the exact age at which the children 
 die, this second column would show the comparative 
 goodness of the governments, and the comparative 
 happiness of their subjects; — a simple arithmetical 
 statement might then be more conclusive than the 
 cleverest argument. Malthus assents, but adds that 
 " we should need to attend less to the column giving 
 the number of children born, than to the one giving 
 the number which reached manhood, and this number 
 will almost invariably be the greatest where the pro- 
 portion of the births to the whole population is the 
 least." ^ Tried by this standard, which is much more 
 truly the central doctrine of Malthus than the ratios, 
 our own country was even then better than all, save 
 two, European countries. Tried by it to-day, we 
 have still a good place. Though no great European 
 countries, except Austro-Hungary and Germany, have 
 had more marriages, in the twenty years from 1861 
 to 1880, not only these, but Holland, Spain, and 
 Italy, have had more births, and all of them except 
 Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have had more deaths, 
 in proportion to their numbers.^ 
 
 One great advantage of the census is, that it enables 
 the registrars to calculate from their own data, with 
 certain sure limits of told-out numbers behind and 
 
 1 2nd ed., pp. 213-14 ; Yth ed., p. 202. 
 2 45i;i J?fiporf of Registrar-General (England), (1882), p. oi. 
 
184 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 before them. "When the registers contain all the 
 births and deaths, and there are the means [given by 
 the census] of setting out from a known population, 
 it is obviously the same as an actual enumeration." ^ 
 Malthas suggested in 1803 that the experiment of 
 1801 should be repeated every ten years, and that 
 registrars' reports should be made ever}' year.^ This 
 has been done ; and, if both have been accurate, then 
 the registers of the intervening years, on the basis of 
 the decennial enumeration, ought to make us able 
 to calculate the numbers for any intervening year. 
 Accordingly, the population of England in 1881, as 
 calculated from the births and deaths, was little more 
 than one-sixth of a million different from the numbers 
 as actually counted over on the night of the 4th of 
 April in that year.^ The growth in the last decade, 
 1871 to 1881, was higher than in any since 1831-41 ;* 
 the births were more and the deaths fewer than 
 usual. Another London has been added to our 
 numbers in ten years.' 
 
 This gives no sure ground, however, for prediction. 
 To suppose a country's rate of increase permanent 
 is hardly less fallacious than to suppose an invariable 
 order of births and deaths over the world generally. 
 Even if we are beyond the time when we need to 
 make any allowance for increasing accuracy and fulness, 
 and if we may assume that no given census has any 
 
 1 Tth ed., p. 210. ^^ 2nd ed., p. 302 ; Ith ed., p. 194 n. 
 
 ^ Numbers calculated by " natural increment," i. e. births and deaths 
 — 26,138,248 ; numbers actually enumerated— 25,968,286.— PreliHuuari/ 
 Report, p. iii. 
 
 * '31-'41, incr. 14-52 ; '71-'81, incr. 14-34. 
 
 ^ Or three and a quarter millions of people to England and Wales alone. 
 
CHAP. VII.] ENGLAND. 185 
 
 units to sweep into its net that through their fear or 
 an official's carelessness escaped its predecessor, still 
 we cannot take the rate of increase from one census 
 to another as a sure indication of the future. With 
 some qualifications the words of Malthus apply to us 
 in 1881 quite as accurately as to our fathers in 1811 : 
 "This is a rate of increase which in the nature of 
 things cannot be permanent. It has been occasioned 
 by the stimulus of a greatly increased demand for 
 labour, combined with a greatly increased power of 
 production, both in agriculture and manufactures. 
 These are the two elements which form the most 
 effective encouragement to a rapid increase of popula- 
 tion. What has taken place is a striking illustration 
 of the principle of population, and a proof that, in 
 spite of great towns, manufacturing occupations, and 
 the gradually acquired habits of an opulent and 
 luxuriant people, if the resources of a country will 
 admit of a rapid increase, and if these resources 
 are so advantageously distributed as to occasion a 
 constantly increasing demand for labour, the popula- 
 tion will not fail to keep pace with them." ^ It was 
 a rate of increase which he saw would double the 
 population in less than fifty-five years ; and this 
 doubling has really happened. The numbers for 
 England in 1801 were 8,892,536 ; and in 1851 they 
 were 17,927,609. Malthus had not anticipated any 
 greater changes in manufacture and trade than those 
 of his own day; and he clearly expected that the 
 rate of increase would not continue and the numbers 
 
 1 Yth ed., II. ix. p. 215 (written first in 5tli ed., 1817). 
 
186 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 would not be doubled. The one thing certain was the 
 impossibility of safe prediction on the strength of 
 any existing rate. A writer at the beginning of this 
 century prophesied the extinction of the Turkish 
 people in one hundred years ; Sir William Petty at 
 the end of the seventeenth century predicted that in 
 ISOO London would have 5,359,000 inhabitants. But 
 the Turks are not yet extinct; London in 1800 had 
 less than a million of people, and has taken eighty years 
 more to raise them to the number in the prophecy.^ 
 
 If prediction was difficult in the case of England, 
 it was not less so in the case of the other parts of 
 the United Kingdom. The conditions of society and 
 industry were quite different in the three countries ; 
 and to judge of the actual or probable growth of 
 population in Scotland or Ireland, we must first, as 
 with England, clearly understand these conditions. 
 In the early part of this century even more than 
 now, Scotland^ stood to England as the country 
 districts of England now stand to its great towns. 
 Continual migration from country to town may be 
 said to have been its normal state ; and the largest 
 towns were in England. The change from a militant 
 and feudal to an industrial society was nowhere so 
 marked as in Scotland after the Union, and especially 
 after the rebellion of 1745. The hereditary judgeships 
 of highland chiefs were swept away ; the relation 
 
 1 Essay, Vtli ed., p. 258 ; cf. Prel. Bept. Census, 1881, p. ix. 
 
 2 The account of Scotland in the Essay, Bk. II. ch. x., is taken from the 
 Statistical Account of Sir John Sinclair, 1791-99. Sinclair was acting, on 
 the south side of the Tweed, as President of the Board of Agriculture. 
 See below, Bk. II. ch. i. p. 218. 
 
CHAP, til] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 187 
 
 between chief and clansmen became the unromantio 
 relation of landlord and tenant. The displacement 
 of household work by the factory system, and of hand 
 labour by machinery, crowded the great towns of 
 Scotland at the expense of the country districts ; and 
 crowded thfe great towns and manufacturing districts 
 of England at the expense of Scotland. The flood 
 of North Britons into England was not of Bute's 
 making ; and it was greatest after and not before the 
 Peace of Paris, although under that peace and a 
 stable government the farming, the manufacturing, 
 the banking, and the foreign trading of ^Scotland it- 
 self had grown great enough (it might have seemed) 
 to employ the whole population at home. Cotton 
 manufacture, which on the whole is the typical 
 industry of these latter days, was peculiarly English.^ 
 Sheep-farming at home and cotton-spinning in 
 England combined to depopulate the Scotch high- 
 lands and much of the lowlands. The highlands, 
 with their strongly-marked physical features and 
 strictly limited industrial possibilities, were some- 
 what in the position of Norway. In the highlands 
 proper there were no mineral riches ; there were moor- 
 lands, mountains, streams, lochs, heather, bracken, 
 peat, and bog ; the patches of cultivable soil would 
 bear a scanty crop of oats, and perhaps clover, barley, 
 or potatoes.^ This description applied to a large half 
 
 ' There was very little in Scotland. It is only once mentioned by 
 Adam Smith. MacCuUoch says " never," but he had overlooked Wealth 
 of Nations, IV. vii. 251-2. 
 
 2 The last of late introduction. See Reports to Board of Agriculture : 
 Central Highlands (1794), p. 21. 
 
188 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk i. 
 
 of entire Scotland ; and we must bear it in mind to 
 understand the saying of Mai thus in 1803 : "Scotland 
 is certainly over-peopled, but not so much as it was a 
 century or half a century ago, when it contained few^er 
 inhabitants." 1 The highlands are over their whole 
 extent what the lowlands are as regards their hills, fit 
 only for sheep. Sutherland has about thirteen in- 
 habitants to the square mile now, and Midlothian 
 seven hundred and forty-six ; but Sutherland and not 
 Midlothian may be over-peopled. Sutherland as com- 
 pared with her former self, when she had thirty or forty 
 to the square mile, may be more or she may be less 
 over-peopled than she once was ; we cannot tell till we 
 know what her wealth was and how it was distributed. 
 Under the patriarchal government ^ of early times 
 the wealth of the country consisted literally in its men. 
 If a chief were asked the rent of his estate, he would 
 answer that it raised five hundred men ; the tenant 
 paid him in military service. Adam Smith remembers 
 tha,t in the Jacobite Rebellion, which disturbed his 
 country at the time he was studying at Oxford, " Mr. 
 Cameron of Lochiel, a gentleman of Lochaber in [the 
 west highlands of] Scotland, whose rent never exceeded 
 £500 [English] a year, carried, in 1745, eight hundred 
 of his own people into the rebellion with him."* 
 Subdivision of land meant more retainers and greater 
 honour ; and so the highlands were peopled not to 
 the full extent of the work to be done, but actually to 
 
 1 2nd ed., p. 334 ; 'Ztli ed., p. 229. 
 
 2 Not feudal but pre-feudal, or allodial. See Wealth of Nations, III. 
 iv. 183, 1. 
 
 2 Wealth of Nations, ibid. 
 
CHAP. Til.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 189 
 
 the full extent of the bare food got from the soil.' 
 On the establishment of a strong government and 
 the abolition of their hereditary judicial privileges/ 
 the chiefs soon became williag to convert the value 
 in men into a value in money, exchanging dignity for 
 profit. They no longer encouraged their tenants to 
 have large families ; and yet they made no efforts to 
 remove the habits, which the tenants had formed, of 
 having them.^ It was this change that gave Sir 
 Walter Scott the materials for his most powerful 
 pictures in Waverley and other novels. But it is the 
 distress of the chiefs that is tragic to him, rather than 
 the misery of the clansmen. The clansmen for their 
 part had under feudalism been brought up to be 
 farmers or cattle-dealers and nothing else ; there was 
 as little variety of occupation in the highlands then 
 as in Ireland now. Undoubtedly too they had that 
 customary right of long possession, which law so often 
 construed into a legal title in the case of more 
 influential men. It was true also that, if the native 
 highlanders would not cultivate that poor soil, no 
 strangers would, and, if it was politically desir- 
 able that the country should remain peopled, the 
 only way to secure this was to prevent the native 
 exodus.* No such attempt was made ; but, on the 
 contrary, the highland landlords followed the way 
 that led to the highest rents ; they consolidated their 
 
 1 Selkirk, Highlands, 1805, p. 25. ^ See the Legend of Montrose, &c. 
 
 ' Adam Smith, I. c. ; cf. I. viii. 36, 1 (the often-quoted description 
 of " half-starved highland women " with their twenty children in contrast 
 to the "pampered fine lady" with few or none. 
 
 * Reports to Board of Agriculture : Central Highlands, 1794, p. 52. 
 
190 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 farms; they exchanged agriculture for pasture ; they 
 substituted deer for sheep. Almost every highland 
 district has sooner or later passed through all these 
 three stages, and with the same result, the employ- 
 ment of fewer and fewer men.'^ The discarded 
 men had two courses before them, migration to the 
 lowlands ^ or emigration to the colonies. The farm 
 labourer would migrate, the farmer emigrate. The 
 landlords incurred and often deserved odium for the 
 manner of their evictions ; but they treated the 
 evicted better than the average British capitalist 
 treats his dismissed hands. They usually provided 
 passages and often procured settlements abroad for 
 them. Lord Selkirk, one of the few writers on this 
 subject that preserves a judicial calmness, advised his 
 countrymen to acquiesce in the "depopulation" of the 
 highlands, but to draw the stream of emigration to 
 our own colonies. He himself drew it, so far as 
 he could, to the Eed River settlement and Prince 
 Edward Island. 
 
 From the middle of last century to the beginning 
 of this, emigration went on except when war made 
 it impossible. The dangerous qualities of the high- 
 landers made them very valuable in the three great 
 wars that prevented them from leaving the country 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, III. iv. 184, 1 (written 1774), a passage whicli 
 shows that the clearances and the consequent cry of Depopulation are 
 to be looked for as early as the middle of the century. We are some- 
 times told that from the '45 to the end of the century was the golden age 
 of highland farmers. But the willingness of the clansmen to enter 
 Chatham's highland regiments would hardly imply great contentment. 
 
 2 Of. Easay on Pop., pp. 332 (2nd ed.), 227 (7th ed.), and Selkirk, I. c, 
 pp. 43 seq. Contra, tee Report of Crofters Commisswn, 1884, p. 51. 
 
CHAP. Yii.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 191 
 
 with their families. It may be that this very military 
 consideration induced the English Government to 
 connive at the clearances at first ; and interference 
 at any later stage was very difficult. As it is, in 
 the end even the Sutherland evictions ^ seem simply 
 to have shifted the population and not removed it. 
 In spite of emigration Sutherland had as many in- 
 habitants at the last census of 1881, as at the first 
 in 1801, namely, above 23,000. Fishing, an industry 
 new to a great part of the highlands, made this 
 phenomenon possible. Fishing villages have grown 
 at the expense of inland farms. But this is not the 
 whole truth. Till the time when free trade began 
 to distend Glasgow and other great towns of Scot- 
 land, the highland counties taken altogether had 
 actually increased in population, as compared with 
 what they were in 1801. The subsequent fall is 
 due not to any great clearances or emigrations, but 
 to another cause that had been acting though not 
 conspicuously for some time before. This was migra- 
 tion to the industrial centres of the lowlands. In 
 the days of the Tudors there were complaints in 
 England of the decay of towns, because a strong 
 government had at last made the protection of walled 
 towns superfluous, and industry had spread itself in 
 peace, where it was wanted. But two centuries later 
 there was decay not of the towns but of the country 
 districts, because industry was taking forms that 
 made concentration necessary. At first, both in 
 
 ^ Made under the Marquis of Stafford between 180Y and 1820, in 
 whieli year the popular odium was at its height, and the landlord made 
 his defence in a well-known pamphlet by his factor, James Loch. 
 
192 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 England and Scotland, there was a real diminution 
 in the rural population ; there had been for the time 
 a real diminution of the work to be done in the 
 country, and a transference of it to the towns. The 
 hand-loom weaver had been supplanted by the power- 
 loom. The little villages, where the workman lived 
 idyllically, half in his farm and half in his workshop, 
 now either sent their whole families to the towns, 
 thus stopping their contributions to the parish regis- 
 ters in the country and swelling those of the town, 
 or, still keeping the parents, sent three-fourths of 
 the children there, thus making the country registers 
 a very untrustworthy reflection of the real state of 
 the population in the country districts. That country 
 villages in every part of Scotland, but especially near 
 the large cities, are '■' breeding grounds " of this latter 
 description ^ is perfectly well known ; and the same is 
 true, in a less degree, of England. This is one reason 
 why even the purely rural districts of Scotland have 
 greatly increased in apparent population since 1801, 
 and most of them are increasing still ; the readiness 
 of the Scotch to emigrate has caused the large 
 families quite as much as the large families the 
 emigration. Another reason is, that even in the 
 country districts there is now more work to be done 
 and it is done better. Orthodox economists may 
 count this an example of the self-healing effects of 
 an economical change that causes much suffering at 
 first. It is fair to say that this eventual cure is 
 
 1 Cf. Malthus, Essay, 7tli ed., p. 229, top ; cf. pp. 221 ft., 223 ft. ; 2nd 
 ed., pp. 326-7. 
 
CHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND lEBLAND. 193 
 
 neither more nor less complete than the cure of the 
 analogous hardships of the newly-introduced factory- 
 system, and the temporary inconveniences of sudden 
 free trade. What keen commercial ambition can do 
 it has done, and its success is at least sufficiently 
 complete to justify us in saying of Scotland to-day 
 what Malthus said of it eighty years ago : it was 
 most over-populated when it had fewest inhabitants. 
 Modern improvements, however short of perfection, 
 have at least both in England and in Scotland abso- 
 lutely put an end to periodical famines. Even the 
 scarcities of 1799 and 1800, though they caused great 
 distress in both countries, were not famines in either of 
 them ; and, since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, 
 even sucb general distress as was caused in Scotland 
 by the potato blight cannot occur again. That dis- 
 tress itself was as nothing compared with the terrible 
 dearths from which Scotland used to suffer five or six 
 times a ceutary, and which England experienced as 
 late as the seventeenth. i The dismal picture^ which 
 Malthus draws of the condition of the Scottish 
 peasantry reminds us that it is not mucb more than 
 a century since Scotland took her first steps in 
 civilization and turned her energies from war to 
 commerce.. Her population at the '45 was about 
 one and a quarter millions, in 1801 about one 
 and a half; but in 1861 more than three, and in 
 1881 three and three-quarters. Population therefore 
 
 ' See Malthus, Essay, Yth ed., p. 227. CI. Farr in Statist. Journ., 
 16tli Feb. 1846. 
 2 Drawn chiefly from tlie Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791-99. 
 
 
 
194 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 has more than doubled within the century. But 
 even now there are only a hundred and twenty-one 
 inhabitants to the square mile, as compared with four 
 hundred and forty-five in England. The wealth of 
 the country has increased immensely faster than the 
 population ; it has multiplied fivefold since the middle 
 of this century, and tenfold since the beginning of it.^ 
 The history of population in Ireland would have fur- 
 nished Malthus with still more striking illustrations of 
 his principles, if his life had lasted a few years longer. 
 He contents himself (till the 6th edition of the Ussay ^) 
 with a single paragraph : " The details of the popula- 
 tion of Ireland are but little known. I shaU only 
 observe, therefore, that the extended use of potatoes 
 has allowed of a very rapid increase of it during the 
 last century. But the cheapness of this nourishing 
 root, and the small piece of ground which, under this 
 kind of cultivation, will in average years produce 
 the food for a family, joined to the ignorance and 
 depressed state ^ of the people, which have prompted 
 them to follow their inclinations with no other 
 prospect than an immediate bare subsistence, have 
 encouraged marriage to such a degree, that the 
 population is pushed much beyond the industry and 
 present resources of the country ; and the consequence 
 naturally is, that the lower classes of people are in 
 the most impoverished * and miserable state. The 
 checks to the population are of course chiefly of the 
 
 ^ Lavergne, Bcon. Bur. de VAngleterre, ch. xx. p. 310. 
 ^ The 6tli simply adds the numbers of the people from the census of 
 1821, with hardly any comment. 
 3 2nd ed. says "barbarism." * 2nd ed., "depressed." 
 
CHAP. Yii.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 195 
 
 positive kind, and arise from the diseases occasioned 
 by squalid poverty, by damp and wretcbed cabins, 
 by bad and insufficient clothing,^ and occasional 
 want. To these positive checks have of late years 
 been added the vice and misery of intestine com- 
 motion, of civil war, and of martial law." ^ 
 
 In his review of Newenhatn's Statistical and His- 
 torical Enquiry into the Population of Ireland in 1808,^ 
 and in his evidence before the Emigration Committee 
 in 1827, Malthus uses even stronger language. We 
 may quote from the latter document as the less known 
 of the two. In 1817 he had spent a college vacation 
 in visiting Westmeath and the lakes of Killarney,* 
 and was able to speak from personal knowledge of the 
 country. He was asked : — • 
 
 Qu. 3306". " With reference to Ireland, what is 
 your opinion as to the habits of the people, as tending 
 to promote a rapid increase of population ? " — " Their 
 habits are very unfavourable in regard to their own 
 condition, because they are inclined to be satisfied 
 with the very lowest degree of comfort, and to marry 
 with little other prospect than that of being able to 
 get potatoes for themselves and their children." ^ 
 
 1 2nd ed. adds, " by the fllth of tlieir persons." 
 
 2 2nd ed.,pp. 334-5 ; 7tlied.,p. 229. He refers to tlie rebellion of 1795- 
 98, that was prelude to the Union of 1800, and was fresh in his memory. 
 
 ' Edin. Bemew, July 1808, the only review in that journal assigned to 
 him by express testimony. 
 
 * 3rcJ Report of Emigration Committee (1827), Evid., qu. 3225. 
 
 ^ In the article on Newenham he incidentally utters the paradox that 
 in view of the low standard of food the people's indolence is almost an 
 advantage, for it prevents wages falling quite down to that level. — Art. 
 p. 341. Cf. Essay, IV. xi. 456-7. For his view of potatoes in Ireland, 
 ibid., 453. 
 
 2, 
 
196 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. I. 
 
 3307. " What are the circumstances which con- 
 tribute to introduce such habits in a country ? " — 
 " The degraded condition of the people, oppression, 
 and ignorance." 
 
 3311. " You have mentioned that oppression con- 
 tributes to produce those habits to which you have 
 alluded ; in what way do you imagine in Ireland there 
 is oppression ? " — " I think that the government of 
 Ireland has, upon the whole, been very unfavourable 
 to habits of that kind ; it has tended to degrade the 
 general mass of the people, and consequently to 
 prevent them from looking forward and acquiring 
 habits of prudence." 
 
 3312. "Is it your opinion that the minds of the 
 people may be so influenced by the circumstances 
 under which they live, in regard to civil society, 
 that it may contribute very much to counteract that 
 particular habit which leads to the rapid increase of 
 population ? " — " I think so." 
 
 3313. " What circumstances in your opinion con- 
 tribute to produce a taste for comfort and cleanliness 
 among a people ? " — " Civil and political liberty and 
 education." ^ 
 
 Then the subject of one acre holdings is introduced, 
 and Malthus is asked : — 
 
 3317. "What efi'ect would any change of the 
 moral or religious state of the government of that 
 country produce upon persons occupying such posses- 
 sions ? " — " It could not produce any immediate efi'ect 
 if that system were continued ; with that system of 
 
 ' Cf. Review of Newenham, p. 352. 
 
CHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 197 
 
 occupancy there must always be an excessive redund- 
 ancy of people, because, from the nature of tolerably 
 good land, it will always produce more than can 
 be employed upon it, and the consequence must be 
 that there will be a great number of people not 
 employed." 
 
 3318. "Is, therefore, not the first step towards im- 
 provement in Ireland necessarily to be accomplished by 
 an alteration of the present state of the occupancy of 
 the land ? " This was a leading question, but Malthus 
 would not be led. He replied, " I think that such 
 an alteration is of the greatest possible importance, 
 but that the other (the change in the government) 
 should accompany it ; it would not have the same 
 force without." In his answers to later questions he 
 gave his view at greater length on the causes of the 
 difference between English and Irish character. 
 
 Answ. to qu. 3411. "At the time of the intro- 
 duction of the potato into Ireland the Irish people 
 were in a very low and degraded state, and the 
 increased quantity of food was only applied to in- 
 crease the population. But when our [English] wages 
 of labour in wheat were high in the early part of 
 the last century, it did not appear that they were 
 employed merely in the maintenance of more families, 
 but in improving the condition of the people in their 
 general mode of living." ^ 
 
 3413. " You attribute the difference of the character 
 of the people to the difference of food ? " — " In a oreat 
 measure." 
 
 1 Cf. Eogers, Six Gentv/ries of Work and Wages (1884), p. 484. 
 
]9S MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 3414. " What circumstance determines the differ- 
 ence of food in the two countries ? " — " The circum- 
 stances are partly physical and partly moral.'' It will 
 depend in a certain degree upon the soil and climate 
 whether the people live on maize, wheat, oats, pota- 
 toes, or meat." ^ 
 
 3415. "Is not the selection in some degree de- 
 pendent on the general state of society ? " — " Very 
 much on moral causes, on their being in so respect- 
 able a situation that they are in the habit of looking 
 forward, and exercising a certain degree of prudence ; 
 and there is no doubt that in different coimtries 
 this kind of prudence is exercised in very different 
 degrees." 
 
 3416. " Does it depend at all on the government 
 under which they live ? " — " Very much on the 
 government, on the strict and equal administration of 
 justice, on the perfect security of property, on civil, 
 religious, and political liberty ; for people respect them- 
 selves more under favourable circumstances of this 
 kind, and are less inclined to marry, with [out] the pros- 
 pect of more physical sustenance for their children." 
 
 3417. " On the degree of respect with which they 
 are treated by their superiors ? " — " Yes ; one of the 
 greatest faults in Ireland is that the labouring classes 
 there are not treated with proper respect by tbeir 
 
 1 In a sense already frequently noticed. So in answer 3401, where 
 he seems to accept the phrase " moral degradation " as applied to Ireland. 
 
 2 Of. above, pp. 95 and 195 n. Professor Rogers must have forgotten 
 such passages as these when he wrote the 62nd and 63rd pages of his 
 Six Cmturies of Work and Wages (1884), though he furnishes his own 
 correction on a following page (484). 
 
CHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 199 
 
 superiors ; they are treated as if they were a degraded 
 people." 
 
 Thereupon he is again asked a leading question of 
 a somewhat cynical character, but he is again cautious 
 in his answer. 
 
 3418. "Does not that treatment mainly arise 
 from their existing in such redundancy as to be no 
 object to their superiors'?" — " In part it does perhaps ; 
 but it appeared to take place before that [redundancy] 
 was the case, to the same degree." 
 
 The questioner, however, begs the question and 
 asks : 
 
 3419. " The number being the cause of their treat- 
 ment, will not their treatment tend to the increase 
 of that number?" and the answer is: "Yes, they 
 act and react on each other." 
 
 Accordingly his opinion in 1827 is, as it was in 
 1803, that emigration conjoined with other agencies 
 will be good for Ireland, but by itself will leave 
 matters no better than they were. 
 
 Alongside of his weighty words in the essay 
 and in the evidence it is worth while to place 
 the words written by Adam Smith half a century 
 earlier : — 
 
 " By the union with England, the middling and 
 inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete 
 deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which 
 had always before oppressed them. By a union with 
 Great Britain, the greater part of the people of all 
 ranks in Ireland would gain an equally complete 
 deliverance from a much more oppressive aristocracy, 
 
200 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 an aristocracy not founded, like that of Scotland, in 
 the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and 
 fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, 
 those of religious and political prejudices ; distinc- 
 tions which, more than any other, animate both the 
 insolence of the oppressors and the hatred and indig- 
 nation of the oppressed, and which commonly render 
 the inhabitants of the same country more hostile to 
 
 one another than those of different countries ever 
 
 " 1 
 are. 
 
 With such passages before us, we cannot consider 
 
 the two economists to have been behind their age in 
 
 their Irish policy. In regard to accurate figures, the 
 
 later economist was little better off than the earlier. 
 
 Ireland was not included in the first two censuses of 
 
 1801 and 1811. In 1695 its population was estimated 
 
 by Captain South as little more than one million ; ^ 
 
 in 1731, by inquiry of Irish House of Lords, at two 
 
 millions; in 1792 by Dr. Beaufort at a little above 
 
 four millions ;^ in 1805 by Newenham at five and a 
 
 half millions ; in 1812 an imperfect census gave it 
 
 as nearly six millions ; in the census of 1821 it was 
 
 6,800,000. It was clear that the population of 
 
 Ireland was increasing even then faster than that of 
 
 England.* But between these dates and our own 
 
 o 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, V. iii. 430, 1, 2. 
 
 2 Sir Wm. Petty made it 1,100,000 in 1672. See MacCullooh, Append, 
 to Wealth of Nations, (IV.) 462. 
 
 ^ See Sir H. Parnell's evidence in 3rd Report to Emigration Committee, 
 1827, p. 200. He thinks that between 1792 and 1821 the population of 
 Ireland had doubled itself. 
 
 * Malthus, Evidence before Emigration Committee, 1827 ; 3rd Report, 
 qu. 3430, p. 327. 
 
OHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 201 
 
 times comes an episode striking enough to provide 
 all economical histories with z. pur pur eus p annus. 
 
 For about two generations England had perpetrated 
 in Ireland her crowning feats of commercial jealousy, 
 a jealousy not more foolish or wicked against Ireland 
 than it was against the American colonies, or, till 
 1707, against Scotland, but more easily victorious. 
 Ireland had not begun to be in any sense an industrial 
 country till the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. ; 
 and the wars of the succeeding reigns hampered her 
 earl)^' efforts. She had fair corn and meadow lands, 
 and perhaps the best pastures in the world for sheep 
 and cattle. The English farming interest became 
 impatient of Irish competition, and a law was passed 
 to forbid the importation of Irish sheep and cattle 
 and dairy produce into England (1665, 1680). By 
 reason of the later Navigation Acts, Ireland couldnofc 
 make amends for this by trading with America, for 
 all such trading must be by way of England and in 
 English ships, nor by trading with France for the 
 same reason. England in her jealousy would have 
 surrounded her with a cordon quite as close as 
 Berkeley's wall of brass.^ As soon as a considerable 
 woollen manufacture grew up, England stopped it 
 by legislation, which (in 1699) forbade the export- 
 ation of Irish woollens not only to England but to 
 any other country whatever. English interference, 
 
 1 Querist (1735) 134 : " Whether if there was a wall of brass a thousand 
 cubits high round this kingdom, our natives might not nevertheless live 
 cleanly and comfortably, till the land, and reap the fruits of it ? " The 
 " caged rats " of the Com Law pamphlet? give us the other side of the 
 question. 
 
202 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. i. 
 
 if it had done no more, added immensely to the 
 uncertainties ^ and fluctuations of Irish trade. The 
 growth of industries like the woollen manufacture 
 had set on foot a growth of population which did 
 not stop with the arrest of the industries. As often 
 happens/ the effects of an impulse to marriage lasted 
 far beyond the industrial progress that gave the 
 impulse. But this means hunger and suffering, if 
 not death. In the case of Ireland, the ruin of all 
 industries but farming over more than three-fonrths 
 of the land led to an absolute dependence of the 
 people on the harvest of their own country ; and, 
 where it failed them, they were brought face to face 
 with dearth or famine. It led also to the peopling 
 of the country districts at the expense of the towns,^ 
 instead of (as usual) the towns at the expense of 
 the country. If Goldsmith's Deserted Village is not 
 English, it is not Irish. By the year 1780, when 
 Lord North from fear of rebellion granted free trade 
 to Ireland with Great Britain, the mischief had been 
 made almost incurable. The great increase in the 
 Irish population, like the great increase in the English, 
 may be said to begin in a free trade movement. In 
 the worst days of legal persecution it might have 
 been said of the Irish Catholic population, the more 
 they were afflicted the more they multiplied and 
 grew. Lavergne* thinks their greater increase was 
 
 ^ " Of such consequence in the encouragement of any industry is a 
 steady unvarying policy." — Arthur Young, France, p. 388. 
 
 2 See above, p. 151, &c. ^ See above, pp. 191-2. 
 
 " I. c. p. 399. Cf. Lecky, Eighteenth Cent., vol. ii. pp. 222 seq. ; Reziew 
 of Newenham, pp. 349, 350. 
 
CHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 203 
 
 due first to the physiological law, that in the case of 
 all animals the means of reproduction are multiplied 
 in proportion to the chances of destruction [?],. and 
 second to the instinctively sound tactics of a people 
 otherwise defenceless. The probability is, too, that 
 they remained quiet under their multitudinous indus- 
 trial, political, and religious disqualifications so long, 
 because they were reduced to that depth of misery 
 that kills the very power of resistance ; and poverty 
 at its extreme point is a positive but not a preventive 
 check on population. Where things are so bad, 
 marriage, it is thought, cannot make them worse, and 
 marriage would go on at the expense of a high 
 mortality, general pauperism, or continuous emigra- 
 tion. The pureness of marriage relations in Ireland, 
 though in itself a much greater good than its conse- 
 quences were evil, acted as it would have done in 
 Godwin's Utopia ; ' apart from wisdom, virtue itself 
 had its evils. Potatoes by-and-by came into general 
 use ; and the bad harvests, which taught even the 
 Scotch and English poor ^ to make frequent use of 
 this substitute for corn, converted it in Ireland from 
 a substitute into a staple. Economists viewed this 
 change with almost unanimous disapproval. In the 
 view of Malthus it was the cheapness of this food 
 that made it dangerous for the labourers ; his theory 
 of wages led him to object to cheap corn on the same 
 grounds.^ On the principle that it needs difficulties 
 
 ' See above, p. 18. 
 
 2 Yth ed., p. 378 ft. Cf. Polit. Econ., 1st ed., pp. 252, 290, and 
 394 seq. 
 
 3 Essay, III. viii. 323 (first in 5th ed.). See later, p. 268, &c. 
 
204 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i, 
 
 to generate energy, the Irish are made indolent by 
 their cheap food, and make no use of it except to 
 increase by it. Living on the cheapest food procur- 
 able, they could not in scarcity fall back on anything 
 else. Every man who wished to marry might obtain 
 a cabin and potatoes.^ At the lowest calculation, an 
 acre of land planted with potatoes will support twice 
 as much as one of the same quality sown with 
 wheat.^ There are other objections to a potato diet. 
 It is a simple (as opposed to a composite) diet, and 
 it involves a low standard of comfort. The second 
 is not the same as the first, for a people that had no 
 variety in their food might conceivably have a great 
 variety in their other comforts. As a matter of fact, 
 however, it was none of these three supposed disad- 
 vantages of the potato that proved the bane of the Irish 
 population, but a fourth one, its liability to blight.' 
 
 The figures of the census tell their own tale. In 
 1821 the Irish people numbered 6,801,827 ; in 1831, 
 7,767,401; in 1841, 8,199,853; but in 1851,6,514,473. 
 In each previous decade the increase approached a 
 million ; in the last there was not only no increase, 
 but a decrease of more than a million and a half 
 There had been a disastrous famine followed by great 
 emigrations. What happened on Lord Lansdowne's 
 estate in Kerry is an example of what took place 
 over Ireland generally.* That estate comprehended 
 
 1 JEssay, 7th ed., pp. 452-3 ; 2nd ed., pp. 575-6. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 323 ft. (7t]i) ; MaoCuUocli, Appendix to W. of N., p. 
 467, 2. 
 
 3 Essay on Fop., 2nd ed., p. 576 ; 7t]a ed., p. 453 ft. 
 * Lavergne, pp. 423-4. 
 
CHAP. VII.] SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 205 
 
 about 100,000 acres, on which before the famine there 
 was a population of 16,000 souls. When the famine 
 came a fourth part of them perished and another 
 fourth emigrated. In course of time, thanks to 
 money sent by relatives from America and advances 
 made by Lord Lansdowne, the emigration continued 
 with such rapidity that only 2000 souls were left on 
 the estate. The famine taught the people how to 
 emigrate, and gave them some idea of the meaning 
 of over-population. The rural districts of Ireland 
 are probably over-peopled now ; but there seems 
 reason to believe that a body of tenants, who are 
 little short of peasant proprietors in security of 
 tenure, and who have been forced into a knowledge 
 of the world outside Ireland, will not retain the 
 habits of the old occupiers.^ Without a change of 
 habits, peasant proprietorships would have done little 
 for France, and will do little for Ireland. 
 
 This would certainly have been the judgment of 
 Malthus on things as the}'' are now in Ireland, 
 after Catholic Emancipation, Disestablishment, and 
 the Land Act. In his own time he was wise enough 
 to see that the first could not be delayed without 
 injustice and danger. The rapid increase of the 
 Catholic population would soon, he foresaw in 1808,^ 
 bring the question of Emancipation within the range 
 of " practical politics," and if the measure had been 
 
 1 Even in 1875 the Eegistrar-General'a Report showed tliat there were 
 then fewer marriages in Ireland than in England, in proportion to the 
 population, and that thjy came later. Of. the 18ft Beport, for Ireland 
 (1882), pp. 18, 19. 
 
 ^ JRevietv of Newenham, pp. 351-4. 
 
206 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. i. 
 
 passed, as he urged, in 1808, instead of twenty years 
 later, the labour of conciliating Ireland might have 
 proved easier, and the political change might have 
 helped to produce that change in the habits of the 
 people which Malthus deemed essential to its per- 
 manent prosperity. 
 
BOOK 11. ECONOMICS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LANDLORDS. 
 
 Need of an Economical Digression — The Hegemony of Adam Smith's 
 School — Cardinal Doctrines of the Malthusian Economy — Scope, 
 Method, Details — Malthus doing Injustice to his Economics — 
 Human Characterof his Doctrines — Agricultural Situation in 1794 — 
 History of Com Laws — Malthus on Rent in 1803 and afterwards — 
 Observations on the Corn Laws — Grounds of an Opinion — Natwre 
 and Progress of Bent — Ricardo's Criticisms — Agricultural Improve- 
 ments — Malthusian Ideal of Commercial Policy — The Wall of Brass 
 ■ — Limits to Commercial Progress. 
 
 The Essay on Population deals with the past, the 
 present, and the future. We have tried to follow its 
 account of past and present, and must now consider 
 the author's view of future prospects and of the 
 various schemes (including his own) for making the 
 future better than the present. 
 
 To do justice to this half of the essay, we must 
 take further liberties with its arrangement. For 
 the sake of explaining the historical genesis of the 
 essay, we have already taken first ^ that criticism of 
 Godwin and Condorcet which in the later essay 
 comes in the centre of the work,^ on the heels of the 
 
 1 See above, Bk. I. ch. i. 
 2 2nd ed., Bk. III. chs. i. to iii. ; 7th ed., Bk. III. chs. i. and ii. 
 
208 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk, ir. 
 
 account of population in the United Kingdom, the 
 point where we have now arrived ; and the chapter 
 on emigration has been used before its time. There 
 remain, out of the fourteen chapters of the third book 
 of the essay, eleven still untouched ; and in all but 
 one^ a knowledo-e of the general economical doctrine 
 of Malthus is indispensable to a clear and just under- 
 standing of him. No apology is needed then for a 
 somewhat long digression, in which the chief econo- 
 mical writings of our author are briefly analyzed. It 
 is not wholly a digression, as the substance of seven ^ 
 out of ten chapters will be found incorporated with 
 it, and their logical connection with the author's 
 economical theories (so far as it exists) will be shown. 
 As a thoroughly practical man, Malthus knew that 
 philanthropy can do little without sound doctrine ; 
 and his economical theories belong to the substance 
 of his work. They were developed, unlike the Essay 
 on Population, in quiet controversy among friends ; 
 Eicardo, James Mill, and Jean Baptiste Say, who 
 were critics of the Political Economy, had been con- 
 verts of the Essay. These were, however, the very 
 men who came nearest to identify orthodox economics 
 with rigorous abstraction. Malthus himself, labour- 
 ing to build up the neglected pathology of economic 
 science, was not chargeable with this fault. His first 
 work had happily fixed into an intellectual principle 
 his natural inclination to look at speculative questions 
 
 1 'Ztli ed., ch.. iii. (on Owen, &c.), whicli replaces a reply (2nd and 3rd 
 edd.) to Godwin's first reply. 
 
 2 AH except those on pauperism. When pauperism is reached, the 
 thread of the essay is again taken up. 
 
CHAP. I,] THE LANDLORDS. 209 
 
 in their relations to practice, and to look at " things as 
 they are " ^ rather than as they might be. Eicardo's 
 first work, bearing wholly on finance,^ had unhappily 
 fixed for him his inclination to treat every social 
 question as a problem in arithmetic. In both cases 
 the excitement of controversy would make the im- 
 pression deeper. 
 
 The two economists both start from Adam Smith,* 
 as theologians from the Bible. It was becoming clear 
 that these Scriptures were of doubtful interpretation. 
 Men were to choose between the Calvinism of Eicardo 
 and the Arminianism of Malthus ; and, when the two 
 writers turned from their debates with the public to 
 debates with each other, no less a prize was in ques- 
 tion than the hegemony of the school. 
 
 This was won by Eicardo, whose Principles of 
 Political Economy and Taxation (1817) were accepted 
 by James Mill, MacCulloch, Nassau Senior, to say 
 nothing of others, as the Institutes of their creed. 
 MacCulloch thought it not worth his while to print 
 what Eicardo had thought it worth his while to write, 
 in vindication of his positions against Malthus.* The 
 strongest ally of Malthus was Sismondi. It was not 
 till Eicardo had reigned for thirty years that there 
 was serious sign of defection, when the son of James 
 Mill broke with his father's traditions ; ^ and, though 
 
 1 Tol. Econ., 1820, Introd. p. IL Cf. Tract on Value, p. 60 ft, and 
 above, p. 37. 
 
 2 High Price of Bullion, 1809. See below, p. 285. 
 
 3 Malthus, Pol. Econ., Introd. pp. 2, 5, 22, &c. ; Essay on Pop., Pref. 
 &c. ; Eicardo, Principles of Pol. Econ. and Taxn. (1817), Pref. 
 
 * Life of Ricardo in preface to Works, p. xxxi. 
 
 ' J. S. Mill, Political Economy, 1848 and 1849. It was not a complete 
 
 P 
 
210 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WOKK. [bk. ii. 
 
 in the hands of Thornton, Cliffe Leslie, Walker, and 
 others, the reaction has been carried to the utmost, 
 the eclipse of Eicardo has done nothing to rescue 
 Malthus from obscurity. The very success of the 
 Essay on Population may have deepened the oblivion 
 of the other writings in virtue of the popular fallacy 
 that a man cannot be equally great in general theory 
 and in the advocacy of one particular reform. 
 
 The Political Economy of Malthus has its faults ; 
 but it contains in outline the main truths which 
 writers of our own time think they have established 
 against Eicardo. First and foremost, he maintains 
 with them that the proper study of the science is 
 not Wealth, but Man, or more definitely. Wealth in 
 relation to Man. The qualities of man and the 
 earth he cultivates are according to Malthus so many 
 and variable in relation to each other that a study 
 of their relations cannot be an exact science like 
 mathematics ; it may contain " great general prin- 
 ciples " to which there are few exceptions, and 
 " prominent landmarks " that will be safe guides to 
 us in legislation or in life; but "even these when 
 examined will be found to resemble the most general 
 rules in morals and politics founded upon the 
 known passions and propensities of human nature."^ 
 Human conduct is characterized by such variation 
 and aberration that we must always be prepared for 
 
 breach. The new faith and the old perplex each other and the reader, 
 in the pages of Mill. 
 
 ' Fol. Ucon., Introd. Cf. the Discussions on the Measure of Value, 
 Pol. Econ., oh. ii., and pamphlet on the subject. So Roscher, National- 
 okonomie, § 1 and n. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 211 
 
 exceptions to our principles, and for qualifications 
 which spoil the charm of uniformity, but are faithful 
 to facts,^ like George Eliot's " analyses in small and 
 subtle characters," which stimulate no enthusiasm but 
 alone tell the whole truth. In the second place, we 
 are told that the nature of the subject makes a 
 peculiarly cautious Method necessary. Our first 
 business being to account for things as they are,^ 
 till we are sure that our theories do so we cannot 
 act on them.^ A good economical definition must 
 conform to the ordinary usage of words. We must 
 take if possible a meaning which would agree with 
 the ordinary use of words "in the conversation of 
 educated persons."* If this does not give sufficient 
 distinctness, we must fall back on the authority of the 
 most celebrated writers on the science, particularly of 
 the founder or founders of it ; "in this case, whether 
 the term be a new one born with the science, or an 
 old one used in a new sense, it will not be strange 
 to the generality of readers, or liable to be mis- 
 understood." * If any word must have a difi"erent 
 meaning from that adopted by either of these author- 
 ities, the new sense must not only be free from the 
 faults of the old, but must have a clear and recog- 
 nizable positive usefulness. The new definitions 
 should be consistent with the old; and the same 
 terms should be used in the same sense, except where 
 
 1 Arist., Mhics, i. (3). 
 
 ' " Befinitions in Political Economy, preceded by an inquiry into the 
 rules which ought to guide political economists in the definition and use 
 of their terms, with remarks on the deviations from these rules in their 
 writings" (1827), p. 5. 
 
 3 Pol. Bcon., Introd. p. 11. < Definitions, p. 4. ^ j^j^;^ p 5_ 
 
 P 2 
 
212 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 inveterate custom insists on an exception. When 
 all is done, it is still impossible in a social science 
 like political economy to find a definition entirely 
 beyond cavil.^ 
 
 "Wealtb" must include all tbe "material objects 
 that are necessary, useful, or agreeable to mankind ; " ^ 
 "productive labour" must be the labour which 
 realizes itself either in such material objects or the 
 increased value of them ; or else we wander from 
 common language, and our discussions travel ofi" into 
 indefiniteness. Economical reasoning must be a de- 
 duction from observed facts of nature and of human 
 nature verified by general experience. Malthus 
 professes to have used this cautious method through- 
 out, and the theory of population was only the 
 particular instance where circumstances enabled him 
 to make his verification most complete. " I should 
 never have had that steady and unshaken confidence 
 in the theory of population which I have invariably 
 felt, if it had not appeared to me to be confirmed, 
 in the most remarkable manner, by the state of 
 society as it actually exists in every country with 
 which we are acquainted."^ On the other hand, 
 Eicardo, legislating for Saturn, gives us little or 
 no verification by experience. It is true that he 
 admits qualifications and exceptions to his own state- 
 ments ; and he would have winced a little at his own 
 
 ' Definitions, pp. 6, 7. 
 
 ^ Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 28. "And have an exchangeable value," was 
 the Ricardian addition ; and in the Quarterly Rev., Jan. 1824, p. 298, 
 Malthus weakly allows the addition to pass. 
 
 2 Pol. Econ., Introd. p. 11. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 213 
 
 biographer's assertion that "Mr. Eicardo paid com- 
 paratively little attention to the practical application 
 of general principles ; his is not a practical work." * 
 But he makes no use of the admissions ; his illustra- 
 tions as a rule are not historical, but imaginary cases 
 and the verification is wanting. In a letter to 
 Malthus (written on the 24th November, 1820) he 
 says : " Our differences may in some respects, I think, 
 be ascribed to your considering my book as more 
 practical than I intended it to be. My object was 
 to elucidate principles, and to do this I imagined 
 strong cases, that I might show the operation of 
 these principles."^ In Malthus and Adam Smith, 
 imaginary cases are rare exceptions, actual examples 
 from life or history are the rule. Malthus goes so 
 far in this direction tliat (to use his own phraseology) 
 he is tempted to subordinate science to " utility." 
 Even Adam Smith, though he had abundance of 
 good-will to his kind, did not write to do good but 
 to expound truth. To Malthus the discovery of 
 truth was less important than the improvement of 
 society. When an economical truth could not be 
 made the means of improvement, he seems to have 
 lost interest in it. His pointed warning to others 
 against this error ^ may be regarded as a confession 
 of his own liability to it ; and, if he obeyed his own 
 warning at all, his position was at the best like 
 that of the latter-day utilitarians, who try to reach 
 
 > MacCullocli, Life ofMicardo, prefixed to Frine. rf Econ. and Taxation 
 (ed. 1876), p. XXV. 
 
 2 Letter quoted by Empson in Edin. Review, Jan. 1837. 
 
 3 Pol. Econ., Pref. pp. 12, 13 (2nd ed.). Cf. above, p. 57. 
 
£14 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. ii. 
 
 happiness by making believe not to think of it. 
 If his science had been less biassed by utility, it 
 might have been more thorough ; and we might not 
 have had in our own time a Ricardian socialism, 
 appearing like the ghost of the deceased Eicardian 
 orthodoxy sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. 
 He has the virtue of refusing to join the economical 
 Pharisees,^ who would not admit the elasticity of 
 economical laws, lest they should discredit their 
 science ; but he is to blame for not pushing his 
 quarrel against Ricardo with the same energy as 
 against Godwin. His forces, in this campaign, were 
 worse drilled and worse handled. It is justly said by 
 Garnier {Diet, de I'Econ. Pol., art. 'Malthus'), that in 
 spite of its title, the Political 'Economy of Malthus is 
 not the exposition of a system, but simply a collection 
 of economical papers on various subjects that had 
 been brought specially under his notice in discussion 
 ■with his friends, or (we might add) in his college 
 class. This itself would lead him to present a much 
 less solid front to the enemy than he did in the Essay. 
 To come, in the third place, to Details, we find the 
 human character of the Political Economy of Malthus 
 appearing not only in his view of population, where all 
 is at last made to depend on the personal responsibility 
 of the individual man, and legislation is good or bad 
 according as it strengthens or weakens that responsi- 
 bility, — but in his view of the Value of goods, as 
 measured by human labour, — in his view of demand 
 
 1 Arist., Ethics, x. 1. Some thought pleasure was the goal, but, for the 
 sake of others, "one must not say so." 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 215 
 
 and supply, as sharing the inconstancy of the human 
 desires that enter into both of them, — in his view 
 of the Eent of land, as determined by the effects of 
 human industry and skill as well as by the natural 
 qualities of the soil, — in his view of the Wages of 
 labour, as ]:egulated not by an unchangeable but by 
 a progressive minimum, — in his view of luxury, as 
 being equally with parsimony necessary to produc- 
 tion, and preventive of over-production, — and in his 
 view of free trade, as a rule to which we must make 
 exceptions if we would not cause sufferings. 
 
 These doctrines had a distinct relation to current 
 events. Political and social changes were reacting 
 on political economy. As Godwin and Pitt provoked 
 the essay of 1798, the scarcity of 1799 and 1800 
 called forth the pamphlet on High Prices (1800). As 
 the latter bears directly on the Poor Law, it will 
 best be considered when the thread of the Essay on 
 Population is taken up again ; ^ and the same applies 
 to the letter of Malthus to Whitbread (1807). The 
 distresses of a time when wheat went so high as £6 
 the quarter instead of its normal 40*. or 50s., would 
 naturally make the relief of the poor a question of the 
 day. The high prices of corn increased the number 
 of enclosures and Enclosure Bills. More than three 
 millions of acres, or about a twelfth part of the 
 entire area of England and Wales, are said to have 
 been taken from waste into cultivation between 1800 
 and 1820. The average price of wheat, always the 
 staple food of the people when they could get it, had 
 
 1 See below, ch. iv. 
 
216 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 been 555. lid. for the years preceding, viz. from 1790 
 to 1799 inclusive ; it was 82*. 2d. from 1800 to 1809 
 inclusive, and 88s. Sd. from 1810 to 1819 inclusive, 
 after which, it fell (for the next decade) to 58<s. 5d.'^ 
 In 1883-4 it was 35s. 8d. a quarter, which means a 
 four-pound loaf (of medium quality) at A^d. or 5d. ; 
 but at its lowest during the war (in 1803) it was at 
 57s. Id., and the loaf was at 6^d. or 7d. 
 
 Yet agriculture had not been standincr still. Arthur 
 Young, whose eccentric energy benefited every one 
 but himself, and fell little short of genius, betted his 
 nineteen volumes of Annals of Agriculture against Sir 
 John Sinclair's twenty-one volumes of the Statistical 
 Account of Scotland, that the Government of Pitt 
 would not establish a Board of Agriculture. But 
 Farmer George did establish one, in 1793 ;^ Young 
 paid his bet and became Secretary ; Sinclair gained his 
 nineteen volumes and became President of the new 
 Board ; and together they did much to make farmers 
 and landlords aware of the rotations of crops, disuse 
 of fallows, new manures, road-makings, that the 
 Secretary had been preaching in vain for thirty years.' 
 
 When the great scarcities of 1799-1800 took place, 
 the Board was equal to the occasion. It urged the 
 Government to get supplies of rice from India ; it 
 preached earnestly the cultivation of waste lands and 
 the temporary conversion of grass lands into corn- 
 
 1 Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 148 (ed. 1851). Cf. MacCulloch, 
 Wealth of Nations, Notes, p. 525. 2 Dissolved in 1817. 
 
 2 Between 1767 and his death in 1820, he wrote no less than a hundred 
 volumes on agriculture. His bet is given in Sir J. Sinclair's Life by- 
 Archdeacon Sinclair, i. 253. 
 
CHAP, I.] THE LANDLORDS. 217 
 
 fields. The last was done widely enough when the 
 prices of corn were high. The second, except when it 
 meant enclosure of commons, was hardly done at all ; 
 and there was a strange impression that the efforts 
 of the Board were at bottom a political movement 
 against ecclesiastical titles and the Established Church. 
 The importation of rice would have been of immense 
 immediate service ; but by the time the order had 
 reached India and the rice ships had come back to 
 England,^ the famine was over, the people preferred 
 wheat, and £350,000 of bounty were thrown away.^ 
 Nothing shows the insularity of English commercial 
 policy better than the remedies generally proposed 
 in those days for curing the evils of a bad harvest. 
 The House of Commons passed self-denying ordin- 
 ances^ and brown-bread bills, and offered a bounty 
 on potatoes.* 
 
 There was some talk inside the House of enforcing 
 a minimum rate of wages, and outside of enforcing a 
 maximum price of bread. The people were told to 
 eat red herrings instead of bread ; philanthropic soup 
 shops were opened ; distilleries and starch manu- 
 factories were threatened with prohibition. Relief 
 from the poor rates was, however, the favourite way 
 of cutting the knot. Better that our people should 
 depend on each other than on the foreigner. This 
 fear of dependence was the more pardonable then, as 
 
 1 At the end of 1801. 
 
 ^ Communications to Board of Agriculture, iv. 232-5(1805). Of. Ann. 
 Reg., 1801, p. 131. 
 
 ^ E. g. that the members should always use mixed instead of pure 
 wheaten flour. * Ann. Beg., 1801, p. 129. 
 
218 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 there were times, in the war with Napoleon, when 
 England was more completely alone against the 
 world than she is ever likely to be again. It was 
 a much more culpable folly to pretend^ that the 
 scarcity was due to "forestalling and regrating,"^ and 
 that England could have provided for herself well 
 enough, even in 1799 and 1800, but for the corn- 
 dealers and the large farms and the enclosures and 
 the new-fashioned husbandry. The new learning, 
 however, went on its way.' The benefits of it may 
 have gone to farmer* or to landlord, — the question 
 was much debated, — but they did not go to the 
 labourers. The same is true of the improvements in 
 cattle-breeding introduced by Bakewell of Leicester 
 and Chaplin of Lincoln, and encouraged by the Smith- 
 field Club (1798), which has long outlived the Board 
 of Agriculture. The life of the country labourers was 
 little changed. They and their wages could not 
 remain entirely unaffected by the growth of manu- 
 facturing towns. But custom still had the chief 
 power over wages, and had no little influence on 
 rents. From the reports sent from the Scotch, 
 English, and Welsh counties to the Board of Agri- 
 culture in 1794, it does not appear that wages were 
 at all, or rent very closely, in correspondence with the 
 amount of the produce.^ Rents were far from being 
 
 ' As was done, e. g., by Chief Justice Kenyon, King's Bencli, Rex v. 
 John Rusby, Nov. 1799. 
 
 2 See J. S. Girdler, Forestalling, &c. (1800), S. J. Pratt's poem on Bread 
 for the Poor (1800). 
 
 3 Girdler, I. c. pp. 46, 48, &c. 
 
 * Philps, Progress of G-reat Britain, p. 132. 
 
 ^ Of. the figures given in Malthus' Tract on Value, pp. 69-79, and in 
 
CHAP. 1.] THE LANDLORDS. 219 
 
 rack rents, and wages were far from varying with 
 the necessary expenses of the labourer. In truth 
 each country district in the days before railways and 
 steamboats was nearlj^ in the same isolation with 
 regard to the rest as all England was with regard 
 to foreign nations. The price of farm produce was 
 indeed tending to be equal over England, as now 
 over the world. Wages were displaying no such 
 tendency. Of all goods a man is the most difficult 
 to move,^ for you must first persuade him ; and 
 human inertia by making men stationary will keep 
 wages low. So it was in 1794. The exertions of 
 landlord and tenant were directed therefore rather to 
 keep up corn than to keep down wages. They were 
 beginning to fear for their monopoly of the corn 
 market. The English Government had done its best 
 to keep their market for them. A law of Charles 
 II. passed in 1670 virtually prohibited importation 
 of foreign wheat till the price of home wheat was 
 over 53s. A:d. a quarter, and^joashAe it free only when 
 the home price was SOs.'^^he Revolution of 1688 
 brought a new phase of commercial policy. The 
 new rulers, to conciliate the agricultural classes and 
 atone for the burdens which had been transferred 
 to them from the industrial classes, granted a bounty 
 of 5s. a quarter on the exportation of wheat so long 
 as the home price was not over 48s. In this 
 way, after exportation in the days of the Romans, 
 
 Professor Rogers' Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 487 seq., — both 
 of them taken chiefly from Eden on the Poor. 
 1 Wealth of Nations, I. viii. 44, 1. 
 
220 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 and alternate exportation and importation according 
 to the seasons in after times, there was, after the Eevo- 
 lution, exportation encouraged by a bounty, while im- 
 portation was still hindered by duties. The intention 
 was at once to attract capitalists to agriculture and to 
 reward those already engaged in it. By this means 
 not only would the farmers be attached to the new^ 
 dynasty, but England would provide all her own food.^^v^ 
 
 But the very increase of tillage kept down prices 
 and gave the landowners little benefit. Whenever a 
 scarcity occurred the laws were suspended, and the 
 bounty and duties were taken off together.^ Exporta- 
 tion, however, was the rule till a little after the middle 
 of the century, say at the beginning of George Ill.'s 
 reign, when the tide had fairly turned. Especially 
 after the Peace of Paris (Nov. 1762), commerce was 
 extended and population with it. Canals were made, 
 roads improved, and home trade prospered.' AVe 
 could no longer raise enough corn for our own wants.* 
 In 1766, the year of our author's birth, there were 
 scarcities, Corn Plots, and suspensions of the Corn 
 Law^s ; * but the bounty was kept up in name to the 
 end of the century. In 1795 and 1796 the price of 
 wheat rose to 80,?. a quarter, in 1797 and 1798 it 
 sank to 545. ; but, at the end of harvest, 1799, it rose 
 to 92s., in 1800 to 1285., and before the harvest of 
 1801 to 1775. The quartern loaf (under 6d. in 1885) 
 
 1 On the whole subject see Craik, Hist, of Commerce, ii. 142-5. 
 
 2 Macpherson, ditto, iii. 148 (year 1728), 307 (year 1757). 
 
 3 Ibid., iii. 329, 331 ; MacC, Comm. Diet. (ed. 1871), p. 430. 
 ^ Of. Essay on Population, p. 352 (7th ed.). Of. above, p. 25. 
 5 Macpherson, iii. 438, 452. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 221 
 
 was once within ^d. of 25. ! Then came a cycle of 
 comparative plenty. Wheat between 1802 and 1807 
 was at 755. on an average, and a new Corn Law in 
 1804 prohibited importation till the home price should 
 rise to 635. Between 1808 and 1813 it was 1085. 
 on an average ; and it was as high as 1405. 9d. in 
 the severe winter (1812-13) of Napoleon's retreat from 
 Moscow. ^^Eut- in the spring of 1815 wheat was at 
 605. If it should rise to 635. the ports would be 
 opened, and there was not even the Protection of 
 war. The farmers and landowners were terror- 
 stricken, the political economists divided, and the 
 bill for raising the importation price to 80s. was 
 hurried through the House. The bounty, relaxed in 
 1773, had been finally repealed, in 1814.' As the 
 sliding scale of duties was not introduced till 1827, 
 we are to regard Malthus and Ricardo as writing on 
 rent (in 1815 and 1820) under the severe Corn Law 
 of 1815, as well as when the wisdom of passing that 
 measure was still under debate. All their discus- 
 sions on rent bear consciously or unconsciously upon 
 the Corn Laws of their own time. 
 
 Malthus is rightly considered the first clear ex- 
 pounder in England of the economical doctrine of 
 rent. Dr. James Anderson, a contemporary of Adam 
 Smith, was no doubt before his age in his view of the 
 subject;^ but, perhaps because he was better known 
 
 ^ Cf. Malthus, Essay on Pop., p. 453 (2nid ed.) ; Grounds of an Opinion, 
 &o., p. 43. 
 
 2 E. g. National Industry of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 208-9 (1779). Mac- 
 CuUocli has quoted other passages {Wealth of Nations, xlviii. n., and 
 Note on Bent, p. 453, 1, and n.). Sir Edward "West agrees with Malthus 
 
222 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 as an agriculturist than as an economist, he does not 
 seem to have made converts. The " simultaneous 
 rediscovery" of the true doctrine by West and 
 Malthus in 1815 may be compared with the simul- 
 taneous discovery of the Darwinian theory by Wallace 
 and Darwin in 1859. The times were ripe for it. 
 Malthus gives no certain sound on the subject in the 
 early editions of the Essay on Population. In the 
 second he even says that " one of the principal 
 ingredients in the price of British corn is the high 
 rent of land " (p. 460; cf. p. 444). However, needing 
 to lecture on Eent to his pupils at Haileybury in 
 
 1805, he saw the unsoundness of this position, and in 
 
 1806, in the third edition of the essay, the passage is 
 dropped, and we are told, " universally it is price that 
 determines rent, not rent that determines price " (vol. 
 ii. p. 266). The passage is repeated in the fourth 
 edition (1807).^ But when the time came for a fifth 
 edition, in 1817, the whole of the chapters on Corn 
 Laws and bounties, which are the only chapters of the 
 essay that deal much with rent, were recast, to ex- 
 press the clearer views which the author had already 
 expounded elsewhere. In the spring of 1814, in the 
 excitement of debates on the abolition of the bounty 
 and on new laws to keep out foreign grain, Malthus 
 was led for the fourth or fifth time in his life to take 
 the field as a pamphleteer.^ This time, however, he 
 came forward, he said, not to take a side but to act 
 as arbitrator. His " Observations on the effects of 
 
 in his qualified approval of the Corn Laws. See Trim of Corn, &c., 
 p. 139. 1 A reprint of the 3rd (?) 
 
 2 If we include the Crisis, it would be the fifth time. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 223 
 
 the Corn Laws, and of a rise or fall in the price of 
 corn on the agriculture and general wealth of the 
 country" (1814),i professed to balance the arguments 
 for and against the Corn Laws, and did it, he said, 
 so judiciously, that his own friends were in doubt to 
 which opinion he leaned.^ To later readers the bias 
 is not doubtful. It appears even in such a passage as 
 the following, which, incidentally, shows us his view 
 of rent, nearly matured : — " It is a great mistake to 
 suppose that the effects of a fall in the price of corn 
 on cultivation may be fully compensated by a diminu- 
 tion of rents. Eich land, which yields a large nett 
 rent, may be kept up in its actual state, notwithstand- 
 ing a fall in the price of its produce, as a diminution 
 of rent may be made entirely to compensate this fall, 
 and all the additional expenses that belong to a rich 
 and highly-taxed country. But in poor land the 
 fund of rent will often be found quite insufficient for 
 this purpose. There is a good deal of land in this 
 country of such a quality, that the expenses of its 
 cultivation, together with the outgoings of poor's 
 rates, tithes, and taxes, will not aUow the farmer to 
 pay more than a fifth or sixth of the value of the 
 whole produce in the shape of rent. If we were to 
 suppose the prices of grain to fall from 75s. to 505. 
 the quarter, the whole of such a rent would be 
 absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of the 
 farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, 
 and making some allowance for a fall in the price of 
 
 ^ It -was popular enougli to reacli a Srd edition in 1815. 
 2 See Grounds of an Opinion, &c., p. 2. 
 
224 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ir. 
 
 labour. The regular cultivation of such land for 
 grain would of course be given up, and any sort of 
 pasture, however scanty, would, be more beneficial 
 both to the landlord and farmer." ' The drift of the 
 pamphlet may be shortly stated. The writer refused 
 to go with Adam Smith in identifying corn with 
 food, and attributing to it in that capacity an un- 
 changeable value, which made any rise of price 
 futile for the encouraEfement of tillage. He thought 
 
 o o o 
 
 that it was perfectly possible to encourage tillage by 
 Corn Laws ; but was it good policy ? Before he 
 could answer this question, he felt bound to con- 
 sider several others.^ Under free trade would Great 
 Britain grow her own corn 1 — if not, ought Govern- 
 ment to interfere to secure this ? — if so, would laws to 
 hinder importation be the best kind of interference ? 
 The answer to the first is, that other countries have 
 soils more fertile than Britain ; Poland can ship corn 
 at Dantzig for England at 325- a quarter;^ and, if there 
 were free trade over Europe, the rich lands which are 
 not English would send their plenty to relieve the 
 wants of their neighbours. If Corn Laws have not 
 made us grow our own corn, free trade would not. In 
 answer to the second question, no doubt it is sound 
 economy to buy in the cheapest market and sell in 
 the dearest ; and, if we had regard to nothing but the 
 greatest " wealth, population, and power," the rule 
 would be invariable ; foreign imports of food are in 
 every case a good thing for the country, and, if there 
 
 1 Observations, pp. 20-1. ^ Ibid., p. 17. 
 
 3 The English price in Nov. 1884. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 225 
 
 is evil in the matter, it is not in them but in the bad 
 season which makes them necessary ; moreover, a free 
 trade in corn secures a steadier as well as cheaper 
 supply of grain.^ But, on the other hand, dependence 
 on other nations for the first necessary of life is a 
 source of political insecurity to the nation so depend- 
 ing ; and, though the dependence is mutual, identity 
 of commercial interests seldom prevents nations from 
 going to war with each other ; " we have latterly seen 
 the most striking instances, in all quarters, of Govern- 
 ments acting from passion rather than interest." ' 
 And it might be argued that, if we give up agricul- 
 ture for manufacture, we change the character of our 
 people ; manufacturing industry conduces to mental 
 activity, to an expansion of comforts, to the growth 
 of the middle classes, and to the growth with them 
 of political moderation ; but it is more subject than 
 agriculture to the fluctuations of fashion, which lead 
 to chronic destitution and discontent, and the con- 
 ditions of artizan life are " even in their best state 
 unfavourable to health and virtue."^ Virtue and 
 happiness after all are the end ; wealth, population, 
 and power are but the means. Malthus himself 
 believes in something like a golden mean, a balance 
 of the two industries, which legislation might pos- 
 sibly preserve.* There is another and less plausible 
 
 1 Observations, pp. 19, 22, 23, 27. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 28. If the Eicardian hypothesis is not true of individuals, 
 it is still less true of Governments, as Cobden experienced. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 30, 31. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 32 : " Many of the questions both in morals and politics 
 seem to be of the nature of the problems de maximis et minimis in 
 
 Q 
 
226 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 argument on the same side. Assuming that wages 
 vary with the price of corn, high money wages, and 
 therefore high prices of corn, are an advantage to 
 working men, who would have more money to buy 
 the goods of the foreign countries where prices of 
 corn were low and goods were cheap. This argu- 
 ment, though our author is inclined to yield to it, 
 is inconsistent with his own views of wages and the 
 facts he cites in support of them.^ More cogent is 
 the plea that it would be unfair suddenly to with- 
 draw a long-established protection, though (it might 
 be replied) we are no more bound to be gradual in 
 abolishing protection than in concluding peace during 
 war. But the real question is, whether once protected 
 is to mean always protected, and protected in an 
 always increasing degree, for it was this increased 
 protection that was proposed in 1814 and 1815. It 
 may be true that if we protect manufacture we ought 
 to protect agriculture ; but, instead of protecting both, 
 why not set both free ? Statesmen had no courage, 
 however, to be free-traders, in days when the separate 
 articles protected were as many as the millions in the 
 National Debt, and each article represented a vested 
 interest. Malthus does not seem to expect Parlia- 
 ment to give free trade a moment's consideration. 
 But the friends of the new Corn Laws, besides using 
 the commonplaces of protectionism, argued from Lhe 
 change in the value of the English currency. When 
 paper were paper prices,^ the importation price of the 
 
 fluxions ; in which there is always a point where a certain effect is the 
 greatest, while on either side of this point it gradually diminishes." 
 ^ Cf. even Obserocdions, pp. 5, 12, 13. ^ See below, chs. ii. and iii. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 227 
 
 law of 1804 could be soon reached, and foreign corn 
 came in much faster than the real or the bullion 
 prices of it would have allowed. There was also 
 the long array of standing arguments for Corn Laws 
 that lay stress on the heavy taxation of the country, 
 and are meant to show that the agricultural classes 
 bear most of it, and are thus handicapped against 
 the foreigner. From Malthus himself the old leaven 
 of protectionism was never wholly purged away. 
 Like Pitt, though in a less degree, he suflPered his 
 politics to corrupt his political economy, and drag 
 hiin back from the " simple system of natural liberty " 
 into " the mazes of the old system." ^ English people 
 since the Eepeal of the Corn Laws will hardly care 
 to thrash the old straw out again. Perronet Thomp- 
 son's Catechism of the Corn Laws is the best storehouse 
 of the old arguments and their refutations, set forth 
 with a liveliness to which no other English economical 
 writing has the slightest claim.^ 
 
 The real opinion of Malthus came out in the second 
 Corn Law pamphlet on the Grounds of an Opinion on 
 the Policy of restricting the Importation of Foreign 
 Corn (1815). Between the two came the tra,ct on 
 Pent, which is rather an economical book than a 
 political pamphlet, and will be noticed immediately. 
 He now declares himself in favour of a temporary 
 
 1 The expression of Grenville in a letter to Pitt, 1800. See Stanhope, 
 Life of Pitt, u. 371. 
 
 ^ Unless perhaps Mr. Bagehot's. Col. Thompson understood the 
 theory of population only in its cruder form. In answer 337 of the 
 Catechism (1839) he meets the objection that free trade would only 
 increase population by saying : " No man has a right to prevent ua 
 running a constant race with hunger if we can." 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [be. ii. 
 
 duty on imported corn to countervail the artificially- 
 low value of the currency, — " to get rid of that part 
 of our prices which belongs to great wealth, combined 
 with a system of restrictions." ^ 
 ^^ He warns the Government that they should not take 
 such a step to benefit a particular trade, but only to 
 benefit the public. The motives are those constantly 
 professed by defenders of the Navigation Act — not 
 j)rivate interests but public policy. Since he wrote 
 his Observations circumstances had changed. The 
 sudden peace had brought the then unprecedented 
 combination of a bad harvest and low prices ; the 
 value of the currency had fallen fast ; and last, and 
 not least, France, the best corn country in Europe, 
 had begun to prohibit the exportation of grain ^ in 
 dear years. We must therefore, he says, keep up the 
 high farming which the war taught us, by keeping up 
 the high prices of the war. Eighty shillings might 
 not be too high a price, for the limit of prohibited 
 importation. 
 
 It seems extraordinary that, after so clearly recog- 
 nizing that " wealth does not consist in the dearness 
 or cheapness of the usual measures of value, but in 
 the quantity of produce," and that exports are not 
 so good a criterion of wealth as the " quantity of 
 produce consumed at home," ' Malthus should recom- 
 mend the increase of abundance by means of artificial 
 dearness. It is a poor consolation to us that he was 
 no worse than Brougham, who voted for the Corn 
 
 1 Grounds, &c., p. 46 n. ^ jj;^^ pp 3^ yI, 12. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 30, 33. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 229 
 
 Law in 1815, and for the support of the Navigation 
 Act in 1849, — and little worse than Eicardo, who 
 would allow a temporary restriction for the sake of 
 leaseholders.! A better is that he was advocating a 
 policy that was against his private interests as a 
 holder of a fixed salary and owner of three per cents. ^ 
 But at the best the atmosphere of these two tracts is 
 a little depressing. ^ 
 
 The tract on Eent is more bracing. It was the 
 first-fruits of the larger work on Political Economy 
 (1820); and its substance had been delivered in the 
 professor's lectures at Haileybury. It expounds the 
 Nature and Progress of Bent with clearness and 
 intelligibility, if without the liveliness of 1798. 
 Malthus gives us to understand that, to explain this 
 or any other economical notion, we must keep as 
 closely as possible to the usage of ordinary language, 
 the language of clear-thinking ordinary men.^ 
 
 To them, rent does not mean, as by derivation, 
 simply produce or profit; nor, as to a Frenchman 
 now and to Bailie Nicol Jarvie in his days, interest 
 on a debt. It means a certain price paid to a land- 
 lord for the use of his land. But such a definition 
 is too wide. It might include the proceeds of a 
 monopoly, or an interest on capital, or a Government 
 tax, or a legal rate, or a toll, or a payment for 
 service rendered. We must define the term a little 
 more clearly. 
 
 There is a certain portion of a landlord's income 
 
 1 Eicardo, WorU, p. 335 (MacC.'s ed.). For remarks on this part of 
 Malthus' tract see iUA., p. 382. 
 
 2 Grmnd,, &c., p. 36 n. Cf. Eicardo, p. 390. 3 g^e above, p. 211. 
 
230 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 aud of a peasant proprietor's earnings that has an 
 origin and character distinct from the rest, and 
 demands the economist's separate attention, whether 
 it alone receives the name of rent or not ; — this is, 
 the excess of the produce of land beyond the cost 
 of production and the current rate of profits. Re- 
 present these in money ; and suppose the current 
 profit five per cent. Suppose that a tenant lays out 
 £500 on his farm, and gets by the harvest and 
 farm produce not only £500 plus £25, but £600; 
 the additional £/5, which would if retained by him 
 be over or extra profits as compared with the rate 
 usual among farmers and men of like business, is the 
 value of his rent ; and the landlord can take that 
 from him without impoverishing him. Eent is that 
 portion of the produce which remains, after all the 
 outlay of the cultivator has been repaid him together 
 with the current profits. From accidental or tempo- 
 rary causes the money rents of land may be more or 
 less than this ; but this is the point to which actual 
 rents will gravitate.-' 
 
 So far as this account goes, it might seem that 
 Malthus' description is too general ; it would include 
 the extra profits, for example, of any monopoly or a 
 royalty for the xise of a patent ; and Ricardo's defini- 
 tion, " the price paid for the indestructible powers of 
 the soil," might seem more definite. But Malthus is 
 rather too specific than too general. He is thinking 
 of agricultural land only, and that mainly as pro- 
 ducing food for man. If his description of the 
 
 i Pol. Econ., ch. iii. sect. i. p. 134 (1820). 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 2.31 
 
 Nature of rent adds little to that of Adam Smitli/ 
 his account of its Causes, which he himself was the 
 first to grasp, is characteristic and peculiar. 
 
 First, he says, fertile^ soils yield a produce that 
 more than feeds the producer. This may be put 
 more generally than Malthus has put it. If rent 
 is to be paid, there must be wherewithal to pay 
 it ; and there cannot be so if production does no 
 more than repay cost. There may, however, be a 
 production beyond mere repayment of cost, not only 
 ia farming but in all trades. The very principle 
 of the division of labour and the separation of 
 trades implies that devotion to one occupation makes 
 men so dexterous in production that, besides pro- 
 viding for themselves, they have an overplus where- 
 with to supply their other wants and the wants of 
 others.* This overplus, where the facilities for trading 
 were specially good, might be so much above the 
 overplus of an ordinary profit that the granter of 
 the facilities, who is usually the ground landlord, 
 might get the lion's share of it, and still leave the 
 user of the facilities as thriving as his neighbours. 
 On the other hand, if no such overplus can be earned, 
 no such rent can be paid. Rent, in short, when it 
 is paid by men of business, either in town or in 
 country, means over-profits, and ground -rents mean 
 advantage of situation. 
 
 a 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, I. xi., beginning. 
 
 2 He does not always prefix this qualification ; but that he intended 
 It appears clearly from the Tract on Rent, p. 3 n. : Not every land that 
 yields food will yield rent. Of. Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 141. 
 
 2 Compare Tract on Bent, p. 16 n. 
 
232 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 The second cause of rent, according to Malthus, 
 who is considering, be it remembered, the cause of 
 the Progress of rents as well as of their actual volume 
 at any given time,' is the peculiarity belonging 
 to agricultural land, that the demand increases with 
 the supply ; in other cases the demand is external 
 to the supply, but in this case ^ the supply creates its 
 demand. Where there is food there will be mouths. 
 In the supply of food no over-production is possible.^ 
 
 It is here that the Essay on Bent is connected with 
 the Essay on Population. By the law of population 
 the tendency is that where food enough for six is 
 being produced by two, the other four will soon 
 make their appearance ; and so, thinks Malthus, the 
 farmer makes his customers by simply making his 
 wares. Something like this, we might add, would 
 happen in a completely developed co-operative society, 
 where the makers would sell to each other and buy 
 from each other. It is even true, in a sense, of all 
 manufacturers as things now are, in proportion as 
 their articles come near to being necessaries ; — if 
 they supply that without which people cannot live, 
 they go far to bring people into being. Malthus, 
 however, regarded it as much more true of agricul- 
 tural production than of any other. He regarded 
 food as the chief necessary, and thought with Adam 
 
 ' The title of the tract is, An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress 
 of Bent, and the Principles by which it is regulated. It appears from a 
 letter of Malthus to Sir John Sinclair on 31st Jan., 1815, that it was passing 
 through the press in that month. Sinclair, Correspondence, i. 391 (1831). 
 
 ^ As, he might have added, in education. 
 
 3 Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 142, but especially p. 187. Cf. Tract on Bent, 
 pp. 8—12. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 233 
 
 Smith, that "when food is provided it is compara- 
 tively easy to find the necessary clothing and 
 lodging." ^ Against this we need only remember, 
 how the Essay on Population showed that it was 
 only in the lower stages of existence that increase 
 of mere food involved increase of population ; and so 
 the tendency of the supply to create its own demand 
 was, on the author's own showing, nothing more 
 than a tendency.^ His economical reasoning was 
 swayed a little by his circumstances. The insularity 
 of English life in his days prevented him from con- 
 ceiving how a nation could safely derive half its 
 food from abroad ; what Adam Smith had thought 
 too good to be likely,^ he thought too dangerous to 
 be desirable. Good or bad, it is our position now, and 
 the result is, first, that the supply of food does not, in 
 the same degree or way, produce its own demand 
 as formerly, and, second, that our other productions 
 are, even more truly than the agricultural, the supply 
 that creates its own demand, for they give the power 
 of buying the food that feeds new demanders. The 
 production carried on, on the surface of the land, has 
 come in this way to be a more potent cause of the 
 Progress of rents than production from the soil itself. 
 With this restatement the second of Malthus' causes 
 of rent becomes perhaps a little more intelligible. 
 
 His third cause is that good land is scarce. Lands 
 diS'er in fertility, and there is not, as in a new 
 country, enough of the most fertile to supply all our 
 
 1 B-unt, p. 10. 2 Cf also below, p. 294. 
 
 3 Wealth of Nations, IV. ii. 307, 2 ; cf. lY. v. 240, 2. 
 
234 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 wants. When the produce of the inferior begins to 
 be absolutely necessary, the inferior will be cultivated 
 at a price enough to repay cost and give ordinary 
 profits to the farmer. But what is simply enough to 
 do that for him will do much more than that for all 
 the holders of superior lands, and all that is much 
 more can be taken by a landlord as rent without 
 placing the tenant at any disadvantage as compared 
 Avith his neighbours. As soon as this happens in a 
 country, the extra profits, which are called by econo- 
 mists rent, will appear in it ; and the growth of 
 population, by leading to an increased demand for 
 food and to an increased price of it, will cause the 
 cultivation of inferior lands, or else a more expen- 
 sive cultivation of the old ones ; and again, since the 
 necessary new supplies cannot be permanently kept 
 up without one or other of these two resources, the 
 price, and with it the rent, will, in the absence of 
 inventions, remain permanently higher. In other 
 words, this third cause is the " law of diminishing 
 returns." 
 
 It is this law of diminishing returns which bulks 
 most largely in the tract of Sir Edward West, written 
 in the same year as that of Malthus. West's theory 
 of rent is simply, " that in the progress of the 
 improvement of cultivation the raising of rude pro- 
 duce becomes progressively more expensive, or in 
 other words, the ratio of the net produce of land 
 to the gross produce is continually diminishing." ^ 
 
 1 Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, witli observations 
 showing the impolicy of any great restriction of the importation of 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 235 
 
 He sees how near Adam Smitli came to it when he 
 said, that in the progress of cultivation the total 
 amount of rent increased, but the proportion of it 
 to the produce diminished, so that from being e.g. 
 half the produce it became one-third.' He sees, as 
 even in 1798 Malthus had seen,^ that but for this 
 law population might increase indefinitely on a few 
 fertile lands instead of spreading over the globe 
 (West, p. 13), whereas because of this law inventions 
 in agriculture are not able to remove " the necessity 
 of having recourse to inferior land, and of bestowing 
 capital with diminished advantage on land already 
 in tillage" (p. 50). He pushes the principle so far 
 as to say broadly that whatever increases agricultural 
 production increases cost, while whatever increases 
 manufacturing production diminishes cost (p. 48), 
 inferring that the former must tend abroad and 
 the latter at home to prevent the displacement of 
 English agriculture by foreign competition. As he 
 had little or no influence on Malthus, his tract need 
 not be noticed in detail ; it is enough to say that, 
 while West is superior in style and arrangement, 
 Malthus is the more comprehensive. West is clearer 
 and simpler because he includes less. 
 
 Looking at the three causes together, we see that 
 the first and last relate to the statics, and the second 
 to the dynamics of the subject. We need to remember 
 that Malthus is having regard in the first instance 
 
 com, and that tlie bounty of 1688 did not lower the price of it. By a 
 fellow of University College, Oxford. (London, 1815.) Page 2. 
 1 W. of N., II. iii. 148, 1. 2 Essay, 1st ed., p. 363. 
 
236 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 not to the value but to the quantity of the produce. 
 Now, apart from questions of value, it is possible there 
 might be, in a country, land yielding to the sower more 
 than he sowed ; but it might be an ordinary excess, 
 secured by all producers in that country, for the land 
 might be all equally fertile, and production from 
 land might be the most fertile of industries. In that 
 case, even if the land was a State monopoly and the 
 producer's gains could be taken from him by a tax, 
 there would be nothing corresponding to rent, in the 
 received sense. But, as soon as there were differences 
 in the fertility, and therefore differences in the 
 quantity produced at the same cost, the farmer who 
 had the difference on his side could be said to have 
 a rent. It is this surplus, conjoined with the insti- 
 I tution of private property, that, according to Malthus, 
 I makes leisure and mental progress, and even great 
 , , material prosperity, possible.^ The rent is properly 
 * the extra profits, and not the equivalent paid over 
 for them to a landlord ; rent can easily exist without 
 a landlord. " It may be laid down, therefore, as an 
 incontrovertible truth, that, as a nation reaches any 
 considerable degree of wealth, and any considerable 
 fulness of population, which of course cannot take 
 place without a great fall both in the profits of stock 
 and the wages of labour, the separation of rents, as a 
 kind of fixture upon lands of a certain quality, is a 
 law as invariable as the action of the principle of 
 gravity. And that rents are neither a mere nominal 
 value, nor a value unnecessarily and injuriously 
 
 1 Tract on Bent, p. 16 ; IJssay on Pop. (Vth ed.), p. 327. Cf. above. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 237 
 
 transferred from one set of people to another, but a 
 most real and essential parb of the whole value of 
 the national property, and placed by the laws of 
 nature where they are, on the land, by whomsoever 
 possessed, whether the landlord, the crown, or the 
 actual cultivator." ^ 
 
 It is the second cause that brings the first and third 
 into operation in such a way as to produce the rents 
 that we actually know in an old country. The fertility 
 which secures a produce beyond cost makes extra 
 profits possible ; the growing population, which gives 
 the produce a value, makes them actual ; and the 1 
 gradations in fertility, whereby a uniform increase in 
 the value of produce creates far from uniform extra 
 profits to different cultivators, give the extra profits 
 the peculiar graduated character, which is character- 
 istic of rent in the economical sense of the word. 
 
 Malthus believed himself to have included, in this 
 theory of rent, what truth there was in the view of 
 the French economists and of Ada.m Smith, when 
 they spoke of rent as due to the qualities of the soil 
 and not to an ordinary monopoly. His contemporaries 
 admitted him to have been the first clear expounder 
 of the subject. But his most eminent brother econo- 
 mist found general agreement quite consistent with 
 emphatic divergence in details,^ not wonderful in a 
 writer who regarded every economical question as a 
 particular case of the problem of value rather than of 
 wealth. 
 
 1 Rent,-p. 20 ; cf. pp. 18, 57. Essay on Pop., Snd ed., p. 433 ; 7tli ed., 
 p. 327. " If we look only to the clear monied rent," &c. 
 ^ Ricardo, Preface to Principles of Pol. Econ. and Taxation. 
 
238 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 Ricardo admits that his own theory of rent is 
 simply a farther development of the Malthusian. In 
 an essay on The Influence of a low price of Corn on 
 the Profits of Stock, shoioing the inexpediency of Be- 
 striclions on Importation (1815),^ published in answer 
 to the two tracts of Malthas above mentioned, he 
 makes this quite clear, and, unlike his disciples, is 
 warm in praise of his rival's powers as an economist.^ 
 He agrees with the definition (of the Tract on Bent) 
 that rent is " that portion of the value of the whole 
 produce which remains to the owner after all the 
 outgoings belonging to its cultivation have been 
 paid," including an ordinary rate of profits for the 
 employed.* 
 
 But, whereas Malthus regards rent as increased by 
 whatever lessens the outgoings in any shape or form, 
 Ricardo considers that can happen in one way only, 
 namely, by the increased cost of raising the last part of 
 the necessary supplies. Arithmetically it was clear 
 that, if you had four items making up the total 
 expense of cultivation, whatever reduced any one of 
 the items /»ro tanto reduced the total.* Accordingly, 
 Malthus said that rent could be increased by such an 
 accumulation of capital as will lower the profits of 
 stock, — such an increase of population as will lower 
 
 1 Eeprinted by MaoCuUoch. in Ms edition of Pol. Econ. and Taxation, 
 pp. 367—390. 
 
 2 MacCulloch ed. of Pol. Econ. and Taxation, p. 374 n. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 371. 
 
 * So Prof. Eogers ascribes the bigh. rents of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries very largely to the low .wages ; higher ones would 
 have "reduced rent first, and profits afterwards." — Six Centuries, p. 
 482 ; cf. pp. 480 and 492. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 239 
 
 the "wages of labour, — such agricultural improve- 
 ments or such increase of the cultivator's exertions 
 as will diminish the number of labourers needed, — ■ 
 or such an increase in the prices of produce from 
 increased demand as will increase the diflference 
 between the expense of production and the price of 
 produce.^ Ricardo, on the other hand, says that 
 profits can never be reduced by mere accumulation of 
 capital or competition of capitals, but only by the 
 progressively less fruitful character of the investments 
 to be found for capital as accumulation goes on. As 
 long as there is fertile land /to be had, yielding a rich 
 return to capital, no one will accept a poor return. 
 "If in the progress of countries in wealth and popu- 
 lation new portions of fertile land can be added to 
 such countries with every increase of capital, profits 
 would never fall nor rents rise." ^ In things as they 
 are, capital soon accumulates beyond the rich invest- 
 ments and has to take the poorer. Sooner or later, 
 even in a new colony, a point is reached where fertile 
 land will not supply food enough for the growing 
 population except at an increased cost.^ Now, if the 
 supply is absolutely required, the most costly portion 
 of it, whether it be got by an extension of cultivation 
 to poorer lands, or by a more thorough cultivation 
 of the richer, will determine the price of all the rest, 
 
 1 Fol. Econ. (1820), p. 161 (ch. iii. sect. iii.). 
 
 2 Pol. Econ. and Taxation, pp. 373, 375, 379-80 ; cf. pp. 71 and 72, but 
 especially 68 ft. Malthus on the whole follows Adam. Smith, I. ix. ; 
 Mill has followed Eicardo. 
 
 ^ So far as the account is meant to be historical, it must be corrected 
 by Carey. See above, p. 65. 
 
240 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ir. 
 
 for there cannot be two prices in the same market ; 
 and the profits of the producer of it will determine 
 the profits of all his fellow-cultivators, for there 
 cannot be two rates of profit in the same business. 
 Furthermore, the agricultural profits will determine 
 the rate in other businesses, for in a full-formed society 
 the rate in the others must bear a fixed relation to 
 the rate in this business, so that the one cannot 
 materially vary without the other.' Therefore the 
 greater cost of the last portion of the necessary supply 
 of food will lower profits generally, will thereby 
 increase the range of extra profits from the richer 
 soils, and will thereby raise rents. 
 i The diff'erence between the two men is, that what 
 I Malthus makes only one cause, Ricardo makes the only 
 j one, the increased cost of cultivation.^ Ricardo and 
 ' his friends have certainly put cause for effect.^ It is 
 1 of course in the first instance the high prices that 
 i lead to the costly cultivation, and not vice versa, for 
 without the high prices the produce of the costly 
 ■ cultiv ation would not be profitable. 
 ^^ Malthus was asked by the Committee on Emigra- 
 tion : " Among other efi'ects of resorting to a soil 
 inferior to any now in cultivation, which is involved 
 in the proposition of cultivating waste lands, would 
 not one be to raise the rents of all the landlords 
 
 ' Eicardo, I. c. p. 372 and n. Cf. below. He appeals to Adam Smith's 
 principle of compensation {Wealth of Nations, I. x.). 
 
 '^ Eogers {8ix Centuries, p. 352) goes so far tlie other way as to make 
 improvements the only cause of an increase of rent, though the passage 
 should be read with p. 480, and especially pp. 482 and 492. 
 
 ' E. g. Mrs. Fawcett, Pol. Econ. for Beginners, pp. 65, 66 ; and even 
 West, on Rent, p. 50. 
 
PHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 241 
 
 throuo-hout Great Britain and Ireland ? "■ — He an- 
 swercd : "I think not. The cultivating of poor lands 
 is not the cause of the rise of rents ; the rise of the 
 price of produce compared with the'~(IOBts~of produc- 
 tion, which is the cause of the rise of rents, takes" 
 place first, and then such rise induces the cultivation 
 of the poorer land. That is the doctrine I originally 
 stated, and I believe it to be true ; it was altered by 
 others afterwards." ^ 
 
 On the other hand, what makes the high prices 
 permanent instead of temporary, is the fact that the 
 cultivation essential to the completeness of the supply 
 cannot be other than costly.^ It is, therefore, not 
 wrong to consider costly cultivation as one cause of 
 the permanence of high prices, and therewith of high 
 rents. But Kicardo goes further, and counts it the 
 only cause. 
 
 Through the whole progress of society, he says, 
 profits are regulated by the difficulty or facility of 
 procuring food ; and, " if the smallness of profits do 
 not check accumulation, there are hardly any limits 
 to the rise of rent and the fall of profit." Nothing 
 can increase the general rate of profit but the cheapen- 
 ing of food ; ^ as by improvements in agriculture, 
 which, by securing the same production with less 
 labour, for the time increase the profits and lower 
 the rents.* The landlord's interest is therefore at all 
 
 1 3rd Report, 1827, p. 321, qn. 3341. Of. Perr. Thompson, True Theory 
 of Rent, pp. 8, 12, 34, &o. (1832, 9th ed.). 
 
 2 Tract on Value, p. 6. 
 
 2 Rieardo, Low Price of Corn, &c., Works, pp. 373, 380, 381, &o. 
 4 IbU., pp. 377, 379. 
 
 E, 
 
242 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 times opposed to that of every other class in the 
 community,^ for it means dear food, low profits, and 
 high rents. Still, high rents are not the cause either 
 of the dear food or the low profits, but are, equally 
 with them, the eff"ect of a common cause, more costly 
 cultivation. The effect of a costly cultivation on 
 wages might seem vi terminormn to be a raising of 
 them, for wages depend on the proportion of the 
 supply of labourers to capital's demand^ for them, 
 and by assumption there was a greater demand. But 
 since the cause of the rise of price was in the first 
 instance an increase of population, it follows that the 
 increased cost of raising the most costly supplies of 
 corn will be incurred not by higher payment of old 
 labourers, but by employment of new. Wages again 
 will buy less corn, for corn has risen. " While the 
 price of corn rises ten per cent., wages will always 
 rise less than ten per cent., but rent will always 
 rise more ; the condition of the labourer will generally 
 decline, and that of the landlord will always be im- 
 proved." ^ In his statement of the doctrine of wages, 
 Eicardo is perhaps more careful in 1815 than he is 
 in 1817, saying that, "as experience demonstrates 
 that capital and population alternately take the lead, 
 and wages in consequence are liberal or scanty, nothing 
 can be positively laid down respecting profits as far 
 as wages are concerned."* But even in 1817 his 
 exposition is hardly more rigid than that of Malthus 
 
 1 Eicardo, Works, 1. c. p. 378. 
 
 ^ Pol. Econ. and Tax., ibid. pp. 50 sej., esp. pp. 54, 55. 
 
 3 I. c. p. 55 ft. 
 
 * Low Price, &o., ihid., p. 379. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 243 
 
 himself. So far is lie from recognizing an iron law 
 driving wages down to " the natural price " or bare 
 necessaries, that he thinks the market rate may be 
 constantly above the natural for an indefinite period, 
 and he regards the natural itself as expansive. The 
 whole chapter on wages ^ shows a just understanding 
 of the Essay on Population. Nevertheless, if Ricardo 
 in one sense made too much of the principle of popu- 
 lation in relation to Rent, in another sense he made 
 too little of it. He does not see that in a progressive 
 country it counteracts the tendency of improvements 
 in agriculture to cheapen produce, and thereby reduce 
 rents ;" agricultural rents have risen since 1846 largely 
 because of high farming. He does not grant that 
 high or low wages can affect rent, because he regards 
 them as purely relative to profits, and making with 
 profits a total amount, of which only the proportions 
 vary ; but it is difficult to believe that the rise in 
 agricultural wages since 1873 or so can have failed to 
 play a part in keeping down farmers' rents since that 
 date. As, however, our view of the power or power- 
 lessness of lowered profits or lowered wages to increase 
 rent will be found to depend on our view of the 
 causes of value, and as the difference of the two 
 economists on the relation of wages to profits might 
 have the appearance of a technical subtlety, these two 
 items of the total may be passed by for the present. 
 
 In regard to agricultural improvements the issue 
 seemed plainer, and the evidence seemed all for Ricardo 
 
 1 Pol. Econ. and Tax., eh. v. ; cf. Malthus, Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 230. 
 2 But cf. Worls, p. 377 n. 
 
 K a 
 
244 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 and against Malthus. In a country depending chiefly 
 on itself for grain, a general adoption of improvements 
 would seem to make supplies cheaper because less 
 costly, and therefore to lower rents because forcing 
 farmers to lower prices. Even Mr. Mill did not 
 break away from Ricardianism at this point,^ though 
 he speaks less unreservedly than Eicardo upon it. 
 Malthus, on the other hand, who regards rent as 
 depending largely on the ability of the agricultural 
 supply to create its own demands, regards rent, accord- 
 ingly, as at all times keeping pace with the increase 
 of grain caused by improvements, unless the improve- 
 ments outrun population. What cheapness does in 
 other cases is to make an article accessible to a 
 circle of buyers previously excluded from it. Every 
 one is a buyer of agricultural produce and no one 
 is excluded ; but the temporary cheapness of grain 
 creates new buyers by making marriage accessible 
 to a wider circle. 
 
 The progress of rents in fact results from the 
 - conflict of two economical tendencies — the tendency 
 • of economical expedients to lower prices, and the 
 tendency of an increasing population to raise them. 
 If Malthus' ripest view of population be true, then 
 a cheapening of food among a civilized people by no 
 means leads to a correspondiug increase of their 
 numbers, and therefore the course of improvement 
 would tend so far towards a diminution of price, and 
 
 1 Pol. Econ., IV. iii. § 4. Cf. Walker, Land and its Bent, pp. 177-81, 
 though it has been pointed ont that on p. 178 that writer omits MiU's 
 qualifying phrase, (improvements) " suddenly made.'' 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 245i 
 
 therewith of rent. If rents depended on the price of 
 corn alone, economical expedients (including not only 
 the direct aids to tillage, mechanical and chemical 
 inventions directly applied to it, but the indirect aids, 
 free trade, railways, and steamers) must certainly have 
 lowered rents in the last hundred years. But the 
 reverse is true,^ chiefly because the produce of a farm 
 is ceasing to mean wheat, and coming more and more 
 to mean cattle and dairy produce, which have nob 
 fallen but risen in price in one hundred years, while 
 corn has actually fallen. This variety of productions 
 has proved financially an equivalent to what Malthus 
 (seventy years ago) considered the main cause of greater 
 extra profits to the farmer and greater money rents 
 to the landlord — the increased fertility of the soil in 
 the matter of grain, and an increased price keeping 
 pace with it. 
 
 The commercial policy of England has become what 
 Malthus describes in the latter part of the Essay on 
 JPopulation as a combination of the agricultural and 
 the commercial systems. His views on this subject 
 became modified as he grew older. In the second 
 edition he says : ^ " Two nations might increase 
 exactly with the same rapidity in the exchangeable 
 value of the annual produce of their land and labour ; 
 yet ... in that which had applied itself chiefly to 
 agriculture, the poor would live in greater plenty, 
 and population would rapidly increase ; in that which 
 
 1 See Sir James Caird's table appended to Landed Interest (1878). Cf. 
 Cairne's Essays in Pol. Ec, vi. p. 216. 
 
 2 Bk. III. ch. vii. p. 429. 
 
246 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. ii. 
 
 had applied itself chiefly to commerce, the poor would 
 be comparatively but little benefited, and consequently 
 population would either be stationary or increase very 
 slowly." " In the history of the world the nations 
 whose wealth has been derived principally from 
 manufactures and commerce have been perfectly 
 ephemeral beings compared with those the basis of 
 whose wealth has been agriculture. It is in the nature 
 of things that a state which subsists upon a revenue 
 furnished by other countries must be infinitely more 
 exposed to all the accidents of time and chance than 
 one which produces its own." ^ It is not, he tbinks, 
 because of her trade, but because of her agriculture 
 that England is so rich in resources ; it is not with- 
 out danger that our commercial policy has diverted 
 capital from agriculture into manufacture and com- 
 merce. About the middle of the eighteenth century 
 we were strictly an agricultural nation, and we were 
 safe, for in a country whose commerce and manu- 
 facture increase from and with the improvement in 
 agriculture there is no discoverable germ of decay. 
 But all is changed now ; and there is reason to fear 
 that our prosperity is temporary, and we have only 
 risen by the depression of other nations.^ When the 
 nations that now supply us with cheap corn shall 
 have prospered like ourselves and increased their 
 population till corn is dear among them, then we 
 shall be ruined. The evils of scarcity are so dreadful 
 that it is worth our while to give special encourage- 
 
 > :Essay, 2nd ed., Bk. III. eh. viii. p. 437. 
 2 Ibid., 1. c. ch. ix. pp. 443 seq. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 247 
 
 ments to agriculture, and, in order to be certain to 
 have enough, to have in general too much.-' Other- 
 wise " we shall be laid so bare to the shafts of fortune 
 that nothing but a miracle can save us from being 
 struck." V^^' If England continues yearly her import- 
 ations of cOtn, she cannot ultimately escape that 
 decline which seems to be the natural and neces- 
 sary consequence of excessive commercial wealth ; 
 and the growing prosperity of those countries which 
 supply her with corn must in the end diminish 
 her population, her riches, and her power," — not 
 indeed in the next twenty or thirty years, but " in 
 the next two hundred or three hundred."^ In 1803 
 Malthus had much in common with the author of 
 Great Britain independent of Commerce, to say nothing 
 of the French economists. He cannot be said to 
 have entirely lost the bias in favour of Agriculture 
 in later years. In the Political Economy, reviewing 
 the last five centuries of English work and wages,* 
 he tries to explain away the instances where rising 
 prices of corn and an " influx of bullion " seem to 
 have injured the condition of the labourer ; and there 
 can be little doubt he was indirectly answering an 
 objection to Corn Laws. When depreciation of the 
 currency, whether through American discoveries or 
 suspensions of cash payment, has occurred, the re- 
 bound from it (he says) has made prices fall much 
 more than wages, and so (we are to infer), when prices 
 
 1 Essay, Bk. IIL ch. ix. p. 450. 2 j^^^^ ^li. x. p. 465. 
 
 3 Ibid., Bk. v. ch. x. p. 468 n. 
 
 *■ Pol. Econ. (1820), pp. 227 seq., (1836) pp. 240 seq. 
 
248 
 
 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. 
 
 [bk. II. 
 
 are kept high, wages will follow. It may be doubted 
 if he had weighed the full consequences of such a 
 contention in the light of his own principles of free 
 trade. Professor Rogers ^ has had the valuable aid of 
 old College accounts. Malthus had little besides 
 Eden, Arthur Young, and the Eeports to the Board of 
 Agriculture ; and it is doubtful if he fully understood 
 the effects on the labovirer of Henry VII. 's debase- 
 ment of the currency, or could apply the analogy to 
 the depreciation in his own day.^ But on the whole, 
 as years went on, he became less physiocratic. He 
 came to acknowledge that, if a purely agricultural 
 country might in some cases, like America, be the 
 best possible for the labourer, it might in other cases, 
 like Poland or Ireland, be the worst possible for him. 
 
 ' Six Ceiituries of Work and Wages, ch. xii., esp. p. 345. 
 
 2 The facts of Malthus' "review" may be roughly given in the follow- 
 ing diagram, where the bar indicates the wheat earned per day by the 
 agricultural labourer. The amount for 1350 assumes that the Statute of 
 Labourers was successful. 
 
 One peck. 
 
 Two pecks. 
 
 1340 (before Plague) 
 1350 (after Pligue) 
 1400 
 
 
 
 
 1500 
 
 
 1603 
 
 
 1650 
 
 
 1699 
 
 
 1730 
 
 
 1766 
 
 
 1811 
 
 
 1822 (?) 
 
 
 
 
 Add 1884, taking wages 
 at 14s. a week and 
 wheat at 36s. a 
 quarter, or Is. \},d. a 
 peck. 
 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 249 
 
 If we hear that the labourer in one country earns 
 in a year fifteen and in another nine quarters of 
 wheat, we cannot be sure that the former is the 
 better off till we know the value of other things in 
 the country in comparison with wheat. If manu- 
 factures were very dear in comparison, then the 
 labourer's wages except in food would go very little 
 way, unless in a case like America, where the quantity 
 is so great that it makes up for the little value of corn 
 wages. In Poland the value of corn is so low, and 
 there is so little capital in the country, that the high 
 corn wages mean low real wages, and the population 
 is either stationary or very slow in its increase. The 
 prosperity of an agricultural country, then, depends 
 on other causes than the direction of its attention to 
 the one industry of agriculture, and without knowing 
 these we could not infer or predict it.^ 
 
 Malthus in fact reached the point at which he was 
 always glad to arrive, the medium between two 
 extreme views. ^ He would neither approve of a 
 purely agricultural nation, whose danger was want 
 of capital, nor of a purely commercial, whose danger 
 was want of food. In a purely commercial, every- 
 thing depends on a superiority in mdustry, machinery, 
 and trade, which from the nature of things cannot 
 last. Not only foreign but domestic competition will 
 
 1 7tli ed., pp. 321 seq. (Bk. III. ch. viii.), first in 1817. 
 
 2 Cf. above, p. 225 n. In Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 432, lie says, " All the 
 great results in Pol. Econ. respecting wealtli depend upon proportions." 
 2nd ed. added (p. 376), " not only there, but throughout the whole range 
 of nature and art." So he thinks a peck of wheat a good " middle point " 
 of wages. Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 284, (1836) p. 254. 
 
250 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 bring down profits, and thereb)'", by discouraging 
 saving and enterprise, diminish the demand for 
 labour and bring the population to a standstill. 
 Christendom has seen Venice, Bruges, Holland lose 
 their trade by their neighbours' gain.^ To say that 
 the nations of the world ought to be allowed to 
 develope their trade as freely as the provinces of a 
 single empire, is, in his opinion, to overlook the 
 reality of political obstacles. If England were still 
 separated into the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, 
 London could not be what it is. The interest of a 
 province and the interest of an independent state are 
 never the same.^ To one who believes political 
 divisions inevitable, there can be little hope for uni- 
 versal free trade. Malthus is unable to rise to the 
 cosmopolitan view of Cobden, and he never seems to 
 see that by ignoring political barriers, free trade may 
 really weaken them. His ideal is a state which 
 combines agriculture and commerce in equal propor- 
 tions.^ The prosperity of the latter implies the decay 
 of feudalism and the establishment of secure govern- 
 ment ; with security comes the spontaneous extension 
 of enterprise and a steady demand for labour. Since 
 the two great classes of producers provide a market 
 for each other, wealth will constantly grow, and 
 without risk of sudden check by a foreign influence. 
 The prosperity of such a country may (he thinks) last 
 practically for ever, and we might answer in the 
 affirmative for our own country the query of Bishop 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., Bk. III. ch. ix. pp. 328 seq. C£. pp. 334, 338. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 332. 3 Ibid., Bk. III. ch. x. pp. 334 seq. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLORDS. 251 
 
 Berkeley about his/ " The countries which unite 
 great landed resources with a prosperous state of 
 commerce and manufactures, and in which the com- 
 mercial part of the population never essentially 
 exceeds the agricultural part, are eminently secure 
 from sudden reverses. Their increasing wealth seems 
 to be out of the reach of all common accidents, and 
 there is no reason to say that they might not go on 
 increasing in riches and population for hundreds, nay 
 almost thousands of years." ^ They would go on in 
 fact till they reached the extreme practical limits of 
 population, which under the system of private property 
 would mean such a state of the land as would " enable 
 the last employed labourers to produce the mainten- 
 ance of as many probably as four persons," the man, 
 his wife, and two children. As soon as the labour 
 ceases to produce more than this, it ceases to be 
 worth the employer's while to give the wages and 
 employ the labour. These practical limits are far 
 from the limits of the earth's power to produce food, 
 and a Government which compelled every member 
 of society to devote himself wholly to the raising of 
 food and necessaries, would succeed in coming nearer 
 to those farther limits, though at the expense of 
 everything we mean by civilization.' As a matter 
 of fact, even the practical limit is not approached 
 by way of a uniform decline of profits and of 
 population. Various causes, acting at irregular in- 
 tervals, stave off" the event. The decline of general 
 
 1 See above, p. 201 n. Cf. Essay on Pop., 7th ed., p. 337. 
 
 ^ Essay, 1. c. p. 338. 3 I. c. Bk. III. ch. x. pp. 338-9. 
 
252 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. ii. 
 
 profits, the iDtroduction of long leases and large 
 farming, would bring more capital to the land ; 
 improvements in agriculture will increase the produce, 
 inventions in manufacture will lessen the cost of the 
 agriculturist's comforts, and make his wages and 
 profits go farther ; the opening of a foreign market 
 may raise home prices ; a temporary rise in the value 
 of agricultural produce may stimulate the investment 
 of capital in farming. So Malthus concludes, for 
 reasons not unlike Cliffe Leslie's,^ that, though there 
 is a tendency of profits to fall, yet the tendency is 
 often defeated. Though there is much truth still in 
 many of his statements, the conclusion he draws from 
 them,^ that we ought by a judicious system of corn 
 duties and corn bounties to keep the price of food 
 steady and secure a large home supply, is quite out 
 of court now. The variations in price have been 
 under free trade very moderate ; and the supply from 
 one quarter or another has never failed us. Free 
 trade is no longer among our problems. 
 
 It must be added, however, that there is no reason 
 why the "practical limits" should not exist under 
 a paternal or fraternal socialism as well as under 
 the present social system. Even if industry were 
 initiated and directed not by individuals but social- 
 istically by Government, the sole motive need not be 
 to increase the mere numbers of the people, and 
 therefore the mere total quantity of food needed for 
 
 1 Fortnightly Beview, Nov. 1881, his last writing. Cf. Essay, 1. c. pp. 
 340—342. 
 
 2 In two long chapters on Com Laws and Bounties, Essay on Pop., 
 Bk. III. ch. xi. pp. 343—367. Cf. above, pp. 226 seq. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE LANDLOEDS. 253 
 
 a bare life. The motive of socialistic government 
 would be to secure a liigh degree of comfort, not a 
 bare subsistence, for all ; aad therefore, at the cost of 
 a limitation of numbers, society would still remain at 
 a distance from its greatest possible production of 
 food. Whether such a limitation of numbers is 
 likely to take place in the reconstituted society is 
 discussed elsewhere.^ 
 
 1 See below, Bk. IV. 
 
254 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. ir. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE WOEKING MAN. 
 
 Measure of Value, 1823 — In what sense Labour a Measure — Diffi- 
 culties — Arguments of the Tract on Value — IMeasure in the same 
 Country — Measure in different Countries — Measure at different 
 Periods in the same — Measure as applied to varying Value of 
 Currency — The Royal Literary Society — The Definitions — Wages 
 — The Minimum of Social different from the Minimum of Physical 
 Necessaries — High Wages, how made Permanent — The " Wages 
 Fund," whose Invention, and how far a Reality — " The New School 
 of Political Economy," its three Tenets — A General Glut in what 
 Sense possible. 
 
 As the Eent and Corn pamphlets deal chiefly with 
 Mother Earth, the tract on the Measure of Value' 
 deals chiefly with Father Work. The search for a 
 common measure of value is not, to Malthus, a 
 purely academical problem. He considers such a 
 measure desirable because in any inquiry into the 
 wealth of nations it is important to distinguish 
 between the rise of one commodity and the fall of 
 another. The former is an intrinsic alteration of 
 value which will afl"ect every exchange in which the 
 object is concerned ; the latter an extrinsic which 
 afi'ects only the one exchange, of the object in 
 
 1 The Measure of Value stated and ilhistrated, with an application 
 of it to the alteration in the value of the English currency since 1790. 
 (April) 1823. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 255 
 
 question with the foreign object that has been 
 altered. By value of course is to be understood 
 economic value, or " the power of commanding other 
 objects in exchange," not value in the (not uncommon) 
 wider sense, of usefulness in supplying wants.^ The 
 economic value of anything, taken in relation to some 
 object which never changes its value from intrinsic 
 causes, may be called the "natural or absolute value" 
 of that thing, and the object with which it was 
 compared maybe called the "measure" of absolute or 
 natural value, in other words, of the value which a 
 thing must fetch if its supply is to be continued. 
 While not only money but any and every object may 
 be such a measure of value for a limited place and 
 time, even money itself is not a good measure for 
 widely different places or for long periods of time ; 
 and corn, which is better for long periods, is worse 
 for short. 
 
 Labour is better than either, but Labour is am- 
 biguous. We may measure the value of anything 
 either by the labour it has cost us in the making of it, 
 which gives us Ricardo's sense of natural value, or by 
 the labour it will purchase after it is made. Adam 
 Smith,^ who preferred labour both to money and 
 corn as the measure of value, wavered between these 
 two meanings of the terms. Malthus declares at 
 once against the first sense. Labour, he says, in the 
 sense of cost does not altogether determine value and 
 
 ^ So Tract on, Value, p. 1. But in Definitions value is "the relation 
 of one object to some other or others, in exchange, resulting 'from the 
 estimation in which a thing is held" (def. 40, 41 ; cf. with def. 5). 
 
 2 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, I. v. 
 
256 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 therefore cannot measure it, even for similar places 
 and times. In 1820 Mai thus had been of opinion 
 that a mean between corn and labour was a better 
 measure of value than labour itself; but since 1823 
 he recurred to the view of Adam Smith/ and held 
 that the amount of the unskilled common day labour 
 of the agricultural labourer, which a thing will 
 purchase or command, is a good measure of the value 
 of it even at widely different places and times. 
 " Agricultural labour is taken for the obvious reasons 
 that it is the commonest species of labour, that it 
 directly produces the food of the labourer, and that 
 it is the most immediately connected with the grada- 
 tions of soil and the necessary variations of profits. 
 It is also assumed with Adam Smith, Mr. Ricardo, 
 and other political economists, that, on an average, 
 other kinds of labour continue to bear the same 
 proportions to agricultural labour." ^ The bodily 
 exertion of the labourer does not change ; it is the 
 same sweat of the brow, the same sacrifice of physical 
 force. When corn, for example, will command a 
 less amount of labour than it would have done a 
 century before, we may be sure it is because of a 
 change not in the labour but in the corn ; and we 
 ought therefore to say not that labour has risen in 
 value, but that corn has fallen. Malthus' search for a 
 permanent element in the changeable has led him to 
 individual human labour as the economical unit. If 
 
 1 Meastire of Faiue,p. 23. Of. Fol. JEcon. (1820), pp. 126 seq.; (1836), 
 pp. 84, 93 seq. 
 
 " Measure of Value, p. 20 n. On pp. 23-4 he adds, " taking the average 
 of summer and Tvinter wages." 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WOEKINQ MAN. 257. 
 
 the Chinese labourer has lower wages than the 
 English, it is not because his labour is of lower valuej 
 but because his necessaries are of higher. Wages are 
 higher in the United States not because labour is of 
 higher value, but because necessaries are of lower. ^• 
 Of course when skill enters into the labour, the unit 
 is not the same ; but, when we look only at unskilled; 
 we find confirmation of Malthas' view in the ex- 
 perience of the elder and the younger Brassey as 
 employers of labour, that quantity for quantity " the 
 cost of the labour [the expense of it to the employer] 
 is the same everywhere " over the world. ^ The 
 measure, however, is by no means out of court as 
 regards skilled labour ; the difi'erence in kind may 
 be stated in terms of a difi'erence in degree. If the 
 watchmaker's labour be paid at the rate of 10s. a 
 day, and the common agricultural labourer's only 
 at Is. 8d., the former may be stated as equivalent to 
 six days' common labour.' Malthus has in his mind 
 a scale of compensation such as is drawn out by 
 Adam Smith in the tenth chapter of the first book 
 of the Wealth of Nations.^ Disagreeableness, diffi- 
 culty, inconstancy, responsibility, risk of failure, are 
 so many disabilities, for each of which a compensa- 
 tion must be made to the workman in the scale of 
 his wages, as adding in eff'ect so many more hours' 
 labour ; and each higher class of workman must be 
 
 » See below, p. 268. Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 125 ; (1836) p. 102, &c.; 
 Tract on Value, passim. 
 
 ^ Work and Wages, ch. iii. p. 75. Malthus, Pol. Econ., 2iid ed., pp. 
 108 seq. 3 Cf. Marx, Kapital, pp. 19, 21, &c. 
 
 * MacC.'s ed., pp. 45 seq. Cf. Tract on Value, p. 20 n., above quoted. 
 
 S 
 
258 MALTHUS AND HIS WOUK. [bk. n. 
 
 paid the unit of common labourer's wages, with the 
 compensations superadded. In practice this means 
 that men will not be found in sufficient numbers to 
 do the higher class work unless the wages are suffi- 
 cient to make it worth their while to undergo the 
 disabilities. It is assumed that this scale has been 
 adjusted by custom and the " higgling of the market" 
 from generation to generation, till in any given 
 neighbourhood each of the several skilled trades has a 
 definitely recognized place in the series.^ 
 
 This reasoning seems less convincing when we 
 consider that the translation of skill into terms of 
 hours would be different in different localities, and 
 that the common labour, which is the unit, would 
 vary in the same way. The measure of value would 
 hold only for a given place, time, and people. To 
 escape from the difficulty, we must consider the 
 difi"erence between the common labour at one time 
 and place and the common labour at another as itself 
 measurable, and allow for it ; or else we must consider 
 it as too small to disturb our conclusions, and so neglect 
 it altogether. To reduce common labour to its theo- 
 retically simplest terms is to reduce it to something 
 below our experience ; and to reduce it to its actually 
 simplest in the given cases is to reduce it to one thing 
 in England, a second in France, a third in India, a 
 fourth in America. There are differences of quality 
 which cannot be with any certainty resolved into 
 differences of quantity ; such are the differences of 
 individuals, the differences of nations, the differences 
 
 1 Cf. Eicardo, Fol. Econ., Works (ed. MaoC), p. 15. 
 
.CHAP. II.] THE WOKKING MAN. 259 
 
 of races. It will be found, also, that the part played 
 by common as opposed to skilled labour, and by agri- 
 cultural as opposed to manufacturing labour, differs 
 so much between country and country that, in order 
 to use labour as a measure, we should need other 
 measures in addition to it. In short, if we had data 
 enough to apply this measure, we 'should have data 
 enough to dispense with it. 
 
 It was possibly the force of these considerations 
 that led Malthus, as time went on, to approach some- 
 what nearer to Ricardo, whose measure, so far as he 
 had one, was not the labour purchased but the labour 
 that entered into cost. But he adhered to the sub- 
 stance of his doctrine as expressed in the tract ; and 
 his positions, in detail, were as follows : — 
 
 The power of one object to command another in 
 exchange is influenced either by a change in the 
 object itself, or by a change in the other. If we 
 found a case where there was never a change in the 
 first object itself, then we should have, in that first, 
 a measure of natural or absolute as opposed to 
 nominal or relative value, i. e. a measure of that 
 value of an article which satisfies the " conditions of 
 the supply " of it, and enables its production to be 
 continued without loss to the producers. By " con- 
 ditions of supply" is meant Eicardo's "cost of 
 production" with the addition of ordinary profits. 
 No measure of market or relative values is possible ; 
 and to have a measure of natural value itself we must 
 make two postulates, — that natural value depends 
 on "labour and profits" {sic), on rent little if at 
 
 S 2 
 
260 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 all, and that the " wages " of labour are also the 
 " value " of labour, — what labour is paid is also what 
 labour will fetch. It is easy to apply the measure 
 where only labour is concerned, for then the labour 
 that the things cost is a sufficient measure ; it would 
 be evident, at any change, that the things had become 
 cheaper, not the labour dearer. Bat in present 
 society value is more complicated ; labour is no doubt 
 the chief source of it, but profits are a very consider- 
 able one.' The natural conditions of supply, however, 
 may be stated in terms of labour, just as if labour 
 had been the sole ingredient. This would give us 
 a measure for the savie country at the same place 
 and time. The total quantity of labour that an article 
 cost, with the addition of ordinary profits stated in 
 terms of labour, would be the same as that quantity 
 of labour which an article would purchase in its 
 natural value. 
 
 In the case of different countries, at the same time, 
 the difficulties are not quite the same. Exchange is 
 there determined not by labour but by money prices ; 
 and money is of very difi"erent value in the one 
 country and in the other. But the differences in the 
 value of money in diff"erent countries are in proportion 
 to the dififerent prices of agricultural labour — 1500 
 days' labour at 4J. a day in India, at Is. in England, 
 meaning £25 and £150 respectively; and, if fixed 
 capital to the value of 300 days' labour were advanced 
 to each of them, while profits calculated in days' 
 labour were twenty per cent, in the one case, ten 
 
 ' Meas. of Value, pp. 8—12. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 261 
 
 in the other, the result would be an article whose 
 conditions of supply would require in the one case a 
 money price of £31, in the other of £168. The 
 difference is no doubt due to the superior efficiency 
 of English industry and skill which enables England 
 to purchase the precious metals more cheaply,^ but 
 the cost of getting the money would not tell us 
 the true present value of the money in England or in 
 India. It is not the labour spent on the gold, but 
 the labour purchased by it, that will help us here. 
 In each country within itself we would measure the 
 natural value of money as well as of anything else 
 by what labour it will purchase ; know the difference 
 between the value of money in the one and its value 
 in the other by the difference between the a.mount 
 of labour it will purchase in the one case and the 
 amount it will purchase in the other.^ 
 
 In the case of different periods in the same country, 
 though we have not, as in the case of two different 
 countries, the test of an actual exchange, we can 
 still use labour as the measure. We must allow 
 for the higher profits of the earlier period ; and 
 on the (Ricardian) principle that profits and wages 
 vary inversely, though corn wages have risen, 
 profits have in proportion fallen, and the total 
 value of the produce measured by its power of pur- 
 chasing labour must be the same,^ the purchased 
 labour then representing the producing labour plus 
 
 1 Meas. of Vahie, pp. 22, 65. Of. Caimes, Australian Episode, in 
 Essays in Pol. Econ. (pp. 92 seg.; cf. pp. 37,61), (18*73),— first published 
 in Eraser's Mag., Sept. 1859. 
 
 ^ Meas. of Value, p. 23. s Ibid., pp. 27—29. 
 
262 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. ' [bk. ii. 
 
 the then rate of profits. From Eicardo's dogma it 
 seems (to MaltTius) to follow directly that the value 
 of labour is constant.-' Taking the labour they will 
 purchase as the best measure of the value of the 
 precious metals, as of anything else, we have light 
 on one of the pressing questions of the day (in 1823), 
 the causes of the changing value of money. The 
 causes affect not the labour but the money, and they 
 are of two kinds. The first Malthus describes as a 
 primary or necessary cause, namely, the variation in 
 profits depending on the (Ricardian) theory of the in- 
 terlocking of wages and profits, and the (Malthusian) 
 theory of the relation of profits to rent. Dear corn 
 due to difficult cultivation would lower profits, and 
 would alter the value of money, but only in relation 
 to raw, not in relation to manufactured produce, or 
 at least (from the effects of Ricardo's principle of the 
 inverse variation of wages and profits) not to the same 
 extent. But the second, which is a " secondary 
 and incidental " class of causes, affects both raw and 
 manufactured goods, and is often enough to completely 
 dwarf the effects of the primary cause ; ^ — it is the 
 general commercial situation of a country, — ■" the 
 fertility and vicinity of the mines, the different 
 efficiency of labour in different countries, the abund- 
 ance or scarcity of exportable commodities, and the 
 state of the demand and supply of commodities and 
 labour compared with" the precious metals.' The 
 
 ^ Meas. of Value, p. 29 n. 
 
 2 He might have said simply that the one is intrinsic, the other 
 extrinsic, in relation to the agricultural products themselves. 
 ^ Meas. of Value, p. 63. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WOEKINa MAN. 233 
 
 efficiency of labour and a prosperous commerce, with 
 a great consequent demand for corn and labour, 
 are often more powerful in making bullion cheap 
 than agricultural productiveness and high profits in 
 making bullion dear and corn cheap. During the 
 -vpar — say from 1790 to 1814 — we had an instance of 
 this, and since the war — say from 1814 to 1823 — 
 we have had a clear instance, he thinks, of the 
 converse.' 
 
 Two elaborate papers on the measure of value, 
 written in 1825 and 1827, show that Mai thus was 
 becoming inclined to make less of his differences with 
 Ricardo.^ They were intimate friends ; their dis- 
 cussions hud no bitterness ; and, to use the words of 
 one of them, " both were so anxious for the truth that 
 sooner or later they would have agreed." ' These 
 papers are a fulfilment of his duty not (as we might 
 guess) as a fellow of the Royal Society or a member 
 of the Political Economy Club,* but as an associate 
 of the Royal-Society of Literature.^ " That brdinch of 
 literature " [sic] " on which it shall be his duty to 
 communicate with the Society once a year at least " 
 is described as " political economy and statistics." " 
 He does little credit in these papers to his literary 
 faculty. Their composition is laboured and devoid 
 
 1 Meas. of Value, pp. 67 seq. Cf. below, pp. 283 seq. 
 
 2 Who allows cost to play a greater part in value. Cf. below, pp. 278-9. 
 But Rieardo, Pol. Econ., sect. vi. p. 28, disclaims belief in any universal 
 measure of value. 
 
 ' Maltlius, quoted by Empson, Edin. Rev., Jan. 1837, p. 499. 
 
 * He was F.R.S. 1819, and a member of Pol. Econ. Club at its founda- 
 tion in 1821. 
 
 * 4th May, 1825 ; 7tli Nov., 1827. Transactions of R 8. L., vol. i. 
 part i. 13. 171. « Report of R. S. L., 1824, p. 21. 
 
264 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 of ornament. The first is On the Measure of the 
 Conditions necessary to the Supply of Commodities ; and 
 the thesis is, that "the natural and necessary con- 
 ditions of the supply of all commodities," that are 
 not monopolies, are represented and measured by 
 the labour which they will on an average command, 
 and by nothing else. The second is On the Meaning 
 which is 7nost usually and most correctly attached to 
 the term, Value of Commodities ; and the thesis is, that, 
 when value is used without a qualifying adjective or 
 reference to any special equivalent in a possible ex- 
 change,' the term refers to the " conditions of supply." 
 When we say, for example, anything is sold at a price 
 far above its true value, we mean far above its cost 
 price, including under " cost " the average rate of profits 
 that must go to the maker if he is to live by his 
 trade. The two papers taken together form a sort of 
 indirect proof of the position taken up in the tract 
 on the Measure of Value (1823), and the relevant 
 parts of the second edition of the Political Economy 
 (1836), and may be stated briefly thus : — The labour 
 commanded by an article is generally the measure 
 of that article's cost ; — but that article's cost is 
 what people generally mean by its value ; — therefore 
 the labour commanded by an article is the measure 
 of that article's value in the ordinary sense of the 
 word. 
 
 The second paper was written at the sa,me time as 
 the Definitions in Political Economy, and illustrates 
 
 1 We might expressly wish to know a coat's value in money or its 
 valne in cutlery or coals. The Professor at the Breakfast-table talks 
 of " Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle." 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 265 
 
 the rule laid down there, prescribing adherence, when 
 possible, to the meaning which economical terms bear 
 in the mouths of ordinary folk.' The Definitions, for 
 example, repeat from (or with) the second paper, 
 " when no second object is specified, the value of 
 the commodity" naturally refers to the causes " which 
 determine " the estimation in which it is held " " and 
 the object which measures it." ^ " The natural value 
 of a commodity at any place and time " is "the 
 estimation in which it is held when it is in its 
 natural and ordinary state," as " determined by the 
 elementary costs of its production," or in other words, 
 by " the conditions of its supply." And the measure 
 of the natural value of a commodity at any place 
 and time is " the quantity of labour for which it will 
 exchange at that place and time when it is in its 
 natural and ordinary state." ^ 
 
 As a literary production the book written for the 
 public is superior to the papers prepared for the men 
 of letters. Next to the first Essay on Population, the 
 critical parts of the Definitions give the most pleasant 
 examples of the author's style. The two papers 
 above mentioned are chiefly important as showing the 
 importance which Malthus, unlike Eicardo, attached to 
 the question of a measure of value.* A contemporary 
 writer said very happily that the fault of Ricardo was 
 
 1 Definitions (1827), p. 235. 
 
 ^ I. e. to tlie object -wMcli measures that cost-value. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 243. 
 
 * See above, p. 254. Eicardo's long correspondence with Malthus on 
 the subject is mentioned by Empson, Edin. Rev., 1. c. p. 469. Empson's 
 extracts from it are the most valuable part of Ms article. 
 
266 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ir. 
 
 to generalize too mucli, and of Malthus to generalize 
 too little. Malthus, he added, is a keen observer 
 but poor in analysis ; he is " so occupied with particu- 
 lars that he neglects that inductive process which 
 extends individual expeiience throughout the infini- 
 tude of things," and converts knowledge into science. 
 " As presented by Mr. Ricardo, political economy 
 possesses a regularity and simplicity beyond what 
 exists in nature ; as exhibited by Mr. Malthus, it is a 
 chaos of original but unconnected elements." ^ On the 
 other hand, the testimonj^ of a recent Grerman writer 
 is very difi"erent. Malthus, he tells us, resembles 
 Ricardo in his sombre view of human life and frank 
 statement of unpleasant facts. Their names are 
 often associated, and no doubt both are children of 
 their times. But their leanings were really unlike. 
 Ricardo took up certain ideas of his time in their 
 narrowest, clearest, and harshest form, and applied 
 them whoUy in the interest of capital. Malthus is 
 far less narrow. His influence on economics has been 
 much smaller than Ricardo's ; but he will be found 
 " by far the more suggestive and less prejudiced of 
 the two," and, if he found more opponents, it 
 is because he was less understood and less read.^ 
 The sprightly Bialogues^ of De Quincey contribute 
 nothing to the discussion on value ; but they show 
 
 1 R. Torrens, Production of Wealth, 1821, pp. iy, v. 
 
 2 Held, Sociale Geschichte Englands, p. 205. 
 
 3 Dialogues of Three Templars on FoUtical Economy, 1824 {Works, 
 Black, 1863, vol. iv.). All depends on the assumption in the middle of 
 D.alogue I. p. 196, (" it is Mr. Ricardo's doctrine that," &c.), and on tie 
 confineinent of the discussion to natural value (p. 198). 
 
CHAP. 11.] THE WOEKING MAN. 267 
 
 how completely Ricardo had won the ear of the 
 literary world, and how little pains the opponents of 
 Mai thus took to do him justice. Mai thus reduced 
 the problem to many elements ; Eicardo to few ; 
 and the latter, as certainly easier to understand, 
 was readily represented as the likelier to be true. 
 Simplicity in such a case is a treacherous virtue ; and 
 the apparent chaos may have been much nearer the 
 truth than the apparent cosmos, if there was a hidden 
 flaw in the latter and a latent principle of union 
 in the former. Sound or unsound, such a principle 
 may be traced in the most abstract discussions of 
 Malthus. We shall find this true when we compare 
 his views with Ricardo's on the nature and causes 
 of value itself, and the movements of prices. We 
 may recognize it even in these discussions on the 
 measure of value. The measurement of all value 
 by individual human labour is of a piece with the 
 author's final view of population, where all is made to 
 depend on individual responsibility. The main weak- 
 ness of the position is perhaps tha.t by unskilled 
 labour he means always agricultural, and does not 
 sufficiently recognize how in manufacturing England 
 it has perhaps become easier to measure unskilled by 
 skilled than the latter by the former. The difficulty 
 met Robert Owen, when in his Labour Exchanges ^ he 
 not only tried to reduce all values to a common 
 measure in labour, but to make labour a means of 
 
 ^ Measure of Value, p. 20 n. 
 
 ^ London, 1832; Birmingham, 1833. The Constituent Assembly applied 
 the same measure, but in a different way, in 1791. See Eosclier, 
 National ohun. (1879), p. 298. 
 
268 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 exchange, for which it is certainly worse suited than 
 money. 
 
 Labour as something to be rewarded by Wages has 
 a more evident connection with the principles of the 
 Essay on Population than labour as the measure of 
 all values. In this case unskilled agricultural labour 
 is again the unit. The first " condition of the 
 supply" of this labour is the necessaries of life, in 
 such quantities as will enable the labourers to main- 
 tain their numbers or to increase them,^ as the case 
 may be. If the former only, the price of labour is 
 not, as Ricardo says, the " natural," but really a most 
 unnatural price, for it would mean that the country 
 giving it had arrived at the final limit of its resources.^ 
 Necessaries, however, are not a simple or even a 
 fixed element. We can of course measure them in 
 corn if we like ; but they consist not only of the 
 prime necessary, the stafi" of life, but of other absolute 
 necessaries, of shelter and clothing, and many " con- 
 veniences " which have become necessaries, inasmuch 
 as they are essential to healthy life, such as soap and 
 shoes and candle-light. It has happily become a 
 truism that the necessaries of life are not a fixed but 
 an expanding factor. Even if competition were 
 always to drive wages down to a " minimum of social 
 necessaries," ' social are always beyond animal neces- 
 saries ; our basest beggars are in the poorest thing 
 
 1 The words are, " enable the labourers to maintain a stationary or 
 an increasing population " {Pol. JEcofb., 1836, p. 218). The awkwardness 
 of the sentence may be due to bad editing ; but we read elsewhere of 
 the " price of wages." 
 
 2 Pol. Econ., 1836, pp. 218, 223. ^ gee Lassalle and Marx. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 269 
 
 superfluous ; and " the barest social necessaries " seem 
 likely in process of time to mean a high standard of 
 comfort. To raise the minimum of social necessaries 
 is the way to raise wages really, universally, and 
 almost irrevocably.^ Malthus himself declares that 
 " it is the diffusion of luxury " in this sense of the 
 word, " among the mass of the people, and not an 
 excess of it in a few," that seems to be advantageous, 
 both for national wealth and national happiness. 
 Paley's ideal of national prosperity, " a laborious 
 frugal people ministering to the demands of an 
 opulent luxurious nation," is heartily scouted by him. 
 The luxuries of the few rich, he says, harass the 
 industry of the poor by varying with the fashion ; 
 but the luxuries of the poor, when embodied in their 
 general standard of living, are not only the best kind 
 of check to population, but the steadiest encourage- 
 ment to general trade.^ He seems to have supposed 
 the elevation in the standard of living to have been 
 effected, like the progress of nations in civilization, by 
 the happy improvement of an accidental advantage, 
 by the retention of high wages, when once secured 
 in a time of brisk trade in the ordinary way of com- 
 petition ; the workmen, in short, succeeded in making 
 permanent and de jure a change once de facto for the 
 time efi"ected.^ " When our wages of labour in wheat 
 
 1 Cf. Malthus, Tol. Econ. (1836), pp. 224, 225, &c. Essay on Popula- 
 tion, ^th. ed., III. viii. 323, but especially IV. xiii. 473. See also Rogers, 
 Six Centuries, ch. viii., ' The Famine and the Plague,' especially pp. 233 
 —242. 
 
 2 Malthus, Essay on Pop., IV. xiii. 473; cf. pp. 373 and 434. 
 
 ' Cf. especially Essay on Pop. (2nd ed.), III. is. 444. "The price 
 of labour has been rising — not to fall again." 
 
270 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 were high, in the early part of the last century, it did 
 not appear that they were employed merely in the 
 maintenance of more families, but in improving the 
 condition of the people in their general mode of 
 living."^ Malthus, without knowing it, was certainly 
 father of the theory of a Wages Fund. The theory 
 is that the average wages of the labouring classes at 
 any given time are high or low in proportion to the 
 great or small amount of circulating capital devoted 
 to the payment of wages, or, as it is sometimes 
 expressed (more tersely and inexactly), wages depend 
 on " the ratio of population to capital." This might 
 mean no more than the arithmetical truism that we 
 may always find the average wages by dividing the 
 total sum received by the total number of recipients ; 
 and the quotient would be unalterable only in the 
 sense in which all other facts might be said to be 
 so, in retrospect. But it is usually taken to mean 
 that the first total could not at any given time have 
 been greater or less than it actually was, being fixed 
 unalterably by circumstances,^ and so "devoted" or 
 " determined " to the payment of wages. The simplest 
 test of this theory is the application of it to the case 
 of a single individual capitalist and his payments in 
 wages. Suppose he has a capital of £10,000, £5000 
 fixed and £5000 circulating; and suppose that the 
 latter means wages only (instead of chiefly), and is 
 
 1 Emigr. Comm. (182'7), p. 326, qu. 3411; cf. 3408, 3409. Of. above, 
 p. 197. 
 
 2 The chief of them being the rate of profits which is at the given time 
 enough to induce the "undertaker" (or "enterpriser") to continue 
 business. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WOEKINQ MAK. 271 
 
 paid to one hundred men ; — £50 a year will be the 
 average wages of the hundred men ; and, by the 
 theory, given the rate of ordinary profits and given 
 the " desire of accumulation " at the time and place, 
 it could not possibly have been cither more or less. 
 But, as the profits are not unconditional, neither are 
 the wages ; the capitalist might conceivably, to save 
 his business, keep it up in bad times at a loss, and 
 pay wages at the expense of profits and at the expense 
 of his personal pleasures.^ He has often the choice 
 before him to spend more on fixtures, or more on 
 new hands, or more on further employment of the 
 old hands. In truth, too, though wages, esj)ecially 
 in England, are often in the first instance advanced 
 out of capital, they are always meant to be paid out 
 of the gross returns, and in every sound business 
 really are so. The workman and employer make 
 their contract beforehand, and expect each other to 
 abide by it, be the profit much or little ; the wages 
 depend, therefore, directly on this contract, and indi- 
 rectly on that which is the means of fulfilling the 
 contract on the master's side, the price of the article 
 made. The price of the article is the real wages 
 fund ; ^ and therefore the wages fund must be as 
 flexible as market prices, and the actual wages as 
 changeable as are the powers, habits, and desires of 
 the two contracting parties. 
 
 1 See Mill on Thornton's ' Labour,' Fortnightly Review, May 1869. Cf. 
 Walker on The. Wages Question, pp. 140 seq. 
 
 ^ So in Quarterly Review, Jan. 1824, p. 315, Malthus says profits 
 depend rather on the demand for produce than on the demand for 
 labour. 
 
272 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 The theory of a wages fund was formed from the 
 facts of a perfectly exceptional time, and on the 
 strength of two truths misapplied, the doctrine of 
 Mai thus (on Population) in its most unripe form, 
 and of Ricardo (on Value) in its most abstract. 
 J. R. MacCuUoch seems to have been the first who 
 put the two together to deduce a rigid law of wages. 
 " The market rate of wages," he says, "is exclusively 
 dependent on the proportion which the capital of the 
 country, or the means of employing labour, bears to 
 the number of labourers. There is plainly, therefore, 
 only one way of really improving the condition of 
 the great majority of the community or of the labour- 
 ing class, and that is by increasing the ratio of capital 
 to population," which the labourers for their part can 
 only do by diminishing the supply of labour. ^ 
 
 Even Mrs. Marcet, a docile Ricardian, had put the 
 case more carefully. " Work to be performed is the 
 immediate cause of the demand for labour ; but, how- 
 ever great or important is the work which a man 
 may wish to undertake, the execution of it must 
 always be limited by the extent of his capital, i. e. 
 by the funds he possesses for the maintenance or 
 payment of his labourers." ^ She professes to be 
 expounding the received doctrine of her day. Mac- 
 Cnlloch's exposition is much more rigid. When he 
 speaks of the "funds devoted to the payment of 
 
 1 Discourse on Pol. Econ., by J. R. MacCulloch, pp. 61, 62 (1st and 
 2nd edd.), 1825. 
 
 ^ Conversations on Pol. Econ., 1817 (1st and 2nd edd.), p. 137. Mrs. 
 Marcet's memory is preserved for latter-day readers by Macaulay's refer- 
 ence to ber in tbe essay on Milton. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKINa MAN. 2Y3 
 
 wages," he means " that portion of the capital or 
 wealth of a country which the employers of labour 
 intend or are willing to lay out in the purchase of 
 labour." It "may be larger at one time than at 
 another. But, whatever be its magnitude, it obviously 
 forms the only source from which any portion of the 
 wages of labour can be derived. No other fund is 
 in existence from which the labourers as such can 
 draw a single shilling. And hence it follows that 
 the average rate of wages or the share of the national 
 capital appropriated to the employment of labour 
 falling, at an average, to each labourer, must entirely 
 depend on its amount as compared with the number 
 of those amongst whom it has to be divided." ^ 
 Neither MacCulloch, nor James Mill, nor John Mill 
 in his early writings, nor apparently any of the ex- 
 pounders of the theory, were in the habit of describ- 
 ing the fund as "unconditionally" devoted to the 
 payment of wages, though John Mill, in restating 
 the position after he abandoned it, gives us so to 
 understand.' Something like unconditional deter- 
 mination, however, is assumed in all the reasonings 
 of the school. Adam Smith's frequent use of the 
 words " funds devoted " or " funds determined " to 
 this or that purpose may easily have been misunder- 
 stood. Certainly ia his pages they mean no inflexible 
 compulsion. He says the demand of those who live 
 by wages can only increase in proportion to the 
 
 ' Discourse, 1. c. Cf. MacC.'s Pol. Earn., Pt. III. ch. ii. p. 378 (ed. 1843) ; 
 Prof. Fiiwcctt's Manual of Pol. Econ., p. 131 (1876). 
 
 2 James Mill, Elem. (1821), p. 25 ; John Mill, Principles, II. xi. § 1. 
 Cf. Fort. Bev., 1869, May ; Thomton, Labour, II. i. p. 83. 
 
 T 
 
274 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 increase of tlie " funds " which are " destined " for 
 the payment of wages, these funds being (he adds) 
 either the- surplus revenue of an idle monied man 
 who will "naturally" use_any addition to them in 
 increasing his staff of domestic servants, or the 
 increased capital of the capitalist who will_ just as 
 "naturally" use them in employing more wor^men.^ 
 The word " destined " is so far, with him, from 
 implying any iron necessity that it means simply 
 " intended " ; and the intention is one that can be 
 foiled or altered. He speaks of the " funds destined 
 for the consumption" of the manufacturing class,^ 
 and of the townsfolk's " fund of subsistence," ^ mean- 
 ing simply their food ; he even speaks of the funds 
 destined for the repair of the high roads in France.* 
 Even the strong passage in Book I. chap, viii., " the 
 demand for those who live by wages necessarily 
 increases with the increase of the revenue and stock 
 of every country, and cannot possibly increase with- 
 out it," stops considerably short of the doctrine of a 
 rigid wages fund. It is never suggested by Adam 
 Smith that the wages fund is inelastic, and that wages 
 could not at any given time have been greater or 
 less than they actually were. The doctrine is seldom 
 traced further back than to Malthus ; and Malthus 
 cannot be shown to have held the doctrine. With 
 express reference to the passage last cited from the 
 Wealth of Nations, he says that "it will be found 
 that the funds for the maintenance of labour do not 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, I. viii. p. 31, 2. 2 Ibid., IV. ix. 306, 1. 
 
 3 Ibid., IV. ix. 310, 2. 4 Ibid., V. i. 327, 2. 
 
CHAP. 11.] THE WORKING MAN. 275 
 
 necessarily increase witli the increase of wealth, and 
 very rarely increase in proportion to it, and that 
 the condition of the lower classes of society does 
 not depend exclusively upon the increase of the funds 
 for the maintenance of labour or the power of sup- 
 porting a greater number of labourers " [Essay, 7th ed., 
 III. xiii. 368). The condition of the working classes 
 depended, he thought, partly on the rate at which the 
 "funds for the maintenance of labour,"^ or, as he 
 expressed it at first, " the resources of the country " ^ 
 and the demand for labour are increasing, and partly 
 on the " habits of the people." Among their habits 
 we should need to put their education and their 
 power of union among themselves, and consequent 
 strength in a struggle with the masters, to obtain 
 or to raise the market rate of wages. From Ricardo 
 he differed on the subject of wages very much as 
 on the subject of value. Eicardo looked at cost 
 price as the natural value of an article, and mere 
 subsistence as the natural wages of labour, Malthus 
 could do neither. 
 
 The issues between the two economists are nowhere 
 so well or so calmly stated as in a paper written by 
 Malthus (a few months after Eicardo's death) in the 
 Quarterly Beview,^ where he deals with MacCuUoch's 
 treatise on Political Economy.^ In that article Malthus 
 professes to regard the political economy of Eicardo, 
 
 * Pol. Earn., ed. 1836, ch. iv. sect. ii. p. 224. 
 
 2 Ibid. ed. 1820, ch. iv. p. 248. 
 
 3 Quarterly Review, Jan. 1824. Cf . below,' p. 288. 
 
 * Supplement to Encyclopcedia Britannica. Cf. above, p. 71. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 MALTHUS AND HIS "WOEK. [bk. il. 
 
 James Mill, and most of the economical writers ia the 
 Eacydopadia, as a new and wrong departure. It is 
 said to have been regarded by the writer as one of the 
 best economical papers he ever wrote ;^ and, among 
 other virtues, it has the merit of perfect courtesy and 
 respect towards the persons criticized. Their system, 
 he says,^ is remarkably like that of the French 
 economists. They " were equally men of the most 
 unquestionable genius, of the highest honour and 
 integrity, and of the most simple, modest, and amiable 
 manners. Their systems were equally distinguished 
 for their discordance with common notions, the 
 apparent closeness of their reasonings, and the mathe- 
 matical precision of their calculations and conclusions 
 founded on their assumed data. These qualities in 
 the systems and their founders, together with the 
 desire so often felt by readers of moderate abilities 
 of being thought to understand what is considered by 
 competent judges as difficult, increased the number 
 of their devoted followers in such a degree, that in 
 France it included almost all the able men who were 
 inclined to attend to such subjects, and in England a 
 very large proportion of them. 
 
 ^ " The specific error of the French economists was 
 tfie having taken so confined a view of wealth and its 
 sources as not to include the results of manufacturing 
 and mercantile industry. 
 
 " The specific error of the new school in England is 
 the having taken so confined a view of value as not to 
 
 1 Empson in Edin. Bev., Jan. 1837, p. 496. 
 ' QimH. Bev., Jan. 1824 (no. Ix.), pp. 333-4. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 277 
 
 include tlie results of demand and supply, and oftjie- 
 relative abundance and competition of capitalT 
 
 " Facts and experience have, in the course of some 
 years, gradually converted the economists of France 
 from the erroneous and inapplicable theory of Quesnay 
 to the juster and more practical theory of Adam 
 Smith ; and, as we are fully convinced that an error 
 equally fundamental and important is involved in the 
 system of the new school in England as in that of the 
 French economists, we cannot but hope and expect 
 that similar causes will, in time, produce in our own 
 country similar effects in the correction of error and 
 the establishment of truth." 
 
 The new school has, according to Malthus, three 
 main principles. The first is, that what determines 
 value is the quantity of labour that a thing costs 
 to make, — the second, that supply and demand do 
 not as a rule affect values, — and the third, that 
 fertility of soil and not competition regulates the 
 rate of profits. The new school thinks that profits 
 enter so little into the price of an article that they 
 may be neglected altogether in the computation of 
 the causes of value. But (says Malthus) the value 
 of a stone wall would be due, nearly all of it, to 
 labour, and the value of a cask of old wine kept for 
 twenty or thirty years would be largely due to 
 profits. £50 worth of stone wall would have much 
 more labour "worked up in it" than £50 worth of 
 old wine. It is not sufficient to answer that profits 
 are simply accumulated wages. As well say that 
 five is another name for four. Kicardo himself 
 
278 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 introduced many qualifications into his own statement 
 that value is due to labour. The principle (he 
 confessed) was modified by the use of machiner}' 
 and by the unequal durability of capital.^ 
 
 Malthus admits the truth of Ricardo's dogma that 
 profits and wages can only increase at each other's 
 expense, and he even applies this principle of 
 Eicardo's in a new way to the facts of the commer- 
 cial depression that had prevailed since the peace." 
 It was universally allowed there had been a less 
 demand for labour and a great fall in wages, but, 
 it was also allowed, a much greater fall in profits ; 
 so that wages while lower in gross amount bore a 
 higher proportion to profits than before. The reason 
 was that, while the competition of labourers was 
 great, the competition of capitalists with capitalists 
 was still greater. The result was a universal fall of 
 prices ; the wages, though relatively greater, were 
 absolutely less in amount, and the demand for labour 
 ■would have been greater if prices had risen and the 
 capitalist had got greater returns to his capital. 
 Malthus would not go farther than this, and the 
 Eicardian doctrine needs to be otherwise applied to 
 yield the doctrine of a wages fund. It was applied 
 in some such way as follows : — Competition drives 
 prices down to the cost of production ; this means 
 that at any given time the sum total of profits and 
 wages cannot be more than they actually are, and 
 
 1 Eicardo, Pol. Econ. and Tax., ch. i. sections iv., v. ; Works, pp. 20, 
 25. Cf. Malthus, Pol. Econ., 1820, p. 104, and the whole of section iii. 
 pp. 72 seq. 
 
 2 Quart. Bev., 1. c. p. 324 ; cf. p. 315. Cf above. 
 
CHAP. II.] THE WORKING MAN. 279 
 
 both are kept down by competition to their mini- 
 mum ; the masters could not give higher wages 
 without cutting down their profits, the men could 
 not get less wages without either starving or being 
 driven to seek other employments. Malthus does 
 not so apply his doctrines. To him, what~~flxes'^e 
 sum total of wages and profits is" not the «ost of 
 production,- but the demand for the thing produced ; 
 not the labour spent on a thing, but the labour that 
 others are willing to give for it ; and the cause of 
 value is not cost, but demand acting with supply. 
 Eicardo, who prefers to confine his theories to natural 
 value, allows that the state of the demand and supply 
 raises market value above or depresses it below cost 
 price ; and he does not see how seriously his own 
 qualifications^ impair the truth of his theory of 
 value even when the value is " natural." ^ It is true, 
 on the other hand, that the supply at any given time 
 is a supply that will not be kept up unless the cost 
 price be paid back. The cost price would certainly 
 be the minimum below which prices could not per- 
 manently pass. But to Ricardo the cost in labour is 
 the formal as well as the material cause of a value ; 
 to Malthus it is only the material, and only part of 
 that, a mere sine qua non, while the efficient is the 
 demand, and the final is the consumption of the article 
 by its last buyer or user. 
 
 The third leading tenet of the new school, says 
 
 ' Pol. Econ. and Tax., ch. i. sections iv. and v. 
 ^ Any given value, it might be added, is influenced by custom as well 
 03 competition. 
 
280 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 Malthus, is that the rate of profits in a country 
 depends on the fertility of the soil tTierer-andr not, 
 as Adam Smith thought, on the competition^ of 
 capital with capital for employment. Against them 
 Malthus maintains that there is no necessary (though 
 there is a frequent) connection between the pro- 
 ductiveness of industry and the rate of profits, 
 still less between the latter and the productiveness 
 of any one single industry, such as agriculture. 
 Profits depend on the proportion of the whole pro- 
 duce which "goes to replace the advances of the 
 capitalist " ; but this proportion may remain the 
 same when the productiveness of industry is very 
 various. In the previous eight or nine years, say 
 from 1815 to 1824, there had certainly been no 
 costliness in production. Corn had been cheap, and 
 farmers' losses had led to the discontinuance of 
 high farming, and especially of the forced cultivation 
 of the dear years. The production, therefore, was at 
 the cost of much less labour. But profits, instead of 
 higher, were much lower. Abundance of produce 
 and competition of producers had caused a fall in 
 the value of produce, so that it was possible for 
 the labourer to receive a greater share of what he 
 made, though his labour had not become more pro- 
 ductive, Ricardo does not take sufiicient account 
 of the influence of prices, both on wages and on 
 profits. 
 
 There had in fact been over-production and a 
 general glut. James Mill's Elements of Political 
 
CHAP. 11.] THE WORKING MAN. 281 
 
 Economy'^ contain a careful demondtratlon that 
 general gluts are impossible. It was emphatically 
 a controversial passage, and in the pages of John 
 Mill it has the look of an anachronism. All de- 
 pended on the meaning of "general." If it meant 
 universal, the case was impossible. It is incredible 
 that all without exception should have something to 
 sell and no wish to buy. To offer anything for 
 sale must of itself imply a desire to buy something 
 else with it, either directly or by means of money. 
 Even a very near approach to universality is not easy 
 to understand ; and it would mean simply that a bad 
 organization of the world's markets had prevented 
 buyers and sellers from reaching each other, and pre- 
 vented goods from going where they are wanted, at 
 the time when they are wanted ; it would mean that 
 not the malady but the scale and degree of it had 
 passed belief. 
 
 1 1821, p. 186, ch. iv. sect. iii. " That consumption ia coextensive 
 with production." 
 
 2 Tol. Ecm., III. xiv. " Of excess of supply." Of. I. v. § 3, p. 42. 
 
282 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GENERAL GLUTS. 
 
 French War and English Trade — English Currency — Bullion Committee 
 — Eestiiction not the only Cause of High Prices — Ricardo on 
 Currency — Toolte on Prices — Say on Gluts — English Trade from 
 1824 — High and Low Wages— Some Fallacies of Malthus. 
 
 The discussion on General Gluts was simply a phase 
 of the discussions on Value ; and the prominence of 
 such discussions in the political economy of sixty 
 years ago was largely due to the peculiar effects on 
 trade and prices of a twenty years' war with France. 
 The theories of economists were becoming most 
 abstract precisely at the time when the justest general- 
 izations were most severely tested by abnormal con- 
 ditions. Even if the Industrial Revolution heralded 
 by the Wealth of Nations had been allowed a free 
 course, the new conditions of manufacture would have 
 raised new economical questions ; and they could not 
 have failed to turn, to some extent, on the subject 
 of value, which Adam Smith had by no means ex- 
 hausted. But there was no free course. War was 
 declared against England by France in 1793. In 
 the same year Pitt was forced to oflfer English mer- 
 chants a loan of public money, to cure a financial crisis. 
 Then followed, under the long Tory supremacy, heavy 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 283 
 
 taxes, repressive laws, and something more nearly 
 approaching a war of classes than anything known 
 in England before or since. 
 
 The effects of the first ten years of the French 
 war (1793 to 1802) were to all appearance rather 
 good than bad. Britain itself, unlike the other 
 belligerent countries, was always intact, and the 
 labours of British manufacturers could go on as if 
 nothing unusual was happening on the Continent. 
 Our command of the sea, to say nothing of the 
 conquest of new countries, gave us trade which 
 others lost, and made amends for the annulment of 
 the French treaty of commerce, and the loss of the 
 Dutch trade. In 1806 the situation became less 
 pleasant. The Berlin and Milan decrees excluding 
 us from almost every country in Europe, the retali- 
 atory Orders in Council and consequent alienation of 
 America did real damage to English commerce. The 
 very expectations they caused of a probable scarcity 
 of particular goods sent up prices ; and, with the 
 real scarcity, contributed to an acute disturbance of 
 trade, which lasted about five years for the Continent 
 and three years more for America (1807-12, 1807- 
 15). New markets were opened to us in South 
 America ; and the pent-up commercial enterprise of 
 our countrymen vented itself in that direction, with 
 wild disregard of the needs of consumers in that 
 quarter.-^ The same happened, with more reason, in 
 1814 and 1815. When peace was restored, it was 
 thought that the whole Continent must be eager to 
 
 1 A cargo of skates was sent to Rio Janeiro in 1808. 
 
284 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 have our goods, after being so long without them ; 
 and we sent them lavishly everywhere without wait- 
 ing for orders. Unhappily the rest of Europe was 
 exhausted by the war, which had lessened their 
 production ; and such products as they could offer 
 us in exchange for our manufactures we seldom took 
 without taxing. The very food that we most wanted 
 from them we were careful to keep out till the last 
 moment.^ Anything more unlike the " simple system 
 of natural liberty " could not be conceived ; and the 
 result certainly seemed to be an over-production on 
 our part ; — it was at any rate a reign of low prices 
 and deep commercial depression. This was not all. 
 Since 1797 we had had a paper currency of uncertain 
 value. In that year the Bank of England, whose 
 department of issue was not then separated from its 
 department of banking, gave advances to Government, 
 in return for which it was relieved of immediate 
 obligation to pay gold to the holders of its notes. 
 As long as the issues were moderate, the notes kept 
 their value ; but this was a time when economical 
 substitutes for the currency, cheques and bills and 
 County notes, were lessening the proportion of the 
 Bank's notes to the total transactions of trade ; and 
 the Bank's power of calculating the public need with- 
 out the natural safety-valve of convertibility became 
 more and more fallible ; the circulation soon con- 
 tained superfluous paper, which dragged down the 
 
 1 The intention of tlie new Corn Law of 1815 was to keep out all 
 foreign grain till the home price should reach 80s. a quarter, or the 
 loaf Is. See above, p. 221. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 285 
 
 whole currency. In these circumstances, discussions on 
 currency gained an interest they could never have 
 had in the abstract ; and they led to measures of the 
 most practical and permanent usefulness. Ricardo's 
 tract The High Price of Gold Bullion a Proof of 
 the Pepreciation of Pank-Notes (1809) prepared the 
 way for the Bullion Committee of the House of 
 Commons (1810), and through them for our own 
 Bank Charter Act (1844). Malthus played a more 
 quiet part. His chief writings on the subject of the 
 currency were two magazine articles, one in the 
 Edinburgh Review of February 1811,^ and another 
 in the Quarterly Review of April 1823. 
 
 The first treats of The Pepreciation of Paper Cur- 
 rency, and is a review of pamphlets by the leading 
 advocates and assailants of the principles of the 
 Bullion Committee's Report. The Committee had 
 inquired into three subjects : the high price of gold 
 bullion, the state of the currency, and the state 
 of the foreign Exchanges. As to the first, they 
 found that, while an ounce of standard gold was 
 converted at the Mint into £3 \ls. 10|(/. (which 
 sum was therefore the Mint price of gold bullion), 
 
 1 The article on the Bullion question, in August of the same year, might 
 he his, if it was not Francis Horner's. Cf. Horner's Lije, vol. i. ch. vi., 
 dates April and Sept. 1805, from which it appears that Horner was working 
 hard at the question and meant to write on it, as he might have done 
 hetter in 1811, fresh from his experience on the Bullion Committee. As 
 to the February article, the authorship is shown partly by internal 
 evidence, partly by Homer's Life, vol. ii. p. 68 (Jan. 1811) : " I received 
 Malthus' MS. from you [Jeffrey] and have since transmitted it to him 
 with such remarks as occurred to me in perusing it," &c. MacCuUoch 
 did not begin to write the economical articles for the Edin. Mev. till 1818. 
 See Notes and Queries, 5th Oct., 1878. 
 
286 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 the said ounce could not in the years 1806-8 be 
 bought by the Mint for less than £4 in bank-notes, 
 or in 1809 for less than £4 10s. The market price 
 had risen to that extent above the Mint price, of 
 gold bullion. As to the second, they found that 
 guineas had gone out of circulation, and were practi- 
 cally replaced by small notes between £1 and £5. 
 Finally, as to the third, they found thq,t from the end 
 of 1808 the Exchanges had become more and more 
 unfavourable to England, till in 1809-10 they were 
 with Hamburg nine, with Amsterdam seven, with 
 Paris more than fourteen per cent, below par. After 
 examination of witnesses and consideration of their 
 evidence, the Committee resolved " that there is at 
 present an excess in the paper circulation of this 
 country, of which the most unequivocal symptom is 
 the very high price of bullion, and next to that the 
 low state of the Continental Exchanges ; that this 
 excess is to be ascribed to the want of a sufficient 
 check and control in the issues of paper from the 
 Bank of England, and originally to the suspension of 
 cash payments, which removed the natural and true 
 control." The effects had been very serious, especially 
 on the wages of common country labour [Report, 
 p. 73) ; and the Committee recommend a speedy 
 return to the principle of cash payments, whether 
 the nation be at peace or war, though caution 
 demands that this take place gradually, in the space 
 of two years. It took place, not in two years, but in 
 more than ten, namely on 1st May 1821,^ Parliament 
 
 1 For the history of the currency in the interval see Miss Martineau's 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 287 
 
 not agreeing to the change till 1819.^ Cobbett's 
 venture (to be broiled on a gridiron when the Bank 
 paid in gold) seemed a perfectly safe one. 
 
 Both Malthus and Ricardo agreed with the Report 
 of the Bullion Committee. Ricardo indeed is in a 
 sense the father of it. Malthus (in the Edin. Bevieiv) 
 speaks strongly of the bad policy and injustice of 
 continuing the suspension, and he does not spare the 
 Bank of England and its mischievous monopoly/ or 
 the " practical men " and their narrow views.* Yet 
 he finds fault with Ricardo here as elsewhere for 
 making his statements too absolute. Malthus' fault 
 is in the contrary direction ; he qualifies too much.* 
 He thinks that Ricardo has gone too far in attributing 
 all the movements of the Exchanges to excessive or 
 defective currency ; a purely commercial excess of 
 imports over exports might, he thinks, cause the 
 same effects, and even in the high price of bullion it 
 was the commercial difficulty that began what the 
 depreciation of currency continued. Ricardo, who 
 replies in a long appendix,^ answers, in substance, 
 that in any and every case money goes from where 
 it is cheaper to where it is dearer, and therefore from 
 
 Ininrod. to Hist, of Peace, Bk. II. ch. iii. ; HUt. of the Peace, Bk. I. ch. iii. 
 and eh. xv. ; Cobbett's Paper v. Gold ; Macleod's Banking, vol. ii., end 
 of ch. ix. pp. 174 — 221, much the completest account. 
 
 ^ Peel changed his views then on Currency, as he did later on 
 Catholic Emancipation and the Corn Laws. 
 
 ^ p. 370. He speaks approvingly of the American free trade in 
 banking in a way that would have pleased Cobden. 
 
 ^ p. 371. 
 
 * E. g. Homer complains of this even in so clear a paper as that on 
 Newenham. See Homer's Life, vol. i. pp. 436-7 {sub data 1808). 
 
 <> Works (ed. MacC), pp. 291—296. 
 
288 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 where the currency has lost value to where it has 
 gained it. But this hardly meets the contention of 
 Malthus, that the efficient cause, though it affects the 
 currency, is not in all cases the currency itself, and 
 in the case of an unequal balance of trade, however 
 temporary, the cause of the exportation of the money 
 is rather the superfluity of the goods in the foreign 
 country than the deficiency of the money there ; — it 
 would be otherwise when the first cause was in the 
 currency itself. The rest of the article contains little 
 that is new to readers of the Political Economy, and 
 tlie reference to a possible over-production is chiefly 
 valuable as a sign of the authorship, and as showing 
 that the views of the author were becoming fixed. 
 The personal acquaintance of Malthus with Ricardo 
 dates probably from the appearance of this article;^ and 
 they continued to discuss and correspond, in perfect 
 friendship, till the death of Eicardo in Sept. 1823.^ 
 
 His friendship with the Edinburgh Reviewers 
 remained unbroken ; and, when he wrote in the 
 Quarterly Beview, it was the Beview not the writer 
 that had changed. On finance, indeed, the Quarterly 
 Bevieio had been saved from unsoundness by Canning's 
 influence,' and an article on Tooke's Prices need have 
 no politics. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Thomas Tooke * was 
 right in holding the diS'erence between the Mint 
 
 1 Ricardo, Worlts (MacC), p. xxi. ' Cf. below, Bk. V. 
 
 3 Horner's Life, vol. ii. p. 68 (Jan. 1811). 
 
 * Thoughts and Details on High and Low Prices during the last 
 Thirty Years, 1793—1823. The later ed. of 1838 in three vols, is more 
 valuable. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 289 
 
 price and the market price of gold bullion to be tbe 
 full measure of tbe effect of this depreciation upon 
 prices, the rest of the increase being due to great 
 demand with small supply, being as a rule much 
 exaggerated and in its worst forms purely local. He 
 pointed out that there was, as a matter of fact, no 
 coincidence between the Bank's contraction or exten- 
 sion of its issues and the fall or rise of prices in the 
 market outside. Prices rose, for example, in 1795 
 and 1796, when the Bank's circulation had been not 
 extended but contracted to meet the commercial 
 crisis; and in 1798, when the Bank's issues were 
 larger, prices actually fell to what they had been in 
 1793. Moreover, when some prices went up, others 
 went down. When the prices of provisions went 
 up in 1799 and 1800, the prices of colonial wares 
 went down. The ruling cause (Tooke argues) was not 
 the issue of many or few bank-notes, but scarcity 
 and plenty, especially the plenty of a good harvest 
 and the scarcity of a bad one. Wages in the same 
 way fluctuated rather by the harvests than by the 
 currency, but not by either so much as by the 
 changes in general trade ; it would not be true to 
 say that the high or low prices produced high or 
 low wages, but what produced the one produced the 
 other. The recoil of the speculation that followed 
 the Peace brought down both together ; there was 
 a glut not only of goods but of hands ; and there 
 were the discarded men of the army to swell the 
 numbers of the unemployed. The Luddite outbreaks 
 against machines, as taking work away from the 
 
290 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 hands, had made a notable beginning in 1812 during 
 the war ; in 1816, the year after the Peace, they began 
 again with greater violence. The discussions of Say 
 and Malthus on Over-production, and the reasonings 
 in Eicardo (1817) and James Mill (1821) on Wages 
 and the Wages Fund, are as truly commentaries on 
 these events as the Letter of Cobbett to the Luddites ^ 
 or^e volumes of Tooke on Prices. 
 '~^ Malthus has adroitly used the work of Tooke to 
 Support his own economical positions. In a review in 
 the (Quarterly for April 1823^ (pages 214 seq^) he 
 tries to show that Mr. Tooke's conclusions as to the 
 high and low prices of the past thirty years prove the 
 following general statements : — First, that values and 
 therefore prices depend on the supply compared with 
 the demand, and are only affected by the labour re- 
 quired to produce goods («. e. by what Eicardo counts 
 the main cause of value) so far as this labour is the 
 main condition of their supply ; second, that the 
 supply and demand are chiefly affected by the seasons, 
 and, of the other causes, war may limit the supply but 
 can hardly cause a demand ; third, that when demand 
 outruns supply trade is brisk, when supply outruns 
 demand trade is dull ; and that, finally, a long-con- 
 tinued deficiency or a long-continued excess of this 
 kind brings with it a fall or a rise in the value of the 
 precious metals.' Malthus, however, goes further than 
 
 1 Political Bcgister, SOtla Nov., 1816. 
 
 2 Internal evidence, e. g. p. 237 of the Quarterly, compared with p. 65 
 of Measure of Value, would show his authorship, and the article is 
 ascribed to him by Tooke, Prices, ed. 1838, vol. i. p. 21. 
 
 3 I. c. pp. 215-16. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENEEAL GLUTS. 291 
 
 Tooke with the Bullion Committee. Though on the 
 bullion question the opposing parties, Bosanquet and 
 Ricardo, seemed to him to be devoted to a precon- 
 ceived theory,^ the Report itself was " more free from 
 this error of preconception than any work that had 
 appeared on the subject;"^ and he agreed with it that 
 there had been a greater rise of prices and of wages 
 at the end of the period of restriction, than could be 
 explained by the bad seasons, and demand for men, 
 and the diflference between paper and gold. He is 
 old-fashioned enough to think that even with conver- 
 tibility there might be over-issue and depreciation, 
 and speculation on a basis of paper. His reasoning 
 on this point is hardly sound. It depends on a 
 misapplication of the axiom that, in the case of 
 necessaries, a very small deficiency in the supply will 
 cause a very great increase in the price, — e. g. that 
 wheat may rise from 100 to 200 per cent, when the 
 deficiency of the crops is not more than 15 or 30.^ 
 The profits of English farmers between 1793 and 
 1815 must therefore have been enormous; and 
 Malthus, though he loves agriculture above manu- 
 facture, has taken account of these high gains of 
 individuals in judging the cause of the Agricultural 
 Interest against the public* But in connection with 
 currency he actually speaks as if those gains were 
 
 1 Bosanquet, Practical Observations on the Report of the Bu!Uon 
 Committee (1810) ; Eicardo, The High Price of Bullion a Proof of the 
 Depreciation of Bank-Notes (1809), and Ms Reply to Bosanquet (1811). 
 
 2 1. 0. Pol. Econ., Introd. (1820), pp. 6 and 7 n., (1836) p. 5 n. Of. 
 Tooke, Prices, Part I. p. 6 (ed. 1823). 
 
 3 Tooke, Prices, Part III. p. 91. i See Tract on Value, p. 18. 
 
 U a 
 
292 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 a public advantage ; he does not see they were a 
 mere transference of public wealth, not an addition 
 to it. The farmer, he says, is obviously " able to set 
 in motion a much greater quantity of industry than 
 before," at least till wages have risen. " The specific 
 funds destined for the maintenance of labour, though 
 diminished in quantity, are by this happy provision of 
 nature increased in their efficiency ; " labourers get 
 more employment, and there is " a burst of prosperity 
 to the producing classes." ^ 
 
 This is a near approach to a worse fallacy than the 
 Wages Fund. The archaic reasoning is the more 
 unhappy, because the reasoner proceeds to use it 
 in a good cause. Jean Baptiste Say^ had taught 
 that all increased or diminished demand depended on 
 increased or diminished supply, and argued thence, 
 with James Mill and Eicardo, the impossibility of 
 general or rather universal glats. Goods' being 
 always meant to be exchanged with goods, one half 
 will furnish a market for the other half; and thus, as 
 production (which gives the means of buying) is the 
 sole source of demand (so far as demand is eff"ective), 
 an excess in the supply of one article merely proves a 
 deficiency in the supply of another, and is improperly 
 called over-production. Indeed, whereas consumption 
 takes an article away from the market, production 
 brings one into it, and thereby increases, jora tanto, the 
 demand by increasing the means of buying. James 
 
 1 Quarterly, April 1823, p. 230. 
 
 2 Econ. Pol, Part III. ch. ii., 2nd ed., 1842 ; 1st ed., 1802. 
 
 3 " Products " is Say's word, liowever. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 293 
 
 Mill's neat demonstration of this doctrine^ would be 
 quite conclusive if we, first of all, defined demand 
 and supply so as to include each other, and, second, 
 supposed general to mean universal. The reply of 
 Malthus himself is that goods are not always 
 exchanged for goods, but frequently, perhaps most 
 frequently, for labour. Say rejoins that he for his 
 part used a term ("products") which includes both 
 goods and services, and that the latter are always 
 the real object of an exchange.^ Malthus makes a 
 better point when he accuses his opponents of treating 
 goods as if they were mathematical symbols, instead 
 of objects of human consumption owing their whole 
 character to human wants.' But his case could be 
 made convincing even on his opponents' premises. 
 Division of labour, all admitted, is limited by the 
 extent of the market ; * allow that the most satis- 
 factory cure for the limitation is to widen the market, 
 not to lessen the division of the labour — still, given 
 the limitation of the market, the extension of the 
 division of the labour will cause an over-production. 
 All that Malthus maintained was that this might 
 happen in a great many cases as well as in a few ; 
 Say went as near as he dared to the assertion that it 
 could not happen at all. 
 
 1 Elements (1821), ch. iv. sect. iii. pp. 186 seq. "That consumption is 
 coextensive with production." Mill taught this as early as 1808 in his tract 
 (against Spence) Commerce defended. 
 
 ^ Lettres d, M. Malthus sur diffdrents sujets d'^con. pol., notamment sur 
 Us causes de la stagnation gdnerale du commerce (1820), pp. 26 seq. 
 
 3 Pol. Econ. (1820), p. 355, (1836) p. 316. Against Say'sgeneral position 
 see Definitions, p. 56 n. 
 
 * Wealth of Nations, I. iii. 
 
294 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 The question of a market, again, is not a mere 
 question of numbers but of wants. A carpet factory, 
 for example, among a people who preferred bare floors 
 would have no market, whatever the numbers and 
 even the wealth of the people. Say does not do full 
 justice to Malthus in this connection. He thinks 
 that the author of the Essay on Population cannot 
 consistently believe in the possibility of a great 
 abundance of products together with a stationary 
 number of parsimonious consumers. But Malthus 
 had allowed that in one case, the case of food, there 
 could be no over-production,^ the want in that case 
 being constant, whereas, curiously enough, Ricardo 
 thinks that food is the one object of which there 
 might be a glut. " If every man were to forego the 
 use of luxuries and be intent only on accumulation, a 
 quantity of necessaries might be produced for which 
 there could not be any immediate consumption. Of 
 commodities so limited in number there might 
 undoubtedly be a universal glut, and consequently 
 there might neither be demand for an additional 
 quantity of such commodities nor profits on the 
 employment of more capital. If men ceased to 
 consume they would cease to produce. This ad- 
 mission does not impugn the general principle," for 
 there is no likelihood of such a contingency as it 
 supposes; — there is a limit to the desire of food, 
 but there is no limit to the desire of other good 
 
 ' See above, p. 232. A curious footnote in Essay on Fop., 3rd ed., vol. ii. 
 p. 264, suggested that there might be over-production in the case of high 
 farming when its cost made the farmers charge more than the public 
 could bear. But this note disappeared afterwards. 
 
CHAP. HI.] GENERAL GLUTS. 295 
 
 things.^ The insatiableness of human desires is here 
 assumed by Ricardo to be always full-grown, instead 
 of what it is, in perhaps three-fourths of the world, 
 an undeveloped possibility. Till we know that the 
 possibility has become actual, we cannot take for 
 granted that all we produce will be wanted. 
 Malthus did not enter with sympathy or even with 
 full intelligence into the spirit of modern trade. But 
 he sees that large manufacture, with its complement 
 of speculative trading, must succeed or fail precisely 
 as it has judged rightly or judged wrongly of its 
 markets, for it no longer, like the old English small 
 production, waits for orders — it anticipates, woos, and 
 coaxes them. He believes that the awakening of 
 man's insatiable wants will tend to secure us against 
 both over-population and over-production, by creating 
 a high standard of living. The taste for luxuries, 
 whatever its positive advantages, from the educa- 
 tional or artistic point of view, confers at least this 
 economical benefit.^ 
 
 Malthus gets a similar result by applying to wages 
 his favourite idea of the golden mean. The " funds 
 destined to pay wages" may, he says, be increased 
 either by high prices or by great production at low 
 prices, — increased value without increased quantity, 
 or increased quantity without increased value. The 
 latter is the more secure way, but it lies on the 
 road to "glut." The most desirable plan is the union 
 
 1 Ricardo, Pol. Earn, and Taxation, ch. xxi. p. 176 (MacCull.'a ed.). 
 Mill (Elements, pp. 193 ft., 194) is more rigid. 
 
 2 Essay, lib. ed., IV. xiii. 473. 
 
296 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 of the two. "There is somewh ere a ^hagpy mean, 
 where, under the actual resources of a count r^jjEotB 
 the increase of wealth and the demand_jfor labour 
 may be a/inaximum. A taste for conveniences and 
 comforts not only tends to create a more steady 
 demand for labour than a taste for personal services, 
 but by cheapening manufactures and the products of 
 foreign commerce, including many of the necessaries 
 of the labouring classes, it actually enlarges the limits 
 of the effectual demand for labour, and renders it 
 for a longer time effective." ^ If any one had urged 
 against this, in the words of Mill, that a demand 
 for goods is not a demand for labour, but simply 
 gives labour a new direction, Malthus would probably 
 have answered that the new direction was all 
 important, because the trade begun in it might be a 
 trade in goods more widely used, and might therefore 
 last longer and more steadily than the old trade. 
 
 We see that in his views of this subject, expounded 
 tediously enough, and at unnecessary length, Malthus 
 had constant thought of the relations of production 
 and distribution to consumption as well as to each 
 other, for the condition of the people was always 
 more important to him than the state of the articles 
 concerned. But he never yielded to his feelings so far 
 as to adopt Sismondi's reactionary ideas on the effects 
 of machinery on the workmen. He never wrote any 
 
 1 Fol. Ecmi. (1836), ch. iv. sect. iii. p. 239, slightly altered from 1st 
 ed., 1820, ch. iv. sect. iii. p. 266. 
 
 2 Siamondi, Nouveaux Principes de I'J^con. Pol, 1819. See Malttas, 
 Pol. Scon. (1820), p. 420, (1836) pp. 325 n., 366 n. Cf. on the other hand 
 Fssay, III. xiii. 372-3 and n. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 297 
 
 description of the evils of division of laliour at all so 
 strong as Adam Smith's.^ He goes little farther than 
 Ricardo, who says in a well-known passage : — " The 
 same cause which may increase the nett revenue of 
 the country may at the same time render the popula- 
 tion redundant and deteriorate the condition of the 
 labourer," for all the increase may possibly be devoted 
 to fixed and not circulating capital, to machinery and 
 buildings instead of wages.^ Eicardo's admission, that 
 he was wrong in not recognizing this sooner, makes 
 us wonder (as men were even then doing in Germany 
 over similar confessions of their philosophers) whether 
 his demonstrations are more accurate than ordinary 
 reasonings. His brother economists never claimed 
 infallibility. Adam Smith gave up his defence of 
 Usury Laws.^ Malthus amended his first views on 
 population, to say nothing of the measure of value.* 
 Mill gave up the Wages Fund. It was only the 
 minor economists who proudly remained at the end 
 where they were at the beginning. James Mill re- 
 fused to follow Eicardo in allowing that food could 
 be over-produced, and MacCuUoch refused to go with 
 him in the admission above quoted, that increase of 
 wealth might go to fixed capital instead of wages .^ 
 
 • Wealth of Nations, V. i. art. ii. pp. 350—353 (ed. MaoC). He is 
 outrivalled by Ferguson, Oivil Society, parts iv. and v. (ed. 1773). 
 
 2 3rd ed. of Pol. Ec. and Tax. (1821), eh. xxxi. pp. 468-9, ed. Mac- 
 Cull., pp. 235-6. Of. below (Critics). It is the position of Marx. 
 ^ If we believe Bowring, Life of Bentham (ed. 1843), p. 176. 
 
 * "Supposing that his opinions have not altered within the last 
 twelve months."— i)e Qiiincey, vol. iv. p. 231. 
 
 = James Mill, Elements, pp. 193, 194. MacCulL, Pol Ec., p. 207. 
 Cf. the tract Mordecai Mullion (1826). 
 
298 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk, ii. 
 
 Orthodox economy became most abstract wben on the 
 death of Ricardo in 1823 its doctrines passed into the 
 hands of the Minor Prophets. 
 
 In the last ten years of his life Malthus made 
 no serious change in his economical views, and 
 approached no nearer to the Ricardians. They were 
 years when economists and political reformers had 
 not learned to work together so harmoniously as they 
 were to do after his death, Huskisson's changes in 
 commercial policy were preparing the way in high 
 quarters for free trade. The sliding scale of corn 
 duties introduced in 1826 pointed on the whole in 
 the same direction. But the agitation of the humbler 
 classes for political freedom, made solid as it was 
 by an appreciable progress in popular education,^ 
 and kept within bounds of law by the influence of 
 Cobbett,* went on in a way apart ; and it will be 
 remembered how Chartism stood aloof from the Anti- 
 Corn-Law League. A man might be an advanced 
 economist and social reformer and a reactionary in 
 politics. In 1824, when trades unions were for the 
 first time allowed by law and the Factory Acts were 
 still too imperfect to give the weak a fair chance 
 against the strong, the "natural state of things," free 
 development of individual and national faculties, did 
 not exist ; and Malthus, who missed them keenly, 
 would have been much amazed to hear that his 
 doctrines were, like Ricardo's, a vindication of things 
 
 1 Especially by Sunday Schools, according to the testimony ol Samuel 
 Bamford. — Radical, vol. i. p. 7 (1844). 
 
 2 We have his counterpart in our own day. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 299 
 
 as they are. Not only the notorious fact of his opposi- 
 tion to Eicardo, but his views on commercial policy 
 are against the notion.* At the Peace there were 
 many fallacies current about wages. The new Corn 
 Law of 1815 had inaugurated the aggressive policy of 
 the agricultural interest, who frankly endeavoured, by 
 forms of law, to convert an occasional scarcity into a 
 permanent one, and keep prices at 805. a quarter. Not 
 a few false friends of the working man recommended 
 him to countenance the law and let his bread be made 
 dear, for then, said they, his wages would be made 
 high. Many manufacturers, on the other hand, were 
 declaring the interest of the country to be low wages, 
 and, unto that end, cheap food and a great population. 
 Malthus was with neither. His partial approval of 
 the new Corn Law was no doubt based on erroneous 
 grounds ; but he held no such mistaken views of 
 wages. His opinion, if not sufficiently obvious from 
 his general views of population, was laid down ex- 
 plicitly in all his writings. He says, for example : 
 " If a country can only be rich, by running a success- 
 ful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at 
 once ' Perish such riches ! ' " ^ "It is most desirable 
 that the labouring classes should be well paid, for a 
 much more important reason than any that can relate 
 to wealth, namely, the happiness of the great mass of 
 society." ' Being asked, "In a national point of view, 
 even if it were admitted that the low rate of wages 
 
 1 See below, Bk. III., for disproof of the charge that he was reactionary 
 in his politics, like many economical optimists. 
 
 2 Pol. Econ., 1820, p. 236. 3 I. c. p. 472. 
 
300 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk ii. 
 
 was an advantage to the capitalist, do you think it 
 fitting that labour should be kept permanently in a 
 state bordering on distress, to avoid the injury that 
 might accrue to the national wealth from diminishing 
 the rate of profit ? " he answered, " I should say, by 
 no means fitting ; I consider the labouring classes as 
 forming the largest part of the nation, and therefore 
 that their general condition is the most important 
 of all." ' 
 
 He thinks, however, that the change from low 
 to high wages might quite possibly so reduce profits 
 as to make trade unprofitable. We might need to 
 sacrifice something of our commercial prosperity. He 
 cannot rise to the conception of a society in which 
 the entire body of workmen as consumers would be 
 a sufiicient market for the same body as producers. 
 He cannot rid himself of the idea that a body of 
 unproductive consumers is a social necessity, to give 
 a stimulus to production by developing the wants 
 which the manufactures are to satisfy. It seems 
 easy to answer that those unproductive consumers 
 can only pay for the manufactures by means of other 
 products, whencesoever obtained, and there seems no 
 reason why their producers should not obtain them.^ 
 If the workmen themselves had the wants and sup- 
 j)lied them by their own labour, all the results that 
 Malthus desires would be obtained without invidious 
 
 1 Emigr. Gomm. (1827), p. 317, qu. 3281. 
 
 2 Some such view is suggested by Malthus himself, Essay, IV. xiii. 
 p. 473 (cf. Poi. Ec, 1820, p. 475), a passage which it is hard to reconcile 
 with the passages in the Quarterly and in the Pol. Ec. that speak of the 
 necessity of a special class of unproductive consumers. 
 
CHAP. III.] GENERAL GLUTS. 301 
 
 distinctions of classes, and with distinct improvement 
 in the condition of the workmen. His aims, at 
 least, were good. The indispensable leisure would 
 be secured if the hours of labour were shortened, 
 as he desired them to be. " 1 have always thought 
 and felt that many among the labouring classes in 
 this country work too hard for their health, happi- 
 ness, and intellectual improvement." ^ The general 
 wealth therefore, if need be, must be sacrificed to 
 the general happiness. Factory Acts that would pre- 
 vent children from labouring too young or too long ^ 
 he thoroughly approves ; though such Factory Acts 
 as would interfere with adult labour he considers 
 an injustice to the work-people themselves, and a 
 hopeless interference with "the principles of com- 
 petition, one of the most general principles by which 
 the business of society is carried on." ' The salvation 
 of the labouring classes must come from themselves, 
 from their own " simultaneous resolution to work 
 fewer hours in the day." But trades unions, as we 
 now know them, had not then come into being ; and 
 he talks ^of a future improvement of the working 
 classes in knowledge, comfort, and self-restraint,* with 
 much hesitation. 
 
 We have seen that the economics of Malthus, 
 whether in relation to the , landlords, the employers, 
 
 ' Pol. JEcon. (1820), ch. vii. sect. ix. p. 473. Cf. Tract on Bent, p. 
 48 n. 
 
 2 Bssay cm Pop., Ill iii. p. 282 (in relation to Robert Owen). Cf. the 
 whole ch. xiii. of Book III., where he treats of " Increasing Wealth as it 
 affects the Condition of the Poor." 
 
 3 Pol. Econ., 1. c. p. 474. * Ihkl, 1. c. pp. 474-5. 
 
302 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 or tLe workmen, are by no means identical with the 
 economics of Eicardo and his school, which have been 
 the ruling and orthodox doctrine for the first half of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 It would be neither complimentary nor true to 
 ascribe the difference to the logic of sentiment ; but 
 it is true that the acute sensitiveness of Malthus to 
 the evils of poverty kept constantly before him large 
 classes of facts which Eicardo seemed willing to 
 forget, and the path that he took, though long ago 
 obscured and forgotten, led him in some important 
 points away from laissez /aire to doctrines of our 
 own day, in which society acting through its G-overn- 
 nient is allowed an originative and not merely a 
 regulative action in the matter of industry and 
 wealth. 
 
 Eesuming the thread of the essay, we shall find 
 that the relation of society to its destitute poor is 
 not to Malthus, as to Eicardo, a question of taxation 
 and finance, but a problem of morals and politics, 
 which could only be solved by a clear view of the 
 relation of the citizen to the commonwealth. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAE. 303 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BEGGAE. 
 
 Arrangement of the Essay — Nature's Mighty Feast — Tract on High 
 Price of Provisions — I cannot, therefore I ought not — Poor Laws con- 
 demned — Frederick the Great's Army — Mitigation of Bad Effects 
 of Poor Law — Step towards Abolition — New Poor Law. 
 
 In the foregoing brief review of the economical doc- 
 trines of Malthus, the chapters on commercial policy 
 and the Corn Laws/ in the third book of the Ussay on 
 Population, have been already noticed. As the First 
 and Second books of the essay were supposed to deal 
 with the state of population in past and in present 
 times, the Third is supposed to deal with the " dif- 
 ferent systems of expedients which have been proposed 
 or have prevailed in society" for curing the evils 
 arising from the principle of population, while the 
 Fourth relates to the future prospects of society, and 
 the possibility of removing the evUs in question. This 
 division of the subject could not be maintained very 
 strictly. The "systems proposed" no doubt were 
 in most cases mere theories and could be considered 
 
 ' See above, pp. 245 seq^. and 252. 
 
304 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 by themselves ; but the " systems that prevailed " 
 included such laws as the Corn Laws and Poor Laws, 
 which directly affected the present habits and wealth 
 of the people, and might fairly have been considered 
 in the second book. The fourth book might quite 
 logically have been part of the third, for it simply 
 adds to the " systems proposed " the proposal of 
 Malthus himself. The arrangement is not in itself 
 so perfect or so closely respected by its author that 
 we need have any remorse for disregarding it. The 
 earliest chapters of the third book (i. and ii.) are 
 substantially the refutation of Godwin, Wallace, 
 Condorcet, as it appeared in 1798, with a postscript 
 (ch. iii.) on Owen and Spence, which will be best 
 considered in another place.^ In point of style they 
 are probably the best in the book. 
 
 After a chapter (iv.) on Emigration ^ come three 
 chapters on the Poor Laws, to be viewed with ch. 
 viii. of the fourth book, which deals with Plans for 
 their Abolition. Of all the applications of the doc- 
 trines of Malthus, their application to pauperism was 
 probably, at the time, of the greatest public interest. 
 Even the first essay had distinct bearing on Pitt's 
 Poor Bill ; the next writing of the author was on a 
 question of parish relief; and. these three chapters 
 in the later Essay on Population have influenced 
 public opinion and legislation about the destitute 
 poor almost as powerfully as the Wealth of Nations has 
 influenced commercial policy. Malthus is the father 
 
 1 See below, Bk. IV., and cf. above, p. 208. 
 ' See above, p. 142. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAB. 305 
 
 not only of the new Poor Law, but of all our latter- 
 day societies for the organization of charity. 
 
 The subject is best introduced in the words of a 
 celebrated parable, which Malthus having used once 
 was never afterwards allowed to forget : ^ — '[ji. man 
 who is born into a world already possessed, if he 
 cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he 
 has a just demand, and if the society do not want 
 his labour, has no claim of ri^/it to the smallest portion 
 of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he 
 is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover 
 for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly 
 execute her own orders, if he do not work upon the 
 compassion of some of her guests. If these guests 
 get up and make room for him, other intruders 
 immediately appear demanding the same favour. 
 The report of a provision for all that come, fills the 
 hall with numerous claimants. The order and har- 
 mony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before 
 reigned is changed into scarcity ; and the happiness 
 of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery 
 and dependence in every part of the hall, and by 
 the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly 
 enraged at not finding the provision which they had 
 been taught to expect. The guests learn too late 
 their error, in counteracting those strict orders to all 
 intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, 
 who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, 
 and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited 
 
 1 The passags is quoted in full because by recent critics it is much 
 garbled ; e. g. ir Progress and Poverty, VII. i. 304 n. 
 
 X 
 
306 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [pk. ii 
 
 numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers 
 when her table was already fulL"^ 
 
 Our neighbours' misfortunes have seldom been 
 made so picturesque. The figure itself was no new 
 one. Lucretius had written : — 
 
 " Cui non, ut plenus vitse oonviva, recedis V'^ 
 
 and Fenton, in Pope's ^ familiar lines : — 
 
 " From Nature's temperate feaat rose satisfied, 
 Thanked heaven that he had lived and that he died." 
 
 But the new application took hold on the public 
 fancy. Sir William Pulteney and Windham are 
 said to have been, beyond others, delighted with 
 its conservative moral.* Malthus may have got 
 the hint of it from a passage in Paley's Moral 
 ajid Political Philosophy. Paley was criticizing a 
 justification of private property, which founded it 
 on every man's right to take what he wants of the 
 things God made for the use of all, just as, when 
 an entertainment is given to the freeholders (as the 
 free and independent electasgl) of a county, we see 
 them coming in and eating and drinking each what 
 he chooses, without asking the consent of the other 
 guests. The simile, says Paley, is not perfect, for 
 in a freeholder's feast nobody is allowed to fill his 
 pockets or to throw anything away, " especially if by 
 
 \/i feay^JnoL2d;i_IV^^^31. \^ ^1^6/ 
 
 2 EvicritfusTiii- 951. CicSro's simile of th« theatre open to all comers, 
 but giving each man his own seat, had special application to Property 
 {Be Finibus, iii. 20). 
 
 3 Epitaph on Fenton. 
 
 * James Grahame's Fopwlation (1816), p. 34. Cf. Quarterly Rev., Dec. 
 1812, p. 327; Hazlitt, Spirit of the Age, ' Malthus,' end. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAR. 307 
 
 SO doing he pinched the guests at the lower end of 
 the table." ^ 
 
 r- 
 
 Even the friends of Malthas thought the passage 
 too gloomy ; and, as every one noticed/ it was not 
 retained after 1803. It contains, however, at least 
 two positions that were never retracted :— that the 
 poor cannot claim relief as a right, but only as a | 
 favour, and that poor relief can only raise one man ' 
 by depressing another. The latter position may be 
 illustrated from the tract written in 1800 on the 
 Ififfk Price of Provisions. The main aim of the tract 
 was to show that the price was too extravagantly high 
 to be due to the deficiency, which was admittedly 
 only one-fourth. But the author throws light on his 
 own general doctrines.' He argues, in substance, 
 that to give relief in money is to enable the relieved 
 persons to retain their ordinary rate of consumption 
 at the expense of the rest. To this the reply is 
 obvious : — the sufficiency of the stock is not so 
 finely calculated, neither is the amount of it so fixed 
 that it cannot be increased from home or foreign 
 stores, — and to withdraw money from the rich for the 
 poor, and increase the country's total expenditure on 
 necessaries, might be simply to divert the stream of 
 importation into the channel of necessaries, and lead 
 to a larger use of food other than bread. Under the 
 
 I Book III. Part I. ch. iv. (1785). 
 
 ^ E. g. Godwin, Population (1820), I. iiL 17. The withdrawal was 
 probably due to Sumner. See Otter, Life of Malthns in Pol. Ec. (1836), 
 p. Hi. 
 
 ^ Cf. Essay, 2nd ed., pp. 400, 401, and nn.; 7th ed., p. 298 n. Cf. 
 pp. 295 and 297 n. Cf. also Tooke, above quoted, p. 291. 
 
 X a 
 
308 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK [bk. ii. 
 
 conditions of ttie time, however, the author's views 
 were not unnatural. On his return from Sweden in 1 800 
 he found scarcity prevaihng in England as elsewhere, 
 but with prices much higher than in other countries. 
 These were the days when Chief Justice Kenyon and 
 a jury enforced the antiquated laws against forestall- 
 ing and regrating.^ Malthus had not read his Adam 
 Smith to so little purpose that he could approve such 
 proceedings ; much of his pamphlet was simply an 
 application, to one particular case, of the principles 
 of the Wealth of Nations (Book IV. chap, v.).^ Neither 
 could he agree with the notion that the paper cur- 
 rency had done it all.' Settling down to his parish 
 work in Surrey, he watched the course of events. 
 What happened, he said, there and presumably else- 
 where was as follows : — In progress of the scarcity the 
 poor complained to the justices that their wages were 
 too low to buy bread at present prices ; the justices 
 thereupon inquired at what, as the lowest wages, they 
 would have been able to buy it, and then " very 
 humanely, and I am far from saying improperly," 
 gave parish relief accordingly.* But, like the water 
 from the mouth of Tantalus, the corn slipped from 
 the grasp of the poor ; prices rose a step further, and 
 the relief had to follow the prices. 
 
 The rates accordingly rose in many places from 
 
 1 Cf. above, p. 220. 
 
 ^ On Bounties and the Corn Trade. Cf. High Price of Provisions, p. 3. 
 
 ^ I. t. p. 23. See above, p. 2S9. Also Corn Law Catechism, 1839, 
 qa. 244. 
 
 * I. c. pp. 9 — 1 1. Cf. the " make up " and " bread money '' mentioned in 
 Beport of Poor Law Commissio^i, 1834, p. 27. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAR. 309 
 
 four to fourteen shillings in tlie pound. By the 
 double burden of dear food and high rates, perhaps 
 five or six millions of the richer classes were certainly 
 made to feel the pinch of the scarcity, which would 
 otherwise have been borne, say by two millions of 
 the poorest, who would have died under it.^ In this 
 instance the Poor Laws did the country a distinct 
 service. But it was done by taking from the first 
 guests to give to the importunate intruders, and 
 could not justify a general eulogy of the Poor Laws. 
 The whole drift of the Essay on Population, had gone 
 against such institutions ; and " two years' reflection," 
 says the writer of the Essay, " have served strongly 
 to convince me of the truth of the principle there 
 advanced, and of its being the real cause of the con- 
 tinued depression and poverty of the lower classes 
 of society, of the total inadequacy of all the present 
 establishments in their favour to relieve them, and 
 of the [certainty of] periodical returns of such seasons 
 of distress as we have of late experienced." ^ In the 
 first essay he had spoken strongly not only against 
 Pitt's new Poor Bill, but against all legal relief, and 
 amongst other reasons precisely on th.e ground that it 
 caused food to rise in price beyond the point to which, 
 scarcity would have raised it apart from interference.^ 
 The second was a stronger reason ; — in the language 
 of Kant, the claim allowed (with little qualification *) 
 by the English Poor Laws was a claim that could not 
 
 ' High Price, &c. pp. 19, 20. 2 j_ <,. p. 27. Cf. above, p. 43. 
 
 3 1st ed., pp. 82, 83 ; Tth ed., pp. 302-3. 
 * Essay, 7th ed., Appendix, p. 493. 
 
310 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 be made universal without contradiction. If every one 
 exercised the supposed right of demanding relief, no 
 community could fulfil the supposed duty of granting 
 it.^ If it could have been fulfilled, Malthus thinks, 
 the obligation would have held ; and, instead of de- 
 claring " I cannot, therefore I ought not," he would 
 have confessed, " I can, therefore I ought." ^ As the 
 case stands, he agrees with Sir Frederick Eden in 
 thinking the giving of legal relief impracticable, and 
 therefore no duty, and also that, " upon the whole, 
 the sum of good to be expected from a compulsory 
 maintenance of the poor will be far outbalanced by 
 the sum of evil which it will inevitably create." ^ It 
 relieved individual sufi"ering at the cost of making 
 the suffering general. It created the poor which 
 it maintained, for it led men to marry w^ith the 
 certainty of parish assistance. It thereby increased 
 the population without increasing the food of the 
 country, and it has to a large extent broken down 
 the ancient spirit of independence. " Hard as it 
 may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty 
 ought to be held disgraceful." * Hisjh wages and 
 independence and moral restraint are better than low 
 wages with a parish supplement and a pauper family. 
 " 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, 
 
 1 He borrows, as lie himself says, the language of Sir Frederick Eden 
 on the State of the Poor (1797). See Essay on Population, 2nd ed., p. 
 417 n. ; 7th ed., p. 308 n. 
 
 2 Letter to Wldtbread (1807), pp. 12, 13 ; cf. Essay, p. 445 ft. 
 
 3 Quoted, Essay, III. vi. .308 n. ■> 7th ed., III. vi. 303 ; 1st ed., p. 365. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAR. 311 
 
 the aggregate mass of happiness among the common 
 people would have been much greater than it is at 
 present." ^ This was his belief to the end.^ 
 
 An allegory of these things may be found in Dr. 
 John Moore's description of the army of Frederick 
 the Great. Dr. Moore saw a man caned for being 
 a few seconds late in replacing his ramrod ; and the 
 officers told him that, since they could not distinguish 
 wilful blunders from accidental, they punished all 
 alike, and the result, they said, was excellent ; all the 
 men were on the alert, and fewer blunders were com- 
 mitted on the whole. It used to be common on 
 field- days for dragoons to have their hats blown off 
 and to be thrown from their horses. At last a general 
 gave orders to punish every man to whom either of 
 these accidents happened ; since then hardly any- 
 body lost his hat or fell from his horse. Dr. Moore 
 heard of a poor hussar who had fallen from his horse 
 at last review, and was to be punished for it as soon 
 as he could leave the hospital. This seemed hard, 
 but the King of Prussia thought he could only hope 
 to make his army superior to others by improving 
 its discipline, training its officers by honour and 
 disgrace, and its privates by physical punishment ; he 
 considered that the occasional suffering of an innocent 
 individual does less harm to an army than the toler- 
 ation of negligence, which makes the negligence 
 greater.' So far as legal relief goes, Malthus would 
 
 1 III. vi. (Yth ed.), p. 305. 
 
 ' See e. g. Emigration Committee, 1827, qn. 3369, p. 323. 
 ^ Dr. John Moore's View of Society and Manners in France, Switzer- 
 land, and Germany (7th ed., 1789), vol. ii. pp. 144 — 157. 
 
312 MALTHUS AND HIS AVOEK. [bk. ii. 
 
 recommend the same martial severity, and try to put 
 men on their guard against poverty by making them 
 bear the discipline of its consequences. There are 
 other points in "which the allegory applies to the 
 " simple system of natural liberty ; " the discipline of 
 industrial competition is certainly in some respects as 
 severe as the discipline of an army. On the other 
 hand, society does not consist of picked strong men, 
 but includes the weak also, and its privates are sup- 
 posed not to take their orders from a commander, but 
 to " fend for themselves." Society under socialism 
 may resemble an army, but not society under indi- 
 vidualism. Malthus, therefore, would have repudiated 
 the analogy. He does not reach his conclusions by 
 a preconceived theory of the state, but by observing 
 the ill results of the common preconceived theory that 
 every citizen when destitute has a right to be sup- 
 ported by the state. He finds that, as a matter of 
 fact, where material relief has been given as a duty, 
 and claimed as a right, the effect on the recipient has 
 been clearly bad ; the Poor Law stands condemned 
 by experience. 
 
 Yet he admits that the badness of the law has 
 been largely counteracted by the remissness of its 
 execution. The attempt to secure a fixed rate of 
 wages to the labourer in all states of trade has not 
 really been made in England as the Elizabethan Poor 
 Law enjoined. The scantiness of the relief actually 
 given, together with the insolence of the ofiicials 
 concerned in the giving of it, has disturbed the 
 sense of complete security, which in the view of 
 
CHAiMV.] THE BEGGAR. 313 
 
 Malthus would in such a case have beeu fatal. "The 
 
 desire of bettering our condition and the fear of 
 
 making it worse, like the vis mediatrix naturce in 
 
 physics, is the vis mediatrix reipublicce in politics, and 
 
 is continually counteracting the disorders arising from 
 
 narrow humaa institutions." The Poor Law has been 
 
 so imperfectly carried out that it has left some room 
 
 still for prudential motives among the labourers ; 
 
 they cannot count on complete provision for their 
 
 families if they marry recklessly, and some few of 
 
 them still think caution needful. Moreover, from 
 
 fear of the Poor Law the rich will often refuse to 
 
 build cottages, lest their occupants become paupers.^ 
 
 In the third place, pauper children, like foundlings, 
 
 do not live long.^ 
 
 In his Letter to Samuel Whitbread, M.P., on Ids 
 
 projjosed Bill for the amendment of the Poor Laios 
 
 (1807), Malthus allows that abolition must not come 
 
 till public opinion is ripe for it ; but he recommends 
 
 legislation in the direction of abolition, to prepare the 
 
 minds of all classes for the final steps, and to expose 
 
 to the working classes the delusiveness of the present 
 
 boon. Poor Laws, he says, are peculiar to England, 
 
 and their absence in other countries does not seem 
 
 to have the effects expected from their abolition here. 
 
 In reply to Malthus, it might be urged that the 
 
 Poor Laws are not entirely peculiar to England, but 
 
 occur in Denmark and elsewhere.^ In the second 
 
 ' Essay, 7tli ed., III. vi. p. 307 ; Emigratimi Committee (1827), qu. 
 3361, p. 323. 
 
 2 I. c. pp. 307-8. Of. above, p. 134. 
 
 ^ Reports to Local Gov. Bd. on Foreign Poor Laws, 1875, p. 7. 
 
314 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 place, as MacCuUoch argues in a letter, aimed at 
 Malthus, to Macvey Napier,^ Britain is peculiarly 
 subject to fluctuations in trade, due, for example, to 
 the changes in foreign tariffs, and therefore there are 
 more cases of sudden and unavoidable distress, that 
 need such a provision as the Poor Law's. In the third 
 place, too, it is difiicult to see how we can make 
 begging unlawful if we make legal relief inaccessible,^ 
 any more than we can logically make education 
 compulsory while we insist on the payment of 
 fees. In the fourth place, an indiscriminate private 
 charity is probably more mischievous than a discri- 
 minating public relief. Malthus, however, was not 
 against all relief, but only against it when claimed 
 as a right ; and he was fully aware that the risks of 
 the English working man were greater than those of 
 his Continental brethren. All he desired was to give 
 the workman scope for that sense of personal re- 
 sponsibility out of which the Poor Law was beguiling 
 him. He knew quite well that no good end would 
 be served by the removal of the Poor Law, unless the 
 public had been educated out of the evil ways of it. 
 He proposed therefore to make a gradual change, 
 the essence of which was to be the disclaimer of any 
 right on the part of a poor man to be supported 
 at the public expense ; children have a right to be 
 supported by their parents, but not by the public.^ 
 
 1 Macvey Napier's Correspondence, pp. 29 seq. Date SOtli Sept., 1821. 
 
 2 Report of Poor Law Comm., 1834 ; Remedial Measures, p. 227. 
 
 ' Essay on Population, Appendix, p. 492. It was probably this dis- 
 claimer of public duty that led Coleridge to complain, "the entire 
 tendency of the modern or Malthusian political economy is to denation- 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAR. 315 
 
 Let a law be passed, he said, declaring that no 
 legitimate child born from any marriage taking place 
 a year after the law's enactment, and no illegitimate 
 born two years thereafter, shall ever be entitled to 
 parish relief. "And to give a more general know- 
 ledge of this law, and to enforce it more strongly on 
 the minds of the lower classes of people, the clergy- 
 man of each parish should, previously to the solemniz- 
 ation of a marriage, read a short address to the 
 parties, stating the strong obligation on every man 
 to support his own children ; the impropriety, and 
 even immorality, of marrying without a fair prospect 
 of being able to do this ; the evils which had resulted 
 to the poor themselves, from the attempt which had 
 been made to assist, by public institutions, in a duty 
 which ought to be exclusively appropriated to parents, 
 and the absolute necessity which had at length 
 appeared, of abandoning all such institutions, on 
 account of their producing effects totally opposite to 
 those which were intended. This would operate as a 
 fair, distinct, and precise notice which no man could 
 well mistake, and without pressing hard upon any 
 particular individuals, would at once throw off the 
 rising generation from their miserable and helpless 
 dependence upon the Government and the rich." ^ 
 Both their irritation against the upper classes and 
 their helplessness in devising expedients in time of 
 
 alize " {Table Talk, p. 327). Cf. Toynbee, Indusi/r. Revol, p. 24. But it 
 may have been simply the idea that Malthus, like Ricardo, advocated 
 laissez faire ; and in this case it is singular he should not have said 
 " Ricardian " instead of " Malthusian." 
 1 Essay, 2nd ed., IV. vii. p. 538 ; 7th ed., IV. viii. p. 530. 
 
316 MALTHUS AND HIS AVORK. [bk. ii. 
 
 want, arise from " the wretched system of governing 
 too much. When the poor were once taught, by the 
 abolition of the Poor Laws, and a proper knowledge of 
 their real situation, to depend more upon themselves, 
 we might rest secure that they would be fruitful 
 enough in resources, and that the evils which were 
 absolutely irremediable they would bear with the 
 fortitude of men and the resignation of Christians."' 
 However comical may be the picture of a clergyman 
 following up the very un-Malthusian marriage service 
 by such a moral lecture as is here recommended, the 
 principle of the recommendation is sober sense, and 
 has largely influenced the benevolence of later philan- 
 thropists. Dr. Chalmers applied it in his Parochial 
 System, which would have been an admirable substi- 
 tute for the Poor Law on the (unfortunately untrue) 
 hypothesis of an absence of sects. The Mendicity 
 Society (dating from 1815) and the Charity Organiza- 
 tion (from 1869) build on the same foundation. 
 
 The new Poor Law of 1834 differed from Malthus in 
 that it did not deny the right to relieve, and still kept 
 up the fiction that the law of Elizabeth was good, and 
 we had degenerated from it.^ But it allowed the 
 right only to the indigent,^ refusing all relief in aid of 
 wages to the merely poor and the able-bodied ; and 
 it carried out the principle that dependent poverty 
 (in the words of Malthus) should be held disgraceful 
 and made disagreeable. " Every penny bestowed that 
 tends to render the condition of a pauper more eligible 
 
 1 Essay, 2n.cl ed., p. 539. ^ E. g. Bepoii. of Commissioners, p. 13. 
 
 3 Report, pp. 227-8. 
 
CHAP. IV.] THE BEGGAR. 317 
 
 than that of the independent labourer is a bounty on 
 indolence and vice." "In proportion as the condition 
 of any pauper class is elevated above the condition 
 of independent labourers, the condition of the inde- 
 pendent class is depressed." ^ If this meant that poor 
 relief should run a race with the average wages of 
 labour, keeping always one stage behind them, it 
 might be argued that in good times a pauper would 
 get too much comfort and in bad times too little food. 
 But the disgrace of dependence and the discomfort of 
 constraint are the deterrents which Malthus himself 
 has most in mind. 
 
 Without the discussions raised by the Essay on 
 Population it is very doubtful if public opinion would 
 have been so far advanced in 1834 as to make a bill, 
 drawn on such lines, at all likely to pass into law. 
 The abolition of outdoor relief to the able-bodied was 
 nothing short of a revolution. It had needed a life- 
 time of economical doctrine, reproof, and coixection 
 to convince our public men, and to some extent 
 the nation, that the way of rigour was at once the 
 way of justice, of mercy, and of self-interest. The 
 history of the English Poor Law is ample proof that 
 men do not instinctively follow their own interest. 
 It was the ratepayer's interest,^ unless he was an 
 employer, that relief should be sparely given ; and it 
 was given lavishly. It was the poor man's interest 
 to be thrifty and sober ; and as a rule he was neither. 
 
 ^ Be.'port, p. 228. 
 
 ^ Even if he were a poor ratepayer, voting a sum of whioli his richer 
 neighbour would pay the larger share. 
 
318 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. ir. 
 
 There was no hope of reform till both rich and poor 
 learned a deeper sense of their personal responsibility 
 for the remoter eflfects of their own acts, whether 
 unwisely benevolent or heedlessly selfish. The clear 
 consciousness of personal responsibility seems to 
 Malthus to be the soul and centre of every healthy 
 reform. In this sense, at least, he would say that 
 virtue is knowledge. 
 
 His thoughts on society are connected at this point 
 with his thoughts on man's place and duty in the 
 world. His psychology and ethics, slightly as they 
 are sketched, throw light on his sociology and 
 economics, and must be considered before we can 
 estimate his position in social philosophy. This will 
 lead us over the greater portion of the fourth book of 
 the essay, leaving the critical chapters till we come 
 to deal with the Critics as a body. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Cardinal Doctrines of the Malthusian Ethics — Application to Desire 
 of Marriage — Place of Man on the Earth — Criticism of Moral Philo- 
 sophy — Teleology and Utility — Benevolence and Self-love — Malthus 
 and Paley — Greatest Happiness — Earthly Paradise — Malthus and 
 the French Revolution — Malthus not a Political Reactionary — 
 Not committed to laissezfaire — His Modifications of that Doctrine 
 — Utililarianism^ius Nationality — Experience as much the Riddle 
 as the Interpretation — The State an Organism — Political Ideals 
 before and after 1846. 
 
 The moral philosophy of Malthus, like that of Aris- 
 totle, starts from a teleology. 
 
 Nature makes nothing in vain. Every desire has ~] 
 its proper place and proper gratification, if we can find 
 them. The passions are the materials out of which 
 happiness is made ; and they are therefore to be regu- 
 lated and harmonized; they are not to be extinguished, 
 or even diminished in intensity.^ There is a way of j 
 so gratifying the desires that they produce a general 
 balance of consequences in favour of happiness ; and 
 there is an opposite way with opposite efi'ects. The 
 former is evidently the way of nature, for utility 
 is the only guide of conduct we have apart from 
 
 ' Essay, 2nd ed., p. 490 ; 7th ed., p. 394 ; cf. pp. 392 top and 396. 
 
320 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. m. 
 
 Scripture.^ We must not eradicate any impulses ; but 
 we must follow none so far " as to trench upon some 
 other law [_sic] which equally demands our attention." 
 What is the golden mean, and what is too much 
 or too little, we can only know by our own and 
 others' experience of the consequences of actions.'' 
 Nature shows us the wrongness of an act by bring- 
 ing from it a train of painful consequences. Dis- 
 eases, instead of being the "inevitable inflictions of 
 Providence," are " indications that we have offended 
 against some of the laws of nature. The plague at 
 Constantinople and in other towns of the East is a 
 constant admonition of this kind to the inhabitants. 
 The human constitution cannot support such a state 
 of filth and torpor ; and as dirt, squalid poverty, and 
 indolence are in the highest degree unfavourable to 
 happiness and virtue,' it seems a benevolent dispens- 
 ation that such a state should by the laws of nature 
 produce disease and death, as a beacon to others to 
 avoid splitting on the same rock." * As epidemics in- 
 dicate bad food, unwholesome houses, or bad drainage, 
 and as indigestion follows over-eating, so the misery 
 that follows on too great an increase of numbers is 
 simply the law of nature recoUing on the law-breaker.^ 
 In this case it has taken a longer experience to teach 
 
 I/, 7tli ed., IV. X. pp. 442-3 ; cf. p. 161. 
 
 2 7tli ed., IV. i. p. 390. Cf. above, p. 37. 
 
 3 Not quite logical, if the test of a virtuous action is its tendency to 
 produce happiness. 
 
 4 Ibid., IV. i. p. 390. 
 
 6 2nd ed., pp. 489, 490, 501 ; 7th ed., pp. 390, 401. Cf. Paley, M. and 
 F. Phil, I. vi., II. iv. ; Tucker, Light of Nature (1st ed., 1768), vol. ii. 
 ch. xxix., esp. § 12. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 321 
 
 men the conduct most favourable to happiness, and 
 therefore the conduct right for them. But even the 
 best food, best clothing, and best housing have not 
 been taught all at once ; and the principle of the 
 lesson is clearly the same in all the cases. 
 
 To say, therefore, that the_ desire of marriage is to 
 be restrained and regulated is not to treat it excep- 
 tionally or to deny its naturalness. There is a lawful 
 and there is an irregular gratification even of hunger 
 and thirst; and the irregular is punished both by 
 nature and, when it takes, for example, the form of 
 theft, by human laws. Society could give such 
 punishment only on the ground that the action 
 punished tended to injure the general happiness. 
 The act of the hungry man who steals a loaf is only 
 distinguishable from the act of the hungry man who 
 takes a loaf of his own, by means of its consequences. 
 If all were to steal loaves there would in the end be 
 fewer loaves for everybody.^ We must apply the 
 same criterion to the irregular gratification of all 
 other desires. 
 
 After the desire for food, the desire of marriage 
 is the most powerful and general of our desires. 
 " When we contemplate the constant and severe toil 
 of the greatest part of mankind, it is impossible not 
 to be forcibly impressed with the reflection that the 
 sources of human happiness would be most cruelly 
 diminished if the prospect of a good meal, a warm 
 
 ' Essay, 7tli ed., IV. i. 391. Kant's test of a moral law, so far as it 
 was not purely dogmatic, was most easily illustrated, or he would have 
 said parodied, by this Utilitarian argument. 
 
 y 
 
322 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. hi. 
 
 liouse, and a comfortable fireside in the evening were 
 not incitements sufficently vivid to give interest and 
 cheerfulness to the labours and privations of the 
 day."^ This desire gives strength of character to a 
 man in proportion as the animal element in it is 
 hidden away out of sight, and in proportion as the 
 gratification of it is won by exertion and, it may be, 
 by waiting. To do as Jacob did for Eachel, a man 
 must have some strength of character. Most of us, 
 in the opinion of Malthus, owe whatever of definite 
 plan there is in our lives to the existence of such a 
 central object of afi"ection.^ Malthus himself, it will 
 appear, did not marry till on the eve of becoming a 
 professor at the East India College, nearly a year after 
 these passages were written. Even in 1798 he wrote : 
 " Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once 
 experienced the genuine delights of virtuous love, 
 however great his intellectual pleasures may have 
 been, that does not look back to the period as the 
 sunny spot in his whole life, where his imaginauon 
 loves to bask, which he recollects and contemplates 
 with the fondest regrets, and which he would most 
 wish to live over again."' Such a passage, though 
 it disappeared, with other flowers of language, in the 
 later editions of the essay, show'" us that Malthus, 
 though , wiser, was not colder than his fellow-men, 
 and drew his facts from experience as well as 
 observation, of the matters concerned.* 
 
 1 Essay, 2nc! ed., p. 487 ; Vtli ed., p. 392. 
 
 2 Ibid., 2nd ed., p. 488 ; 7th ed., pp. 392-3 ; cf. p. 398. 
 
 3 Ihld., 1st ed. (1798), p. 211. 
 
 ^ The passage in A Tale of the Tyne, -n-hich left no trace on Miss 
 
BK. HI.] MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 323 
 
 If we assume the intention of the Creator to 
 replenish the earth, we can see a reason in cosmical 
 polity for the strength of this desire of marriage. If 
 the fertility of fertile soils had been as great as the 
 power of population to increase, there would have 
 been no inducement to men to cultivate the poorer 
 soils or frequent the less attractive parts of the 
 earth's surface ; human industry and ingenuity would 
 have wanted their first stimulus.^ As it is, the 
 disparity of the two powers leads to an over-spreading 
 of the world ; men are led to avoid over-crowding from 
 fear of the evils that spring from it. Man's duties vary 
 with his situations ; and, as these are not uniform, but 
 infinitely various, all his powers are kept in play. 
 This language might make us doubt whether the 
 final cause is the development of man, or simply the 
 replenishment of the earth. If the first essay be 
 allowed in evidence, it is clear that man (with what- 
 ever justice) is made the chief end of the earth, 
 though his own chief end is not supposed to be 
 realized there.^ 
 
 The natural theology of Mai thus and Paley is the 
 foundation of their ethics. It was the English ethics 
 of last century, not only before Kant, but before 
 Bentham. There are signs that Malthus, in his views 
 of metaphysics and of the " moral sentiments," ' 
 
 Martineau's own memory, but so faithfully expounded Malthus that he 
 called on purpose to thank her for it {Autobiogr., i. 253), is easily iden- 
 tified in the light of these extracts as ch. iii. p. 56 of ed. 1833. 
 
 1 2nd ed., pp. 491-2 ; 7th ed., p. 395. See above, p. 36. 
 
 2 2nd ed., p. 494 ; 7th ed., p. 397. Of. above, p. 38. 
 2 The phrase in Essay, 7th ed., p. 401. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. in 
 
 preferred where lie could to draw rather from Tucker 
 than from Paley. Abraham Tucker^ (the "Edward 
 Search" who began the Light of Nature in 1756, 
 and finished it, blind, in 1774) lived for nearly fifty 
 years ^ at Betch worth Castle near Dorking. It is 
 possible in these days, when near neighbours knew 
 each other better than they care to do now, that 
 Daniel Malthus, though the younger man, may have 
 known Tucker. They were both of them Oxford 
 men, small proprietors, eccentric, literary, and fond 
 of philosophizing. Whether through his father at 
 home or through Paley at college, it is certain that 
 Malthus at an early date studied the Light of Nature 
 and adopted much of its teaching. Before he appeared 
 in public as an author, he had formed some settled 
 philosophical convictions, which (whatever their value) 
 at least left his mind free for its other work, and 
 kept it at peace with itself as regards the problems 
 of philosophy. 
 
 The substantial agreement of his views with the 
 doctrines of the Moral and Political Philosophy no 
 doubt helped to bring Malthus under the common 
 prejudice against "Pigeon Paley," ^ the defender of 
 things as they are and preacher of contentment to 
 starving labourers. When Paley became an open 
 convert to the Essag on Population, the public would 
 
 1 Not to be confused with his contemporary, Josiah Tucker, Dean of 
 Gloucester, the forerunner of Adam Smith. 
 
 ^ 1727 to 1774, the year of his death. Betchworth, now absorbed in 
 Mrs. Hope's estate of Deepdene, was on the farther side of Dorking 
 from Albury and the Rookery. 
 
 ^ This lucid epithet is ascribed to George III. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 325 
 
 no doubt believe their suspicions confirmed. But 
 Malthus and Paley agree not as disciple and master, 
 but at most as disciples of the same master. Malthus 
 tries to work out his own philosophy for himself.' 
 
 I It is open to many criticisms. In his ethics he 
 seems to have made no distinct analysis or classi- 
 fication of the passions.' He takes for granted that 
 the Passions are on one side and Eeason on the other, 
 and there is no middle term between the two except 
 the Design of God, which is worked out by the 
 passions of men as by external nature, and which is 
 (we are left to infer) in some way akin to human 
 reason, for human reason can find it out. The 
 impulse of benevolence, for example, is said to be, 
 like all our natural passions, " general" (by which he 
 seems to mean vague), " and in Some degree indiscri- 
 minate and blind ; " and, like the impulses of love, 
 anger, ambition, the desire of eating and drinking, 
 or any other of our " natural propensities," it must 
 be regulated by experience and frequently brought 
 to the test of utility, or it will defeat its own purpose.' 
 In other words, Malthus treats all human impulses 
 as if they were appetites, co-ordinate with each other, 
 primary and irresolvable. All desires are equally 
 natural, and abstractedly considered equally virtuous,^ 
 though not equally strong, and therefore not equally 
 fit at first sight to carry out their Creator's purpose. 
 The Eeason of Man, therefore, must assist the Reason 
 
 1 A point of difference has been noted above (p. 39) and below (p. 330). 
 He differs from Bentbam also, wbo would not gratify the passions but 
 destroy them. See Held, Soe. Geschichte, p. 213. 
 
 2 Essay, 7th ed., IV. x. 441. 3 Jiiid., IV. i. 391. 
 
326 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. Hi. 
 
 of his Maker in carrying out the teleology of his 
 passions, as well as the teleology of nature itself.^ 
 The "apparent object" (or evident final cause), for 
 example, of the desire of marriage is the continuance 
 of the race and the care of the weak, and not merely 
 the happiness of the two persons most concerned.^ 
 To take another example, the object of the impulse 
 of benevolence is to increase the sum of human 
 happiness by binding the human race together.* 
 Self-love is made a stronger motive than benevolence 
 for a wise and perfectly ascertainable purpose. The 
 ascertainment of the purpose, however, presents a 
 difficulty. Acknowledging that we ought to do the 
 will of God, how are we to discover it ? 
 
 We are told in answer to this question, that the 
 intention of the Creator to procure the good of His 
 creatures is evident partly from Scripture and partly 
 from experience ; and it is that intention, so mani- 
 fested, which we are bound to promote. What on 
 God's side is teleology, on man's is utility ; utility is 
 the ruling principle of morals. Not being a passion 
 it cannot itself lead to action ; but it regulates passion, 
 and that so powerfully, that all our most important 
 laws and customs, such as the institution of property 
 and the institution of marriage, are simply disguised 
 forms of it.* As animals, we follow the dictates of 
 nature, which would mean unhindered passion ; but as 
 reasonable beings we are under the strongest obliga- 
 
 ' See above, p. 35. 2 Tth ed., p. 441 ft. ^ in^^^ p. 442 top. 
 
 ' Essay, III. ii. 279, explains in this way the popular prejudice which, 
 in one case at least, visits the same sin more severely in a woman than 
 in a man. 
 
BK. III.] MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 327 
 
 tions to attend to the consequences of our acts, and, 
 if they be evil to ourselves or others, we may justly 
 infer that such a mode of indulging those passions is 
 " not suited to our state or conformable to the will of 
 God." As moral agents, therefore, it is clearly our 
 duty to restrain the indulgence of our passions in those 
 particular directions, that by thus carefully examining 
 their consequences, and by frequently bringing them, 
 to the test of utility, we may gradually acquire a 
 habit of gratifying them only in the way which, being 
 unattended with evil, will clearly " add to the sum 
 of human happiness, and fulfil the apparent purpose 
 of the Creator." ^ All the moral codes which have 
 laid down the" subjection of the passions to reason 
 Lave been really (thinks Malthus) built on this 
 foundation, whether their promulgators were aware 
 of it or not. " It is the test alone by which we can 
 know independently of the revealed will of God 
 whether a passion ought or ought not to be indulged, 
 and is therefore the surest criterion of modern rules 
 which can be collected from the light of nature." In 
 other words, our theological postulates lead us to 
 control our passions so as to secure not merely our 
 own individual happiness, but " the greatest sum of 
 human happiness." And the tendency of an action 
 to promote or diminish the general happiness is our 
 only criterion of its morality.^ 
 
 From this it directly follows that, because the free 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., IV. x. 442. 
 
 ' Ibid., IV. ii. 401. Cf. Paley, Moral Philos., VnL I. Book II. ch. iv. 
 p. 65, there quoted, and Tucker, L. of N. (1st ed.), vol. ii. ch. xxix,, 
 especially §§ 5-7 and 12. 
 
328 MALTHUS AND HIS WOKK. [bk. in. 
 
 and indiscriminafce indulgence of benevolence leads 
 to the reverse of general happiness, we ought to 
 practise a discriminating charity which blesses him 
 that gives and him that takes. There is what 
 Bastiat would call a harmony between the two. 
 
 In this case, indeed, nature reinforces utility by 
 making the passion of self-love stronger in men than 
 the passion of benevolence. Every man pursues his 
 own happiness first as his primary object, and it is 
 best that he should do so. It is best that every 
 man should, in the first instance, work out his own 
 salvation, and have a sense of his own responsibility. 
 Not only charity but moral reformation must begin 
 at home. Benevolence apart from wisdom is even 
 more mischievous than mere self-love, which is not 
 to be identified with the " odious vice of selfish- 
 ness," but simply with personal ambition, the 
 person to whom it is personal including as a rule 
 children and parents, and in fact a whole world 
 besides the single atom or " dividual self." ^ If the 
 desire of giving to others had been as ardent as 
 the desire of giving to ourselves, the human race 
 would not have been equal to the task of providing 
 for all its possible members. But because it is im- 
 possible for it to provide for all, there is a tendency 
 in all to provide for themselves first ; and, though 
 we consider that the selfish element in this feeling 
 ought to grow less in a man in proportion as he 
 becomes richer and less embarrassed by his own 
 
 ' Essay, 1th ed., IV. x. 443, 444 ft. 
 
 2 Ibid, IV. viii. 432, 433, compared with p. 492. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 329 
 
 wants, we must recognize tHat its existence has been 
 due to a wise provision for the general happiness/ 
 Malthus does not deny at the same time that bene- 
 volence is always the weaker motive, and needs con- 
 tinually to be strengthened by doctrine, reproof, and 
 correction. It ought always to be thought a " great 
 moral duty" to assist our fellow-creatures in distress.^ 
 With these ethical views, it was easy for Malthus 
 to meet the objection that the general adoption of the 
 moral restraint recommended in his Essay on Fojaula- 
 tion would diminish the numbers of the people too far. 
 He (or his spokesman) answers ^ that we might as well 
 fear to teach benevolence lest we should make men tod 
 careless of their private interests. " There is in such a 
 case a mean point of perfection, which it is our duty 
 to be constantly aiming at ; and the circumstance of 
 this point being surrounded on aE sides with dangers 
 is only according to the analogy of all ethical ex- 
 perience." There is as much danger of making men 
 too generous or too compassionate, as there is of 
 " depopulating the world by making them too much 
 the creatures of reason, and giving prudence too 
 great a mastery over the natural passions and affec- 
 tions. The prevailing error in the game of life is, 
 not that we miss the prizes through excess of timidity, 
 
 1 Essay, Ytli ed., App. pp. 492-3. Cf. 7th ed., p. 280 : " Self-love is 
 the mainspring of the great machine." 2 jjj y^; 3^^ 
 
 ' Edin. Rev., 1810 (Aug.), an article on Ingram's Disquisitions on 
 Population, and [Hazlitt's] Letters in Reply to Malthus. As the relations 
 of Malthus to the Review were close at this time, and as the arguments 
 and the style are remarkahly like our author's, there is at least a strong 
 prohability that he wrote the article, Jeffrey after his custom providing 
 it with a head and tail to disguise the authorship. Cf. Cockbnrn's Life 
 of Jeffrey, Vol. I. 301, 302, cf. 285. 
 
330 MALTHUS ANB HIS WORK. [bk hi. 
 
 but that we overlook the true state of the chances 
 in our eager and sanguine expectations of winning 
 them.'' Of all the objections that were ever made 
 to a moralist who offered to arm men against the 
 passions that are everywhere seducing them into 
 misery, the most flattering, but undoubtedly the 
 most chimerical, is that his reasons are so strong 
 that, if he were allowed to diffuse them, passion 
 would be extinguished altogether, and the activity 
 as well as the enjoyments of man annihilated along 
 with his vices." ^ 
 
 In his view of the passions and of the moral 
 sentiments, Malthus is clearly a man of the eigh- 
 teenth century, and on the whole is more nearly at 
 one with Paley than with any moralist after Tucker. 
 There are points of divergence. He could not, in 
 view of his cosmology, have fully approved Paley 's 
 definition of virtue, " doing good to mankind in 
 obedience to the will of God and for the sake of 
 everlasting happiness." ^ He may have seen how it 
 followed that a solitary man had no duties, that a 
 pagan had no power to do right, that the moral 
 imperative was hypothetical, and that it had no force 
 for any who abjured their future bliss. At least he 
 contents himself with agreeing that " the will of God 
 is plainly general happiness, as we discover both by 
 Scripture and the light of nature ; " * and, " provided 
 we discover it, it matters nothing by what means ; " — 
 
 1 Cf. Wealth of Nations, I. x. 48, 49. 
 
 2 -Bdm. Rev., 1810 (Aug.), p. 475. 
 
 3 Paley, Mor. and Pol. Phil, I. vii. 9 ; cf. Maltlins, Essay, IV. ii. 
 397, &c. Cf. above, p. 39. i Paley, ihid., 1. iv. 14. 
 
BK. III.] MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 331 
 
 there are clear marks of design in the world showing 
 that its Maker willed the happiness of His creatures ; 
 and what He willed they should will. 
 
 In other words, the ethical system of both is a 
 utilitarianism which is narrow and personal in its 
 motive (the private happiness of the individual in 
 another world), but broad and catholic in its end 
 (the general happiness of human beings in the present 
 world). It is as if God induced us to promote other 
 people's happiness now, by telling us that He would 
 in return promote our own by-and-by. There are 
 signs that Malthus took a larger view, and thought 
 rather of the development of the human faculties' 
 than of mere satisfaction of desires, both in this 
 world and in the next ; but he nowhere distinctly 
 breaks with Paley, and his division of passions into 
 self-love (or prudence) and benevolence is taken 
 straight from that theologian.^ 
 
 By the vagueness of their phraseology when they 
 spoke of the general sum of happiness, the older 
 utilitarians avoided some of the difficulties that en- 
 counter their successors. Apart from the hardness 
 of defining happiness and a sum of happiness,^ 
 there is a difficulty in fixing the precise extent of 
 the generality. The tendency of utilitarianism in 
 the hands of Bentham was towards equality and the 
 
 ' See above, p. 37. The passages there cited completely refute Held'a 
 assertion that " Malthus appealed to Utility in the teeth of his belief in 
 the Bible " (Sociale Geschichte Englands, Book I. ch. ii. p. 234). 
 
 2 Mor. and Pol. Phil, vii. 10. 
 
 ^ " Any condition may be denominated ' happy ' in which the amount 
 or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain." — Paley, M. and P. Ph , 
 Lvi. 
 
332 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. hi. 
 
 removal of privilege ; every one to count as one, no 
 one as more than one. But both with him and 
 with the older members it may be doubted whether 
 the doctrine did not tend to benefit the majority 
 at the expense of the minority. 
 
 We find Malthus thinking^ that, had the Poor 
 Laws never existed, there " might have been a few 
 more instances of very severe distress," but " the 
 aggregate mass of happiness among the common 
 people would have been much greater than it is at 
 present." In other words, what he wanted was the 
 " greatest amount of happiness " on the whole, what- 
 ever an " amount " of happiness may mean. Malthus 
 would probably have refused to use the formula of 
 Bentham, " the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number " ; he would have counted the first item, 
 the happiness, out of all proportion more important 
 than the second.^ He had refused something like 
 it at the hands of Paley. "I cannot agree with 
 Archdeacon Paley, who says that the quantity of 
 happiness in any country is best measured by the 
 number of its people. Increasing population is the 
 most certain possible sign of the happmess and 
 prosperity of a state ; but the actual population may 
 be only a sign of the happiness that is past." ^ 
 Malthus would not, for example, have wished to 
 see the highlands of Scotland brought back to their 
 ancient condition, in which they had greater numbers 
 
 1 Essay, Ith ed., III. vi. 305. 
 
 2 See Mr. Sidgwick's Method of Ethics, p. 385 ft. 
 
 2 Quoted from The Crisis, by Empson, Edin. Rev., Jan. 1837, p. 482. 
 
BK.III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PIIILOSOPHY. 333 
 
 than now living in rude comfort, but also greater 
 numbers exposed to precarious indigence/ 
 
 On the otber hand, it is certain (in spite of a 
 common prejudice) that Malthus desired the great 
 numbers as well as the great happiness, and was 
 indeed quite naturally led by his theological views to 
 prefer a little happiness for each of many individuals 
 to a great deal for each of a few. He " desires a 
 great actual population and a state of society in 
 which abject poverty and dependence are compara- 
 tively but little known," ^ — two perfectly compatible 
 requirements, which if realized together would lead 
 to what may be called Malthus' secondary or earthly 
 paradise, which is not above mundane criticism. 
 
 This earthly paradise is, even in our author's 
 opinion, the end most visibly concerned in our 
 schemes of reform. His idea of it as a society where 
 moral restraint is perfect, invites the remark that the 
 chief end of society cannot be the mere removal of 
 evil ; it must be the establishment of some good, the 
 former being at the utmost an essential condition sijie 
 qua non of the latter. Moreover, moral restraint is 
 not the removal of every but only of one evil ; and it 
 kills only one cause of poverty. A complete reform- 
 ation must not only remove all the evils, but must 
 positively amend and transform all the three branches 
 of social economy, — the making, the sharing, and the 
 using of wealth, — not one or even two of them 
 alone. Every Utopian scheme should be tested by 
 
 * Beport of the Crofters Commission, 1 884, p. 9. 
 2 Essay, IV. iii. 407. 
 
334 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. hi. 
 
 the question : Does it reform all three, or only one, 
 or two, of the three ? Neglect of the third might 
 spoil aU. A scheme which affects all three, however, 
 must have something like a Eeligion in it. With 
 these reservations Malthus' picture of the good time 
 coming has much value and interest.' 
 
 Unlike Godwin, he relies on the ordinary motives 
 of men, which he regards as forms of an enlightened 
 self-love. Self-love is the mainspring of the social 
 machine ; ^ but self-love, when the self is so expanded 
 as to include other selves, is not a low motive. 
 C ommercial ambition, encouraged b y poli tical liberty , 
 and unham pered by Poor Laws, leads nHt.nra.11y tn 
 prosperity.^ The happiness of the whole is to result 
 from the happiness of individuals, and to begin first 
 with them. He "sees in all forms of thought and 
 work the life and death struggles of separate human 
 beings." * " No co-operation is required. Every step 
 tells. He who performs his duty faithfully will reap 
 the full fruits of it, whatever may be the number of 
 others who fail. This duty is intelligible to the 
 humblest capacity. It is merely that he is not to 
 bring beings into the world for whom he cannot 
 find the means of support. When once this subject 
 is cleared from the obscurity thrown over it by 
 parochial laws and private benevolence, every man 
 
 1 It would help the social reformer to learn, e. g. from clergymen, 
 guardians of the poor, and police magistrates, what exact proportion of 
 the destitution within their experience has been due, (a) to the fault of 
 the victim, (6) to the fault of his parents, (c) to the fraud or oppression 
 of others, and (d) to the mere accidents of trade. 
 
 2 7th ed., p. 280. ^ III. ii. 434. ' Scenss of Clerical Life, p. 250. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 335 
 
 must feel tlie strongest conviction of such an obliga- 
 tion. If lie cannot support his children, they must 
 starve ; and, if he maixy in the face of a fair 
 probability that he will 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. It is 
 clearly his interest, and wUl tend greatly to promote 
 his happiness, to defer marrying till by industry and 
 economy he is in a capacity to support the children 
 that he may reasonably expect from his marriage ; 
 and, as he cannot in the mean time gratify his 
 passions without violating an express command of 
 God, and running a great risk of injuring himself or 
 some of his fellow-creatures, considerations of his own 
 interest and happiness will dictate to him the strong 
 obligation to a moral conduct while he remains un- 
 married."^ Supposing passion to be thus controlled, 
 we should see a very different scene from the present. 
 " The period of delayed gratification would be passed 
 in saving the earnings which were above the wants of 
 a single man." Savings Banks and Friendly Societies 
 would have their perfect work; and "in a natural state 
 of society such institutions, with the aid of private 
 charity well directed, would probably be all the means 
 necessary to produce the best practicable effects."^ 
 The people's numbers would be constantly within the 
 limits of the food, though constantly following its 
 increase ; the real value of wages would be raised, in 
 
 ' 7th ed., p. 404. 
 
 2 p. 464, 1817. As early as 1803 {Essay, 2nd ed., IV. xi. 589) Malthus 
 had recommended Savings Banks. 
 
336 MALTHUS AND HIS "WORK. [bk. hi. 
 
 the most permanent way possible; "all abject poverty 
 would be removed from society, or would at least be 
 confined to a very few who had fallen into mis- 
 fortunes against which no prudence or foresight could 
 provide." ' It must be brought home to the poor 
 that " they are themselves the cause of their own 
 poverty."^ While Malthus insists against Godwin 
 that it is not institutions and laws but ourselves that 
 are to blame, he still shares, with Godwin, the desire 
 to lessen the number of institutions ; and, as a first 
 reform, would repeal at least one obnoxious law. 
 
 The relation, of Malthus to the French Revolution 
 and its English partisans is indeed not to be expressed 
 in a sentence. It has been said that he cannot 
 he justly described as being a reactionary;^ and, 
 in truth, besides being a critic of Godwin and of 
 Condorcet, he is influenced to some extent by the 
 same ideas that influenced them. The Essay on 
 Population is coloured throughout by a tacit or 
 open reference to the Rights of Man, a watchword 
 borrowed from France by the American Republic, to 
 be restored again at the Revolution. Paine's book on 
 the Bights of Ma?i, in reply to Burke's Beflections on the 
 Fre7ich Bevolution, had been widely read before it was 
 suppressed by the English Government ; and Godwin 
 and Mackintosh* were not silenced. Malthus himself. 
 
 1 7th ed., p. 397. Cf. p. 407, &c. 
 
 2 7tli ed., p. 405. To make the whole picture complete we must add 
 what is said above (ch. i.) on the place of man on the earth, and also (Bk. 
 III. chs. ii. and iii.) on industrial society as it might be. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 298. 
 
 * Mackintosh changed but never recanted. See Macaulay's Essays. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 337 
 
 as a Whig, docs not disparage the rights of man 
 when the y meant political freedom and equality, but 
 onIy~when they in cluded the right to be supported by 
 oi ie's n eighbour^as had been asserted by the Abb6 
 Raynal and some other writers of the Eevolution.^ 
 As the same assertion was practically made by the 
 English Poor Law, which had venerable conserva- 
 tive prejudice on its side, our author's opposition to 
 it was no proof that his politics were reactionary. 
 His economical antecedents and his political views 
 bound him to the French Revolution. In his range 
 of ideas and his habitual categories he could not 
 depart far from the French Economists, who had 
 helped to prepare the way for the Jacobins. Adam 
 Smith himself had felt their influence. Though he 
 had criticized the noble savage and the state of 
 nature,^ he had himself a lingering preference for 
 agriculture over manufacture ; and he himself spoke 
 of a "natural" price, a "natural" progress of opu- 
 lence, a " natural " rate of wages, and " natural 
 liberty." To him as to the French writers, Nature' 
 meant what would grow of itself if men did not 
 interfere, — the difficulty being that the interference 
 seems also to grow of itself, and it is impossible to 
 separate the necessary protection from the mischievous 
 interference. Malthus retains the phraseology with 
 an even nearer approach to personification. Nature 
 points out to us certain courses of conduct.* If we 
 
 ' Essay, 7th ed., IV. vi. 420-1. 2 W. of N., I. i. 
 
 More strictly, wbat grows of itself is natural ; -what makes it grow 
 of itself is Nature. * See e. g. Essay, p. 390. 
 
 Z 
 
338 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. hi. 
 
 break Nature's laws, she will punish us. At Nature's 
 mighty feast there is no cover laid for the super- 
 fluous new-comer. The Poor Laws offend agaiudt 
 Nature ; they interfere with human action in a case 
 where it would spontaneously right itself by ordinary 
 motives of self-interest ; if men knew they could 
 not count on parish relief, they would probably help 
 themselves. Be the argument worth much or little, 
 its strength is not the greater because of this fio-ure : 
 and his use of it shows that Malthus had not risen 
 above the metaphysical superstitions of his age. But 
 the charge sometimes made against him is that he 
 was not merely not before his age but positively 
 behind it ; and this is certainly false. 
 
 In politics he was as little of a reactionary as his 
 opponent, who if " in principle a Eepublican was in 
 practice a Whig." ^ He followed Fox rather than 
 Burke, and lost neither his head nor his temper over 
 the Revolution. "Malthus will prove a peace- 
 monger," wrote Southey in 1808.^ He was a steady 
 friend of Catholic Emancipation. He saw the folly 
 of attributing with Godwin and Paine all evil to the 
 Government, and with Cobbett all evil to taxation 
 and the funds ;^ but he is one with them all in 
 dislike of standing armies, and is more alarmed at 
 the overbearing measures of the Government against 
 sedition than at the alleged sedition itself. One of 
 
 ^ Life of Godwin, ii. 266. 
 
 ^ Southey wished some " Crusader " like Rickman to write economical 
 articles for the Quarterly and keep out Malthus (Life and Letters, vol. 
 iii. p. 188). 
 
 2 Essay, III. vii. 318 : written in 1817. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 339 
 
 the most remarkable chapters in the second edition 
 of the essay^ is on " the effects of the knowledge of 
 the principal cause of poverty on civil liberty." Its 
 main argument is, that, where there is much distress 
 and destitution, there will be much discontent and 
 sedition, and, where there is much of the two last, 
 there will be much coercion and despotism. A know- 
 ledge of the chief cause of poverty by taking away the 
 distress would leave Government at least no excuse 
 for tyranny. " The pressure of distress on the lower 
 classes of people, together with the habit of attributing 
 this distress to their rulers, appears to me to be the 
 rock of defence, the castle, the guardian spirit of 
 despotism. It affords to the tyrant the fatal and 
 unanswerable plea of necessity. It is the reason why 
 every free Government tends constantly to destruction, 
 and that its appointed guardians become daily less 
 jealous of the encroachments of power." ^ The French 
 people had been told that their unhappiness was due 
 to their rulers ; they overthrew their rulers, and, 
 finding their distress not removed, they sacrificed the 
 new rulers ; and this process would have continued 
 indefinitely if despotism had not been found prefer- 
 able to anarchy. In England " the Government of 
 the last twenty years^ has shown no great love of 
 peace or liberty," and the country gentlemen have 
 
 1 2nd ed., IV. vi.; 7tli ed., IV. vi. and vii. He must have remembered, 
 ■when he wrote these -words, the imprisonment of his poor tutor Gilbert 
 Wakefield for a seditious pamphlet (ITQQ-ISOO). See below, Bk. V. 
 
 ' 7th ed., p. 417. 
 
 ^ 7th ed., p. 426 : written in 1817. For the tendency of the FrencJi 
 before the Revolution to look to Government for everything, see e. g. 
 Dyer's Modern Europe, vol. iv. ch. lii. p. 304. 
 
 Z 2 
 
340 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. iii. 
 
 apparently surrendered themselves to Government on 
 condition of being protected from the mob.^ A few- 
 more scarcities like 1800 might cause such convulsions 
 and lead to such sternness of repression that the 
 British constitution would end as Hume foretold,^ 
 in " absolute monarchy, the easiest death, the true 
 euthanasia of the British constitution." The "tend- 
 ency of mobs to produce tyranny " can only be 
 counteracted by the subversion, not of the tyrants, but 
 of the mobs. The result would be a lean and wiry 
 people, weak for offence, but strong for defence ; there 
 would be freedom at home and peace abroad.^ 
 
 Of course the "knowledge of the principal cause 
 of poverty " is not conceived by Malthus as the only 
 lesson worth learning. He shares the growing 
 enthusiasm of all friends of the people for popular 
 education,^ and thinks the Tory arguments against 
 instructing the poorer classes "not only illiberal, 
 but to the last degree feeble, if not really disin- 
 genuous."^ "An instructed and well-informed people 
 would be much less likely to be led away by 
 inflammatory writings, and much better able to 
 detect the false declamation of interested and am- 
 
 1 Vtli ed., p. 418. 
 
 2 Essays Moral and Political, vol. i. p. 49 : ' The Britisli Parlia- 
 ment.' 
 
 3 Malthus, Essay, 2nd ed., p. 502 ; 7th ed., p. 402. Cf. a striking 
 passage in the review of Newenham, Edin. Bev., July 1808, pp. 348-9. 
 
 * E. g. 7th ed., pp. 438-9 and 478. Cf. above, p. 56. Homer's letter 
 to Malthus in. Feb. 1812 {Mem. of Horner, vol. 11. pp. 109-10) shows 
 it was an active sympathy. Malthus agreed to act as a " steward " at 
 one of Lancaster's meetings in London. 
 
 ^ 2nd ed., pp. 556-7 : opponents "may fairly be suspected of a wish 
 to encourage their ignorance as a pretext for tyranny." 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 341 
 
 bitious demagogues than an ignorant people."^ These 
 words were written in 1803, four years before 
 Whitbread made his motion on Schools and Savings 
 Banks, and thirteen years before Brougham's Com- 
 mittee on Education.^ Malthus in fact was in politics 
 an advanced Whig, ahead of his party in ideas of 
 social reform. This may be seen from the following 
 passage, which is only one out of many, that show 
 his large view of his subject. He says that in 
 most countries among the poor there seems to be 
 something like " a standard of wretchedness, a point 
 below which they will not continue to marry." " This 
 standard is different in different countries, and is 
 formed by various concurring circumstances of soil, 
 climate, government, degree of knowledge, civilization, 
 &c." It is raised by liberty, security of property, ^ 
 the diffusion of knowledge, and a taste for the con- ^ 
 veniences and the comforts of life. It is lowered by 
 despotism and ignorance. " In an attempt to better 
 the condition of the labouring classes of society, our 
 object should be to raise this standard as high as 
 possible by cultivating a spirit of independence, a 
 decent pride, and a taste for cleanliness and comfort. 
 The effect of a good Government in increasing the pru- 
 dential habits and personal respectability of the lower 
 classes of society has already been insisted on ; but 
 certainly this effect will always be incomplete without 
 a good system of education, and indeed it may be said 
 that no Government can approach to perfection that 
 
 1 7th ed., p. 439 ; 2nd ed., pp. 555-6. 
 
 2 Miss Martineau, Hist, of Peace, I. vii. 117-18. 
 
312 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. in. 
 
 does not provide for the instruction of the people. 
 The benefits derived from education are among those 
 which may be enjoyed without restriction of numbers; 
 and, as it is in the power of Governments to confer 
 these benefits, it is undoubtedly their duty to do it." ^ 
 Our author's historical sense saved him from Eicar- 
 dian presumptions in favour of laissez faire. Writers 
 go too far, however, in declaring unlimited com- 
 petition to be against the spirit of his work, and 
 asserting that he undervalued the influence of institu- 
 tions, only that he might save his country's institu- 
 tions from hasty reform.^ He knew that society did 
 not grow up on economical principles ; instead of 
 beginning with non-interference, and extending inter- 
 ference by degrees where it was found imperative, it 
 began with interference everywhere, and relaxed the 
 interference by degrees where it was found possible 
 and thought desirable. We have begun with status 
 and paternal government, and have made our way 
 towards contract and laissez faire ; but we have never 
 reached them, because, as men now are, we cannot go 
 on withoiit damage to the common weal. But it 
 seemed to Malthus that experience had shown the 
 need as clearly as the dangers of natural liberty ; — 
 history, for example, had clearly proved that the 
 material relief of the poor, which had never been 
 abandoned by the Government, might best have been 
 left to private action. The extreme view would have 
 been that it was not every one's duty in general, but 
 every one's in particular, a responsibility of which no 
 
 1 Essay, 7th ed., IV. ix. 440, 441. ^ Held, Soc. Gesch., p. 215. 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 343 
 
 one could divest himself. But, though Malthus often 
 sj)eaks as if the burden ought to lie specially on a man's 
 relatives and private friends, he does not share Adam 
 Smith's antipathy to associations, and would probably 
 have recognized division of labour to be as necessary 
 in charity as in industry. Still, even as administered 
 by an organization of men specially fitted for the 
 work by nature and choice, the distribution of 
 material relief never seems to him a case where 
 society can help the poor without in some degree 
 injuring their independence and their strength of 
 character. In the matter of charity he is clearly on 
 the-eide of natural liberty and individualism. 
 / But, in other directions, he has made admissions 
 which seriously modify the unlimited competition of 
 natural liberty. He admits, first of all, that the 
 struggle for existence when it is the struggle for 
 bare life does not lead to progress ; ^ and he admits, 
 therefore, in the second place, that the state should 
 interfere with the " system of natural liberty," posi- 
 lively, to educate the citizens,^ and to grant medical 
 aid to the poor,^ to assist emigration,'' and even to 
 give direct relief in money to men that have a family 
 of more than six children,^ — as well as negatively, to 
 restrict foreign trade when it causes more harm to 
 the public than good to the traders,^ and to restrict 
 the home trade where children's labour is concerned.'^ 
 
 ' See above, pp. 95, 96, &c. 2 See above, p. 340. 
 
 3 Essay, Ith ed., IV. x. 446-7. « Emigr. Comm. (1827), qn. 3310. 
 
 ' IV. xiii. 474. Potatoes are a godsend to such, he says in another 
 place (Edin. Rev., July 1808, p. 344). 
 « See above, Bk. II. ch. i. ^ See above, p. 301. 
 
344 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iii. 
 
 A critic might ask on what principle he justifies 
 these admissions ; or might hint that he makes them 
 on no conscioas principle at all, but in the spirit of 
 a judge, who is administering a law that he knows 
 to be bad, but prefers to make continual exceptions 
 rather than suggest a new law ; — otherwise could 
 any rule stand the test of so many exceptions ? 
 
 It might be replied that Malthus nowhere writes a 
 treatise on political philosophy, and his views must be 
 inferred from scattered hints, but it does not follow 
 that he was not, consciously or unconsciously, pos- 
 sessed of a guiding principle. His several admissions 
 have a certain logical connection. It is more doubtful 
 whether their connecting principle will seem adequate 
 to a modern reader whose questions in political philo- 
 sophy have been stated for him by Comte and the 
 latter-day socialists. 
 
 The first of the admissions is the more significant, 
 as Malthus, while making it, refuses to approve of 
 the means then actually adopted (by the Poor Law) 
 for raising the level of the weakest citizens, and so 
 fitting them for their struggle. If the absence of 
 provision was an evil, the existing provision was 
 hardly a less one. It was bad for society to give 
 help by giving bread and butter, for that was a gift 
 to full-grown men and women, not really weak, but 
 quite ready to be indolent. A gift of education, 
 on the other hand, is given, he considers, to those 
 who are really incapable of helping themselves and 
 really ignorant of their powers.'' It makes the weak 
 
 E. g. Essay, IV. ix. 433. 
 
BK. in.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 3i5 
 
 strong, and tends to remove indolence, not create 
 it.^ In the same way Factory Acts assist the weak 
 and not the indolent, while the (rare) interference 
 with free trade, the granting of medical relief, the 
 special aid in case of large families, and the aid to 
 Irish peasants, are all of them special remedies in 
 cases where the sufferers could not be expected to 
 foresee and provide against the distress, and were 
 therefore sufferers from circumstances rather than from 
 indolence. Malthus continually takes the view that 
 security is a greater blessing than wealth itself, and 
 insecurity a worse evil than poverty. The circum- 
 stances that cause insecurity were therefore in his view 
 the most distressing ; they baffled individual effort. 
 
 His critics might have answered : "In all the cases 
 mentioned by you as justifying interference, a per- 
 fectly enlightened self-interest would have provided 
 against the mishap ; and relief of any kind would be 
 in the end equivalent to relief in bread and butter, 
 for, as far as it goes, it allows the more to be left over 
 either to the man or his parents for bread and butter, 
 and thereby it is a relief that fosters indolence." He 
 could rejoin, however, that (even if we grant the 
 practical possibility of such a perfect enlightenment) 
 direct relief appeals far more to indolence than in- 
 direct,^ and the good of the indirect can often, the 
 
 1 In Germany poor scliolars from the country are often, when attend- 
 ing the University, billeted for bread and butter on the well-to-do 
 citizens ; and learning proves on the whole so inconsistent with laziness, 
 that the practice does not make them unwilling to earn their own livinc 
 afterwards. 
 
 ' A protective duty is indirect relief of the protected industry, but as 
 a rule the protected are secured against indolence by their own domestic 
 
346 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. hi. 
 
 good of the direct very seldom, outweigh the evil. He 
 would have added that even the direct relief in bread 
 and butter was not opposed by him on any theory, 
 but on the ground of its known tendency to evil, — 
 and, if it had been possible from the nature of men 
 and things to keep the promises of the Poor Law, 
 he would have given his voice for it. He was com- 
 mitted to free trade itself only because and only so 
 far as experience was in its favour. His only axiom 
 in political philosophy was that the end of politics 
 is the greatest happiness of the great body of the 
 people ; and his only rule for securing that end was 
 the observation of what, as a matter of experience, 
 actually did secure it. 
 
 On the other hand, nothing is clearer from his own 
 writings than that the language of experience owes 
 much of its meaning to its interpreter ; and we ask 
 " What were his principles of interpretation ? " 
 
 The answer is, that, in spite of the affinity between 
 utilitarianism in morals and individualismin—pelittcs, 
 he tried to retain the first without the second. He 
 understood moral goodness to consist in the tendency 
 of actions to produce a balance of pleasures over 
 pains ; but his utility when examined turned out, as 
 we have seen, to be much nearer the notion of self- 
 development than simply a sum of pleasures irre- 
 spective of their quality. At this point the strong 
 grasp which family life held on his fancy lifted him 
 above the notion that the chief end could be the. 
 
 competition ; and the fault of protection lies elsewhere than in en- 
 couragement of indolence. 
 
BK. in.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 347 
 
 individual happiness of isolated units, and showed 
 him that the real unit was a group. The state to 
 Malthus, as to Aristotle, is an aggregate of families, 
 though he recognizes very clearly that, besides the 
 connection of householder with householder by the 
 common subjection to the laws, there is the common 
 bond of nationality, a community of feeling, a partner- 
 ship of past traditions, present privileges, and future 
 liopes.^ It is on e of the plainest facts of experience 
 that men are often led by their attachment to their 
 country and countrymen to run counter to their 
 worldly interests.^ ^ ' 
 
 The nation is a little world within the great world, 
 and on the analogy of the great world it is the scene 
 where difficulties generate talents and bring out the 
 character.^ From this point of view it is not far 
 from the truth to parody a well-known description 
 of modern Judaism, and describe the political philo- 
 sophy of Malthus as Utilitarianism plus a Nation- 
 ality. The individualism of Malthus is limited by 
 the particular institutions and particular interests of 
 the English nation.* In his intellectual history a 
 strong emphasis on the state preceded the emphasis on 
 the individual ; and even in his mature view the state 
 is limited in its interference with the citizens only 
 by its powers of doing good to them. But he holds 
 with Adam Smith and the other economists that its 
 powers of doing good to them are very much 
 
 ■ ' R^nan, Qu'est ce qu'mie Nation ? 
 2 Of. above, p. 225. 3 cf. p. 36. 
 
 * The reaction against Ronsseau and Godwin may partly account for 
 the absence of Cosmopolitanism. 
 
348 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. hi. 
 
 narrower tliaii on the old conception of the state, as 
 a kind of family. The duties of a state to the 
 citizens are narrower than those of a father to his 
 children, because what the father can and must do 
 for his children the state cannot do for its citizens 
 with equal safety to their independence. It remains, 
 however, true that the relation of state to citizen is 
 not the commercial relation of one contracting party 
 with another ; it is a relation prior to the commercial, 
 and gives to all contracts whatever validity they 
 have. 
 
 If Malthus himself had been asked to reconcile 
 his departure from the general principle of natural 
 liberty with his general adherence to it, he would 
 have made some such answer as the following : 
 "From the first, when I wrote in 1798, it appeared 
 to me that the action of Government could neither 
 have so uniformly bad an effect as Godwin supposed, 
 nor so uniformly good as Pitt's Bill implied. If, as 
 Godwin desires, there were no Government, but only 
 a chastened laissez faire, unsophisticated human 
 nature would be quite enough to bring back misery 
 and sin.^ But the chastening of the laissez faire 
 could not in my opinion take place without the 
 Government, for it is one of the most proper functions 
 of Government, not adequately dischargeable by in- 
 dividuals, to provide for the people the education 
 that is supposed to chasten. Even when that pro- 
 vision has been made, the education will not do its 
 perfect work if it has not included the particular 
 
 ' See above, ch. i. 
 
BK. ni.] MOEAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 349 
 
 doctrines which it has fallen to me more than any 
 man to bring home to the public mind. With such 
 an education there will be hope for better things. 
 Things as they are and the struggle for existence as 
 it now is among the helpless classes can please me 
 as little as Godwin. It is a struggle which leads to 
 no progress. But, unlike G-odwin, I do not regard 
 Government as necessarily creating the distress ; and 
 I certainly regard it as the necessary engine for 
 removing the distress by education in the end, and 
 toning down its effects by restrictions for the pre- 
 set. If only as an_^ngine of education, paternal 
 government must be a permanent factor of society. 
 Where a public necessity has been well supplied by 
 individual action, I should leave it in the hands of 
 individuals ; but not otherwise. I did n ot object to 
 the Poor Law on the broad ground that it took the 
 place of private action, but because its own action 
 was mischievous. I should try every case on its 
 merits, and be guided to interfere or not interfere 
 by the known results of the existing policies," 
 
 In so speaking, Mai thus would no doubt have 
 justified his own consistency. But the modern reader 
 might justly reply to Malthus, that we have often to 
 judge tendencies as well as results, and experience 
 becomes then an uncertain guide ; he might complain 
 that Malthus himself is sometimes led to judge both 
 of them by a half-acknowledged supplementary prin- 
 ciple of the balance of classes and safety of the 
 mean, which can be applied in a way very unfavour- 
 able to popular rights. He might urge that the 
 
350 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. hi. 
 
 apparent success of an institution might have been 
 due to a concurrent cause that cancelled its defects, 
 and we cannot always pronounce on its merits from 
 experience of it. How can experience help us unless 
 we have the key to its interpretation ? Without 
 such a key nothing would be so false as facts except 
 figures. In human politics mere survival is seldom 
 the test of fitness. 
 
 If we compare the state to an organism and convert 
 our simile into a rule of judgment, we may say that, 
 when each part has its function and contributes to 
 the efficiency of the whole, the body politic is well ; 
 when any part does not, there is need of the doctor 
 or surgeon. This figure seems to give us a key for 
 the interpretation of social experience ; but unhappily 
 the figure itself needs an interpreter.' If we inter- 
 pret oiganism as the ideal union of members in one 
 body, it ceases to be a simile, for the body politic is 
 not merely like this union, — it is the best example of 
 it. For in the body politic the general life is the 
 source of all individual energy, and at the same time 
 the individual members are continually paying back 
 the debt, by an active sympathy and conscious union 
 with the commonwealth, to which the commonwealth 
 in its turn owes all its collective energy ; the citizen 
 is nothing without his state, or the state without its 
 citizens. This is to make the figure useful, by making 
 it change places with the thing prefigured. So long 
 
 1 Some one has said, " Was man nicht definiren kann, zieht man als 
 Organismus an ; " and we had been told, long before, that a simile is 
 either " idem per idem " or " idem per aliud," either of them a logical 
 fallacy. 
 
BK.III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 351 
 
 as the same idea is grasped in both, their relation in 
 rhetoric need not affect us. 
 
 Such an idea of the state would lead us beyond the 
 admissions of Malthus to some such demands as the 
 following : — For his ever}'- possession, the citizen must 
 be able to show some service rendered to his country- 
 men, and must be taught and expected to hold his 
 property in trust for the common good, that so the 
 body politic may have no useless member. In pro- 
 portion as private possession involves monopoly, 
 its use should be jealously restricted in the public 
 interest, which in the extreme cases would lead to 
 the withdrawing of it, with as little friction as might 
 be, from the private owner to the state. Educa- 
 tion acts, sanitary laws, and factory acts should be 
 strictly and universally enforced, not for the sake 
 of the parents, guardians, and employers, or even 
 altoo-ether for the sake of the sufferers themselves, 
 but for the sake of the community, in order that in 
 the struggle for existence every competitor should 
 start fair as an efficient citizen, with full possession of 
 his powers of mind and body. For the rest, security 
 and order should be the watchword of the state, free 
 course being allowed to commercial and industrial 
 enterprise, scientific inquiry, and speculative dis- 
 cussion, in order that progress may be made in the 
 surest of all ways, by the moral and intellectual 
 development of the individual citizens, which will 
 soon express itself in their institutions. With these 
 postulates, half from the old economists and half 
 from the new reformer.^, on the way to be realized. 
 
352 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. m. 
 
 and witli industrial co-operation in prospect, we need 
 not despair of the future of man on our part of 
 tlie earth. 
 
 Tried by such a standard Malthus certainly fails 
 to give us a perfect political philosophy, and seems 
 little farther advanced than his master Adam Smith, 
 who taught that the state was profitable only for 
 defence, for justice, and for such public works as 
 could not be so well done by individuals. With all 
 his regard for the nation, Malthus looks at social 
 problems too much from the individual's point of 
 view. He speaks much, for example, of the good 
 olFect, on the individual man, of the domestic ideal, 
 and of the ideals of personal prosperity in the world, 
 both built on security of property and liberty of 
 action. He speaks little of the duty of the citizen 
 to the community, and of the return he owes it for 
 his security and liberty. The citizen in his picture of 
 him seems to have nothing but duties to his family 
 and nothing but claims on the state. The citizen is 
 lost in the householder. He is content to be let 
 alone, and does not positively and actively recognize 
 his identity with the legislative power, and his obliga- 
 tion to repay service wdth service. Later political 
 philosophy would press the counter-claims of the com- 
 munity on the citizen. It would demand, for example, 
 that he shall neither leave his lands waste nor preserve 
 his game, if either practice is contrary to the public 
 good. It would keep in mind that the holders of 
 large fortunes owe more to the public for protection 
 of them than the holders of small, and should bear 
 
BK. III.] MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 353 
 
 a heavier burden of taxes. It would not leave men 
 to do as tbey willed with their own.^ 
 
 In regard to the lowest classes that are hardly to 
 be called citizens, for they are struggling in hopeless 
 weakness for mere bread, Malthus never seems to 
 see that his own acknowledgment of their power- 
 lessness to rise must justify much more than the 
 mere establishment of compulsory education for their 
 children or even mechanics' institutes for themselves. 
 Ifc would justify the adoption of such measures as will 
 make their surroundings likely to give and preserve to 
 them a higher standard of living. It would sanction 
 measures of " local option " to keep away from them 
 the infection of dangerous moral diseases ; and it 
 would enforce the obligation on the owners of houses 
 to make them habitable and healthy. It would give 
 town and country tenants secure tenure by law, 
 where an insecure tenure of custom had induced 
 them to spend labour on their holdings. 
 
 The older economists had the just idea that security 
 in possession was the first condition of industrial 
 progress ; but they did not see that this very 
 principle would justify very large restrictions on 
 the use of property, and that the restrictions would 
 increase in largeness as the property approached the 
 nature of a monopoly ; they did not see that for the 
 public interest it may be as necessary to prohibit 
 deer forests as to pull down unsanitary dwellings or 
 enforce vaccination. 
 
 _ , Bk. IV. ch. X. p. 445. " Every man has a right to do what 
 he will with his own." But the question is :— What is his own ? 
 
 A A 
 
354 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. hi. 
 
 The reason was that for a long time in England it 
 was a hard enough task for reformers to secure the 
 negative freedom of being let alone, the freedom of 
 trade and of the press and of local government, with 
 the abolition of privileges. Cobden's attempt to 
 resolve Politics into Economics was well-timed and 
 fruitful in its generation ; and the Manchester school 
 has still a part to play in our own time. But the 
 special work of political reform in the future is to 
 achieve the positive freedom, "the maximum of 
 power, for all members of human society alike, to 
 make the best of themselves."-' Of this programme 
 neither Malthus nor any writer of his day had any 
 clear conception. He himself had no claim to a 
 seer's vision ; and the horizon of his opponents was 
 never wider than his own. 
 
 It is time to go back to the Essay and confront 
 its opponents. We have now a sufficient knowledge 
 of the economics and philosophy of Malthus to be 
 able to sympathize with him under misconception, or 
 at least to understand what appearance an objection 
 would wear to his mind. Not that we have a 
 complete picture of the man, or even a view of his 
 entire mental furniture, which is more than this curta 
 supellex ; but we see enough to judge the cause of the 
 Essay on its merits, not prejudiced, favourably or 
 unfavourably, by the life and character of the author. 
 
 1 Professor T. H. Green, Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Con- 
 tract, Oxford, 1881. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 THE CKITICS. 
 
 Three Questions for the Critics — Parr and Thoughts on Parr — Pulpit 
 Philosophy— Godwin's Blessing in 1801— The Cursing in 1820— 
 Theology— The Command to Noah — The Ratios- Population 
 "fitful" — S. T. Coleridge among the Economists — James Grahame 
 — Empson's Classification of Critics — Weyland and Arthur Young 
 — " Cannot, therefore ought not " — Spence's Plan and Owen's — 
 Progress and Poverty — BasKwpital — Herbert Spencer — Classification 
 of Critics — Ethics of the Hearth and of the World — End and Means 
 of Malthus. 
 
 The critics of Malthus had three questions before 
 them : Do the conclusions of Malthus follow from 
 his premises ? Does he himself draw them ? Are 
 they true as a matter of fact ? The answers will 
 be best given by a short survey of the principal 
 critics with whom Malthus contended in his lifetime, 
 and those who have most formidably contended with 
 his followers since his death. 
 
 There is a sense in which the Essay on Population 
 begins and ends with Godwin, for it begins and ends 
 with the question of human perfectibility. The rela- 
 tions of Malthus and Godwin are as it were the tale 
 on which the play is founded. 
 
 Godwin's Political Justice was written in 1793, his 
 
 A A 2, 
 
356 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 Enquirer in 1797; and Malthus' JEssay in 1798. 
 Others kept the ball a-roUing. On the Easter Tuesday 
 of 1800 Dr. Samuel Parr preached an anniversary 
 sermon in Christ's Hospital before the Corporation of 
 London. He chose his text from Galatians vi. 10 : 
 "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good 
 unto all men, especially unto them who are of the 
 household of faith." Like Butler's sermons in the 
 Eolls Chapel, the discourse was really a treatise on 
 moral philosophy. It began by contrasting the selfish 
 and the benevolent system of ethics, pronouncing 
 both of them faulty. If the one has done less harm, 
 the other has done less good than might have been 
 expected, for it has been connected with the new 
 doctrine of universal philanthropy. The new doctrine 
 is false because local neighbourhood of all men is 
 impossible, vi terminorum, and a widening out of the 
 feelings that usually prevail between local neighbours 
 would only make those feelings thin and watery.^ 
 Man's obligations cannot be stretched beyond his 
 powers ; he has no powers, and therefore no obligation 
 to do good unto all men.^ Love of the universe, in 
 the intense sense of the word love, can only belong 
 to the omnipotent Being who has the care of the 
 universe upon Him. We, being men, must only see 
 to it that our benevolence is of His quality, extending, 
 like His, to the unthankful and to the eviJ. But 
 a universal philanthropist exaggerates and pampers 
 this one particular form of the duty of benevolence 
 
 ^ TTiv (ptKiav dvayKoiov iliipt] ylvtaGai. Ar. Pol., II. ii. 
 " See above, p. 310. 
 
SK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 357 
 
 at the expense of the rest, and forgets duties that lie 
 near to him, towards kindred and friends and neigh- 
 bours ; he neglects common duties of life in favour of 
 the uncommou and fanciful. Very different is " the 
 calm desire of general happiness," which draws those 
 that are near still nearer, and makes us value and 
 assist the benevolent institutions, like Christ's Hos- 
 pital, which are at our own doors. 
 
 The hearers of the sermon could have no doubt at 
 whom it was aimed ; and the footnotes of the pub- 
 lished version of it contained large quotations from 
 the Easay on Population and large direct commenda- 
 tions of its author, which made the sermon's oblique 
 censure of Godwin the more stinging. 
 
 Pulpit philosophizing was not rare in those times ; 
 it had been practised since Butler's days by Dr. Ezra 
 Styles* in 1761 ; and Dr. Eichard Price had used a 
 dissenter's pulpit to utter his enthusiastic views on 
 the future improvement of mankind (1787) and the 
 love of our country (1789).^ Burke had denounced 
 him for this in his Beflections ;^ but, if Parr could 
 do the same thing on the other side a few years 
 afterwards, it cannot have been any great singularity. 
 Parr's sermon was the subject of Sydney Smith's 
 first paper in the Edinburgh Heview (Oct. 1802); 
 but its economical interest is due to its effect on 
 Godwin. Godwin had been assailed shortly before by 
 Sir James Mackintosh, a former friend and political 
 
 1 Bismwrse on the Christian Union. See Essay on PopvlaUon, 7th 
 ed., p. 254 n.; Price, Observations, p. 206 n. 
 
 2 Prom Matth. vi. 10, and Psal. cxxii. 2 seq. 
 
 ' See esp. pp. 12—18, and 20 (4th ed., 1790). 
 
358 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 ally, in his Discourse on the Law of Nature and 
 Nations, delivered in Lincoln's Inn Hall, 1799; but 
 Dr. Parr's censures were more severe. Parr may 
 have been alienated "by an offensive description in 
 the Enquirer^ of the clergy, as characterized by " a 
 perennial stationariness of understanding, abortive 
 learning, artificial manners, infantine prejudices, and 
 arrogant infallibility." As all the other professions 
 were equally well abused, the censure need not have 
 been taken to heart. The letter of Malthus to 
 Godwin, written after the publication of the Enquirer, 
 is full of courtesy. At that time, and indeed for a 
 few years afterwards, there was nothing but good-will 
 between the two writers. When Godwin in 1801 
 made his letters to his three critics into a book,^ under 
 the title, ThougJds on Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon, with 
 remarks on Mackintosh and the writer of the Essay on 
 Population, he was bitter only against the two former. 
 He was surprised at the "overbearing scornfulness " 
 of Mackintosh, and at the " venom " of Dr. Parr. 
 If he had changed some of his views it was not in 
 deference to their criticism. Of the Essai/ on Popu- 
 lation, " and the spirit in which it is written," he " can 
 never speak but with unfeigned respect ; " contending 
 only that it is meant to attack his conclusions and 
 not his premises.^ Parr had hailed it as a complete 
 demonstration that Godwin's scheme of equality 
 
 1 Pt. II. Essay V. pp. 228 seq. Life, ii. 292. Cf. ii. 64. 
 
 2 Life, ii. 64. 
 
 ^ Thoughts, p. 10 and n. Cf. pp. 43, 45. In Progress and Pomrty 
 (p. 93, ed. 1881) we are told that Godwin " until his old age disdained 
 a reply " to Malthus. 
 
BK.IV.] THE CRITICS. 359 
 
 would not work, and many better men had felt their 
 mouths shut, and had begged Godwin to speak for 
 them. Godwin consents in these Thoughts. If he 
 was sincere in saying, " I confess I could not see 
 that the essay had any very practical bearing on my 
 own hopes" (p. 55), he must have been in the state 
 which the Enquirer ascribes to the clergyman : " He 
 lives in the midst of evidence and is insensible to it. 
 He is in daily contemplation of contradictions and 
 finds them consistent. He listens to arguments that 
 would impress conviction upon every impartial hearer 
 and is astonished at their futility. He never dares 
 trust himself to one unprejudiced contemplation. He 
 starts with impatience and terror from its possible 
 result." Malthus, on the other hand, though in 
 orders, has behaved very unlike the clergyman of the 
 Enquirer, for we are told by Godwin himself, " he has 
 neither laboured to excite hatred nor contempt against 
 me and my tenets ; he has argued the questions 
 between us just as if they had never been made a 
 theme for political party and the intrigues of faction ; 
 he has argued just as if he had no end in view but 
 the investigation of evidence and the development 
 of truth" (p. 55 ft.). Moreover, he has "made as 
 unquestionable an addition to the theory of political 
 economy as any writer for a century past. The 
 grand propositions and outlines of his work will, I 
 believe, be found not less conclusive and certain than 
 they are new. For myself, I cannot refuse to take 
 some pride in so far as by my writings I gave the 
 occasion and furnished an incentive to the producing 
 
330 MALTHUS AND HIS WOKK. [bk. iv. 
 
 SO valuable a treatise" (p. 56). Surely concession 
 could no further go. Godwin even admits the arith- 
 metical and geometrical ratios.^ His criticisms are 
 all on the checks, which (be it remembered) were 
 only the checks of the first essay, vice, misery, and 
 the fear of them. Are Governments henceforward to 
 prevent the evils of an excessive population by 
 encouraging tbese unsightly counter-agents ? and is 
 every scheme for the amelioration of man's lot fore- 
 doomed ? No, the " author of the essay " has too 
 small an idea of the resources of the human mind ; 
 it is no conclusive argument against a scheme to say 
 that when it is realized it will probably not last.^ 
 He does not attach sufficient weight to the fact that 
 in England, for example, " prudence and pride " 
 prevent early marriages, and from late ones come 
 smaller families. In a state of universal improvement 
 there would be not less but more of these feelings, 
 and a similar effect would follow in a greater degree.' 
 That there was force in this reasoning appears from 
 the way in which Malthus received it when stated 
 to him by letter a few months after the publication 
 of the essay. He replied that the "prudence" in 
 question, if existing in Godwin's new society, would 
 mean an eye to the main chance ; it would mean that 
 one man is strengthening his position and getting to 
 himself more than the minimum of necessaries ; if 
 you prevent this, what becomes of your freedom ? if 
 you do not, what becomes of your equality and 
 wealth 1 Secondly, the effect of the prudence would 
 
 1 Tlwughis, p. 61. ^ jj^^,^ p 67. 3 Ibid., pp. 72-3. 
 
BK. IV.] 
 
 THE CRITICS. 361 
 
 be that the population would not be the greatest 
 possible, but considerably within the limits of the 
 food ; and yet you object to present society, that its 
 arrangements prevent the " greatest practicable popu- 
 lation." In all our political theories, if we would 
 trace to particular institutions the evil that is really 
 due to them, we must deduct the evil that is known 
 to be due to other causes. " The very admission of 
 the necessity of prudence to prevent the misery from 
 an overcharged population, removes the blame from 
 public institutions to the conduct of individuals. 
 And certain it is, that almost under the worst form 
 of government, where there was any tolerable freedom 
 of competition, the race of labourers, by not marrying, 
 and consequently decreasing their numbers, might 
 immediately better their condition, and under the 
 very best form of government, by marrying and 
 greatly increasing their numbers they would immedi- 
 ately make their condition worse." ^ 
 
 This was no doubt a point against Godwin, but it 
 was also a point against Malthus himself. The essay 
 in its first form had not made sufficient allowance for 
 " prudence " ; and the introduction of moral restraint 
 in the second edition might very plausibly have been 
 ascribed by Godwin's friends to Godwin himself, in 
 spite of the elaborate reply to the Tlioughts in a 
 chapter afterwards dropped.^ Godwin said to him 
 afterwards that he had no right to introduce a new 
 element into his solution' of the problem, and pretend 
 
 ' Life of Godwin, i. 324. 
 
 2 See above, p. 208 n. In tlie 5th edition lie turns his back on Godwin 
 and addresses Owen. 
 
362 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 that it was the same solution as before ;Mf he altered 
 his premises he ought to alter his conclusion. To 
 which Malthus might have answered, that, though 
 his conclusion is altered, it retains its value as an 
 argument against Godwin. At first the tendency of 
 numbers to increase up to the food was described as 
 an obstacle fatal to progress ; now it is indeed an 
 obstacle which must be faced and overcome, but it is 
 fatal not to progress, but only to equality. Godwin 
 himself had at first considered it an entirely imaginary 
 obstacle which might be ignored for the present by 
 reformers ; and his very doctrine of prudence amounts 
 to an admission that his view of it had changed. 
 
 Godwin himself was not conscious of his change of 
 front ; as the seventh of thirteen children he may 
 have thought the matter personal ; and whatever 
 concessions he had made in 1801 he withdrew in 
 1820. In that year, with David Booth, the patient 
 author of the English Analytical Dictionary/, to arrange 
 his statistics and vouch for his calculations, he pub- 
 lished an elaborate reply to the Essay on Population. 
 The politicians, the political economists, the bulk 
 of the press, and the public had accepted the Mal- 
 thusian doctrines, though the conversion of the public 
 was no deeper than it was on Free Trade, and the 
 statesmen with a few exceptions were not sorry to 
 make capital out of the " odiousness " of the doctrines 
 whenever the " acknowledged truth " of them would 
 
 1 So Coleridge (MS. note to p. vii of his qnarto copy of the essay) : 
 "And of course you wholly confute your former pamphlet, and might 
 have spared yourself the trouble of making up the present quarto." 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. ^ 
 
 not serve their turn. Still it seemed true that time 
 had declared for Malthus, and Godwin had fallen out 
 of notice. Sydney Smith's assertion,^ " Malthus took 
 the trouble of refuting him, and we hear no more of 
 Mr. Godwin," is not very far from the truth. Malthus 
 had survived his refutation, and Godwin his reputa- 
 tion. Pitt, Paley, and Copleston were with Malthus ; 
 he had gained over Hallam among historians, James 
 Mill, Senior, and Ricardo among economists, J3roug- 
 ham, Mackintosh, and even Whitbread among poli- 
 ticians. Southey, Hazlitt, and Cobbett were not a 
 suflBlcient make-weight. Hazlitt in his Reply to the 
 Etssay on Population (in letters of which some appeared 
 in Cobbett's Pol. Register, 1807) acknowledges the 
 popularity, though he predicts its decay.^ It seems 
 clear that in educated circles at least the view of 
 Malthus was as early as 1820 what it was in 1829, 
 "the popular view,"^ which is quite compatible, 
 as Darwin long experienced, w^ith great unpopularity 
 in particular quarters. No better evidence could be 
 given of this popularity than the unwilling testimony 
 given by Godwin himself in his new book.* At the 
 end of 1819 Brougham had referred in the House of 
 Commons to the principle of Malthus as " one of the 
 soundest principles of political economy," and said it 
 was melancholy to observe how the press scouted it 
 and abused its defenders.^ The press, however, was 
 
 ^ ^din. Rev., 1802, on Dr. Reniiers Discourses, Syd. Sm., WorTcs, i. p. 8. 
 ^ p. 18. Compare De Quincey's 'answer to Hazlitt in London 
 Magazine, 1823 (vol. viii. pp. 349, 459, 569, 586). 
 ^ Senior, Lect. on Pop., p. 35. * Population, I. iv. p. 27 (1820). 
 
 " Cf. also speecli on 9th April, 1816. Hansard, sub data, p. 1109. 
 
364 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK [bk. iv. 
 
 divided. The Edinburgh Review from the first had 
 sided with Malthus. The Quarterly had begun by 
 strong hostility (Dec. 1812, pp. 320 seq^); had softened 
 its tone as time went on (Dec. 1813, pp. 157 seq^., 
 and Oct. 1814, pp. 154-5); had spoken with hesitation 
 and doubtfulness (Oct. 1816, pp. 50 seq}j ; and had 
 at last completely surrendered (July 1817, pp. 369 
 seq}j, confessing it to be "much easier to disbelieve 
 Mr. Malthus than to refute him" (p. 396), thereafter 
 utilizing his doctrine for the support of things as 
 they are, only regretting that Malthus himself would 
 not do the same a little more stoutly (pp. 402-3). 
 Finally, as we have seen, Malthus, after having con- 
 tributed to the Edinburgh, became a contributor to the 
 Quarterly. The change of public opinion, illustrated 
 by the conversion of the Quarterly, gave greater 
 bitterness to the attacks of the enemies that remained 
 unconverted. But it gave them no new arguments. 
 
 In Godwin's Enquiry concerning Population (when 
 we neglect mere epigrams such as " a man is surer 
 that he has ancestors than that he will have pos- 
 terity ") there are substantially four arguments : — 
 Malthus has changed his position ; the world is 
 not peopled ; the ratios are not as he represents ; 
 and experience is against him. We have already dis- 
 cussed the first. The use of the second implies a 
 misunderstanding of the Malthusian position, for it 
 ignores distinction between actual and possible sup- 
 plies of food, and does not allow that a man is 
 "confined" by four walls unless he touches them.' 
 
 1 See above, p. 75. Cf. also above, pp. 142 seg., on Emigration. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 365 
 
 Godwin does not mend the argument by comparing 
 ib to the objection brought against Christianity — " the 
 world is not yet Christianized"; still less by appealing 
 to Christianity itself, and taunting Malthus with the 
 texts, " Increase and multiply," " Happy is the man 
 that hath his quiver full of them," " made a little 
 lower than the angels," " forty sons and thirty grand- 
 sons, which rode on threescore and ten ass colts," 
 " In the last days some shall depart from the faith, 
 forbidding to marry." ^ Malthus had been attacked 
 in 1807 by a Puritan or Covenanting pamphlet en- 
 titled, ' A summons of Wakening, or the evil tendency 
 and danger of Speculative Philosophy, exemplified 
 in Mr. [Sir John] Leslie's Enq^uiry into the Nature of 
 Heat, and Mr. Malthus' Essay on Population, and in 
 that speculative system of common law which is at 
 present administered in these kingdoms.'^ The body 
 of this book had been even more remarkable than its 
 title, for it had proved Malthus guilty not merely 
 of heterodoxy, but of atheism. " It is evident to 
 any one who attentively reads the Essay on Population 
 that its author does not believe in the existence of 
 God, but substitutes for Him sometimes the principle 
 of Population, sometimes that of Necessity." Sadler 
 many years later declared in the same spirit that "the 
 insults the theory of Malthus levels at God, and the 
 injuries it meditates inflicting upon man, will be 
 endured by neither."' 
 
 Once for all, let Parson Malthus explain his con- 
 
 1 Godwin, To-pn., I. xiii. 106. Cf. I. iv. 22, II. ii. 142, VI. vi. 585. 
 
 2 Hawick, 1807, especially p. 84. ^ Sadler, Fopn., I. i. 15 (1830). 
 
366 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 sistency with the religious text-book of his Church. 
 Prior to the injunction given to men to increase 
 and multiply, come, says Malthus, all the moral and 
 physical laws without which they cannot increase or 
 multiply. Suppose the command had been to increase 
 and multiply not men but vegetables ; this could not 
 mean, " Sow the seed broadcast, in the air, over the 
 sea, on stony ground," but, " Take all the means 
 made necessary, by pre-existing laws, to secure the 
 best growth of vegetables." That man would best 
 obey the command, who should prepare the soil, and 
 provide for the watering and tilling of it, where those 
 things were wanting before. So he will best obey the 
 command to increase and multiply Men, who prepares 
 food for men where there was none before, and not he 
 who brings them recklessly into the world without 
 any such provision. " I believe it is the intention of 
 the Creator that the earth should be replenished, but 
 certainly with a healthy, virtuous, and happy popu- 
 lation, not an unhealthy, vicious, and miserable one. 
 And, if, in endeavouring to obey the command to 
 increase and multiply, we people it only with beings 
 of the latter description and suffer accordingly, we 
 have no right to impeach the justice of the command, 
 but our irrational mode of executing it." He might 
 have added, that to give any other interpretation of 
 the passage in Genesis is to forget the circumstances 
 in which the words were spoken. The Deluge had 
 just swept away all the earth's inhabitants except one 
 family, expressly on the score of wickedness ; and, if 
 
 1 Append, to 3rd ed., 1806; 7th ed., p. 485; cf. pp. 395, 446, and al. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CEITICS. 367 
 
 a wicked replenishing were not desirable, an un- 
 happy or a poor one would be at the best only one 
 degree less so. Regarding the question then purely 
 from the outside, we cannot find anything in the writ- 
 ings of Parson Malthus inconsistent with his ecclesias- 
 tical orthodoxy ; and we can hardly believe that free- 
 thinking Godwin was very serious in the objection. 
 
 Malthus himself replies to it as a charge commonly 
 brought against him by others, with no reference to 
 Godwin in particular. For the most part he ignores 
 Godwin's book on Population, as mere rhetoric and 
 scurrility.-^ Godwin, however, had given more than 
 two years of hard labour to the writing of it ; ^ and his 
 biographer regards it as the last work of his best days. 
 He employed his son William and his friend Henry 
 Blanch Rosser to help him, in addition to Booth. 
 His whole mind was occupied with Booth's calcula- 
 tions and his own deductions from them. He himself 
 " could not pursue a calculation for an hour without 
 being sick to the lowest ebb."^ If Booth lagged 
 behind him he was miserable. He rose in early 
 morning to -note down an idea and was ill for the rest 
 of the day after it. He is satisfied, however, with the 
 result of his labours. He thinks his chapter on the 
 Geometrical Eatio will delight his friends and astonish 
 his foes. In any case his comfort is that "truth" 
 will prevail, and, whether through him or another, 
 " the system of Malthus can never rise again, and 
 the world is delivered from this accursed apology in 
 
 1 See Appendix to ed. 1825, 7tli ed., p. 527. ^ x^jg^ y 271. 
 
 3 I. c. p. 259. 
 
368 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 favour of vice and misery and hard-beartedness and 
 oppression," ' and the world will see that there is " no 
 need of any remedies," for the numbers of mankind 
 never did and never can increase in the ways described 
 by Malthus.^ A few of his younger friends^ believed 
 him successful ; and the book was mentioned in the 
 House of Commons as a conclusive refutation of 
 Malthus, especially in regard to the ratios/ But the 
 fact remains not only that poor Godwin made no 
 bread and butter by it,'' but that he converted no one 
 whose opinion in such a matter was of any weight. 
 Mackintosh, though at peace again with his old friend, 
 when he writes to him in September 1821,° cannot 
 praise his work ; even thinks its tone intolerant ; and 
 will only say that he sees nothing in the Malthusian 
 doctrines inconsistent with perfectibility. He takes 
 pains at the same time to disclaim the authorship of 
 the notice in the Edinburgh Review for July 1821, 
 which was lacking in the courtesy due to Godwin, 
 though it did not reproduce the scurrility of the 
 earliest review of him.' The inconclusiveness of the 
 book, even in the view of Malthus' opponents, appears 
 from the stream of new refutations, which made no 
 pause. 
 
 Even the question of the ratios was not settled. 
 Godwin had counted his discussion of them the most 
 important pai't of his book. It gives us his third 
 
 1 Life, ii. 259, 260. Cf. what Godwin writes to Sir John Sinclair, 
 July 1821 (Sinclair's Correspondence, i. 393). 2 i g, p_ 271. 
 
 3 Morgan and Eosser, e. g. See Life, ii. 272-5; cf. p. 280. 
 * Edin. Rev., July 1821, p. 364. ' Life of Godwin, ii. 274. 
 
 « Ibid., pp. 274-5. 1 No. 1, Oct. 1802, esp. p. 26. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 369 
 
 substantial argument against Malthus. Godwin takes 
 up/ what seems to have been a common charge, that 
 the essayist had written a quarto volume to prove 
 that population increases in a geometrical and food 
 in an arithmetical ratio. The essayist had answered, 
 as long ago as 1806,^ that the first proposition was 
 proved as soon as the facts about America were'^ 
 authenticated, and the second was self-evident ; his 
 book was meant less to prove the ratios than to trace 
 their effects. His authorities, as he told Godwin 
 afterwards,' were Dr. Price, Styles, Benjamin Franklin, 
 Euler, and Sir William Petty, supplemented, for 
 figures, by Short and Siissmilch and the censuses of 
 the United States and England, and, for principles, 
 by Adam Smith and Hume. We have already seen * 
 how far the simile of geometrical and arithmetical 
 ratios was meant to be pressed. Godwin thinks he 
 exposes it by arguing that the increase of popula- 
 tion can never be quite exactly geometrical ' (which 
 Malthus would admit), — that America was an excep- 
 tion" (in face of the maxim that the exception 
 tests the rule), — that, in order to suppose population 
 doubling itself in the United States, we must suppose 
 it, as regards births, doing the same in the Old 
 World (in other words, fact is the same as tendency), 
 
 ' Population, I. i. 
 
 ^ Appendix to 3rd ed., p. 520 n.; 7th ed., p. 491 n. 
 
 ^ See his Letter to Godwin, dated October 1818, and quoted in 
 Godwin's Population, Bk. II. ch. i. pp. 116 — 123, with comments. 
 
 ' See above, p. 66. ^ Population, II. a. 244-7. 
 
 '^ E. g. II. xi. 274, 282, but especially I. iv. 25, and for the third 
 argument, pp. 29, 30, cf. pp. 43—50, &c. Cf. also Godwin to Sinclair in 
 Sinclair's Correspondence, i. 393. 
 
 B B 
 
370 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. it. 
 
 — tliat the normal increase is not that of America 
 but that of Sweden/ in which case (Malthus would 
 answer) the normal increase must be one that takes 
 place in face of very severe restrictions. To the 
 charge of damaging the borrowed kettle the old Irish- 
 woman had three answers : — It was cracked when I 
 got it ; it was whole when I returned it ; I never had 
 it. So Godwin's views of the American colonies 
 vacillated between three inconsistent propositions : the 
 great increase of the numbers is natural (or sponta- 
 neous), but that of the food is greater still ; ^ the great 
 increase is not natural, but due to immigration ; ' 
 there has been no great increase at all.* The reader 
 has three alternative arguments presented to him, and 
 it matters little whereby he is convinced, if only in 
 the end he is persuaded to believe with Godwin, that 
 population requires no cbecks at all,^ and is a fitful 
 principle.* In history, says Godwin, it seems to 
 operate by fits and starts ; and such irregular effects 
 cannot have a uniform cause. It might be replied 
 that in the same sense gravitation is fitful, for we 
 seem to break it by walking upstairs as well as 
 down, by using a siphon as well as a water-jug, or 
 by drying up a drop of ink with blotting-paper 
 instead of letting it sink down into the paper. Yet 
 in these cases the fitfulness is never imputed to the 
 absence of a cause, but to the presence of more 
 
 1 Population tends to double in a hundred years, and there is no risk 
 of over-population except in occasional times of dull trade (Letter of 
 Godwin to Sinclair, Sinclair's Correspondence, 1. c). A notable exception. 
 
 2 Population, II. xi. 251-2. 3 iy_ ;_ 4 n ji jg?, and cf. above. 
 ' II. xi. 287, &c., &c. 6 III. iii. 327 seq. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 371 
 
 causes than one. To believe, as Godwin seems to 
 do, in occult laws which vary with the circumstances 
 is to believe in no laws at all. The only constancy 
 would be the constant probability of miracles.^ Free- 
 thinkers had not as yet identified themselves with 
 the party of order in physics ; and perhaps Godwin 
 was simply carrying out his dislike of law one step 
 farther. Having applied it to politics (1793) and to 
 style (1797), he now applied it to nature (1820). 
 He deliberately placed a whole army of facts out 
 of the range of science. It was fortunate for himself 
 that he appeared no more in the character of an 
 economist, but left Booth the task of replying to 
 tbe Edinburgh reviewer.^ 
 
 If economical criticism was weak with Godwin, 
 the political philosopher, it was still weaker with 
 Coleridge, the philosophizing poet. The main criti- 
 cisms of Coleridge ^ are contained in manuscript 
 marginal comments with pen and pencil written on 
 his copy of the second (quarto) edition of tbe 
 Essay (1803), now in the British Museum. When 
 Malthus writes (in Preface, p. vi) that if he had 
 confined himself to general views, his main principle 
 was so incontrovertible that he could have entrenched 
 himself in an impregnable fortress, Coleridge breaks 
 in : " If by the main principle the author means both 
 
 1 Coups d'etat in nature. Paul Bert, L'Enseignement Primaire, 1880, 
 p. xxviii. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Review, July 1821. Cf. Letter to the Eev. T. R. 
 Malthus by David Booth (1823), who absurdly assumes Malthus to be 
 the reviewer. Though internal evidence dispt'ls this fancy, it shows 
 that Malthus was still believed to write for the Edinbii/rgh Bemew. 
 
 ^ Others, in Table Talk and Biogr. Literaria, are chiefly declamation. 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 the Facf^ (i. e. that population -um-estrained should 
 infinitely outrun food) and the deduction from the 
 fact, i. e. that the human race is therefore not inde- 
 finitely improvable, a pop- gun would batter down 
 the impregnable Fortress. If only the Fact be meant, 
 the assertion is quite nugatory, in the former case 
 vapouring, in the latter a vapour." (And on p. vii :) 
 " Are we now to have a quarto to teach us that great 
 misery and great vice arise from poverty, and that 
 there must be poverty in its worst shape wherever 
 there are more mouths than loaves and more Heads 
 than Brains ! " 
 
 This may be taken as simply the argument of 
 Hazlitt, who " did not see what there was to be 
 proved ; " — the principle of Malthus is a truism. 
 Even when commenting on the statement of the 
 Ratios (on p. 8), after some denunciation of the 
 " verbiage and senseless repetition " of the essay, 
 Coleridge goes on to agree with it. He would restate 
 the whole so as to substitute " a proportion which 
 no one in his senses would consider as other than 
 axiomatic, viz. : Suppose that the human race amount 
 to a thousand millions. Divide the square acres of 
 food-producing surface by 500,000,000, that is to say, 
 so much to each married couple. Estimate this 
 quotum as high as you like, and, if you will, even at 
 a thousand or even at ten thousand acres to each 
 family. Suppose population without check, and take 
 the average increase from two families at five (which is 
 
 1 In these quotations the capitals are in the original, and the italics 
 correspond to underlinings. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 373 
 
 irrationally small, supposing the human race healthy, 
 and each man married at twenty-one to a woman of 
 eighteen), and in twelve generations the increase 
 would be 48,828,125. Now as to any conceivable 
 increase in the production or improvement in the 
 productiveness of the thousand or ten thousand acres, 
 it is ridiculous even to think of production at all, 
 inasmuch as it is demonstrable that either already in 
 this twelfth generation, or certainly in a few genera- 
 tions more (I leave the exact statement to schoolboys, 
 not having Cocker's Arithmetic by me, and having 
 forgotten the number of square feet in an acre), the 
 quotum of land would not furnish standing room 
 to the descendants of the first agrarian proprietors. 
 Best do the sum at once. Find out the number of 
 square acres on the globe (of land), and divide the 
 number by 500,000. I have myself been uselessly 
 prolix, and in grappling with the man have caught his 
 itch of verbiage." He goes on to say that if every 
 man were to marry and have a family, and each of his 
 children were to do the same, their posterity would 
 soon want standing room, and, if all checks were 
 removed, this would of course happen much faster. 
 " Any schoolboy who has learned arithmetic as far as 
 compound interest may astonish his younger sister 
 both by the fact and by the exact number of years 
 in which it would take place. On the other hand, let 
 the productiveness of the earth be increased beyond 
 the hopes of the most visionary agriculturist, still the 
 productions take up room. If the present crop of 
 turnips occupy one-fifth of the space of the turnip 
 
374 MALTHUS AND HIS WOBK. [bk. ir. 
 
 field, the increase can never be more than quintupled, 
 and, if you suppose two planted for one, the increase 
 still cannot exceed ten ; so that, supposing a little 
 island of a single acre, and its productions occupying 
 one-fifth of its absolute space, and sufficient to main- 
 tain two men and two women, four generations would 
 outrun its possible power of furnishing them with 
 food ; and we may boldly affirm that a truth so self- 
 evident as this was never overlooked or even by 
 implication contradicted. What proof has Mr. 
 Malthns brought ? What proof can he bring that 
 any writer or theorist has overlooked this fact, which 
 would not apply (with reverence be it spoken) to the 
 Almighty Himself when He pronounced the awful 
 command, ' Increase and multiply ' % " 
 
 From some of the phrases dropped in the course 
 of these comments, we should infer they were the 
 preparation for a formal review of the book by 
 Coleridge himself. It is therefore extremely puzzling 
 to find the whole comments printed almost word 
 for word and letter for letter in a review ^ hitherto 
 considered by every one (Southey included) to 
 be Southey 's. This applies to the subsequent MS. 
 notes, which are happily briefer. Coleridge finds 
 fault with Malthus (p. 11) for using the words 
 virtue and vice without defining them, apparently 
 overlooking the footnote under his very eyes (p. 
 
 1 Arthur Aikbi's Annxuil Review, vol. ii. (for 1803) pp. 292 seq. Cf. 
 Southey's Life and Correspondence (ed. 1850), vol. ii. p. 251, 20th Jan. 
 1804 : " Yesterday Malthus received, I trust, a mortal wound from my 
 hand ; " cf. vol. vi. p. 399, and vol. ii. p. 294. There is no hint of 
 obligation to Coleridge. 
 
BK.IY.] THE CEITTCS. 375 
 
 11 n.) which says, " The general consequence of 
 vice is misery, and this consequence is the precise 
 reason why an action is termed vicious." ^ Coleridge 
 says, in relation to the list of irregularities given in 
 the last paragraph but one of the page (11) : "That 
 these and all these are vices in the present state 
 of society, who doubt ? So was Celibacy in the 
 patriarchal ages. Vice and Virtue subsist in the 
 agreement of the habits of a man with his reason 
 and conscience, and these can have but one moral 
 guide, Utility, or the Virtues and Happiness of 
 Rational beings. We mention this not under the 
 miserable notion that any state of society will render 
 those actions capable of being performed with con- 
 science and virtue, but to expose the utter unguarded- 
 ness of this speculation." Then after some remarks 
 on New Malthusians (as they would be now called) 
 he goes on : " All that follows to the three hundred 
 and fifty -fifth page 3 may be an entertaining farrago 
 of quotations from books of travels, &c., but surely 
 very impertinent in a philosophical work. Bless me, 
 three hundred and forty pages — for what purpose ! 
 A philosophical work can have no legitimate purpose 
 but proof and illustration, and three hundred and 
 fifty pages to prove an axiom ! to illustrate a self- 
 evident truth ! It is neither more nor less than book- 
 making ! " He thinks, however, that what Malthus 
 wrote of Condorcet applies to himself; — though his 
 
 ' Cf. above, ch. iii. pp. 81 seq., and Bk. III. 
 
 ^ Sic, though it explains a thing by itself. 
 
 ^ He probably meant 353rd, but his numbers are careless. 
 
376 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 paradox is very absurd, it must be refuted, or he 
 will think the toleration of his contemporaries due 
 to their mental inferiority and his own sublimity 
 of intellect.^ The remaining marginal notes are 
 chiefly of an interjectional character,^ many of them 
 not very refined. Malthus himself never falls into 
 coarseness ; but his opponents seldom avoid it, and 
 Coleridge (or Southey) is no exception to the rule. 
 Except for the interest attaching even to the foolish 
 words of a great man, it would not have been worth 
 while to revive his obiter scripta on a matter beyond 
 his ken. 
 
 A few words are necessary in regard to Grahame 
 and Weyland, who form the chief subject of the long 
 second appendix of later editions of the essay. 
 Grahame's charges were such as owed all their force 
 to the general ignorance of the actual -Rrritings of 
 Malthus himself.* Mr. Malthus regards famine as 
 nature's benevolent remedy for want of food ; Mr. 
 Malthus believes that nature teaches men to invent 
 (p. 100) diseases in order to prevent over-population ; 
 Mr. Malthus, regarding vice and misery generally 
 as benevolent remedies for over-population, thinks 
 that they are rather to be encouraged than otherwise 
 
 1 On margin of p. 364, 2nd paragr. : " Quote and apply to himself." 
 
 2 E. g. on p. 65 opposite to lines 5, 6, " Ass ! " a monosyllabic refine- 
 ment omitted in Southey's review. , 
 
 3 First in 1817, 7tli ed., pp. 509 seq. 
 
 * One of the charges (p. 18 : that Malthus recommends the same 
 remedies as Condorcet) is sufficient to stamp the character of the book — 
 An Inquiry into the Piinciple of Population, &c., by James Grahame. 
 Its Introduction gives a useful list of writers on both sides ; see p. 71. 
 (Edin., 1816.) Simonin repeats Grahame's charges, with more mistakes 
 of his own. See his Hist, de la Fsycholcgie (1879), pp. 397-9, 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 377 
 
 (p. 100). Malthus, for Ms part, deploring the fact 
 that this last charge has been current "in various 
 quarters for fourteen years " (or since his quarto 
 essay of 1803), thinks he may well pass it by. 
 " Vice and Misery, and these alone, are the evils 
 which it has been my great object to contend against. 
 I have expressly proposed moral restraint as their 
 rational and proper remedy," a sufficient proof that 
 he regarded them as the disease.^ Grahame himself 
 does not deny the tendency to increase beyond food 
 (p. 102), but thinks emigration a sufficient remedy 
 (p. 104). 
 
 Empson,^ playfully classifying the opponents of 
 Malthus, says there are some who will not com- 
 prehend " out of sheer stupidity, like Mr. Grahame," 
 or out of sentimental horror, like Southey,^ Coleridge, 
 and Bishop Huntingford ; * or because, like Sadler ® 
 and Godwin, who followed Price and Muret,^ they 
 imagine the law of population to vary with the cir- 
 cumstances ; or else because they invent laws of their 
 own, like Anderson, Owen, and Poulett Scrope;' 
 
 ' 7th ed., p. 511. Cf. above, p. 52, and the reply to Godwin's Eeply, 
 Essay, 2nd ed., III. iii. 384. 
 
 ^ Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1837. 
 
 ' Life and Correspondence of Southey, vol. iii. pp. 21-2, and p. 188. 
 
 * Bishop of Gloucester and later of Hereford. Theolog. Works 
 (1832). 
 
 ' "The prolificness of human things, otherwise similarly circum- 
 stanced, varies inversely as their numbers." — Sadler, Popn., vol. iii. p. 352 
 (1830). Reviewed somewhat caustically by Macaulay in Edin. Rev., 
 July 1830. See Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, vol. i. p. 126. Cf. Sadler's 
 ' Reply ' to Edin. Rev. His weakest point was his use of " inversely." 
 
 8 Malthus, Essay, II. v. (7th ed.), pp. 164, 166 ; of. p. 485. 
 
 ' G. P. Scrope, M.P., Pol. Econ., 1833, &c. Malthus, Essay, III. iii. 
 (7th ed.), 282-6 (Owen), IV. xii. 457 (Owen), III. xiv. 380 n. (Anderson). 
 
378 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. iv. 
 
 or because, like Weyland,^ they deny the premises 
 of Mai thus as well as the conclusion. Weyland, 
 like Grahame, has the honour of a special refut- 
 ation from Malthus. He allows that Malthus in 
 his essay has raised his subject from the level of 
 desultory academical discussion to that of scientific 
 inquiry, and his book is the point from which every 
 later investigation must start. He allows that his 
 order is lucid and his reasoning fair, and that he 
 enables an opponent at once to discuss the question 
 on its merits. Granting his premises, says Weyland, 
 we cannot deny his conclusion ; but that premise 
 of his is false which assumes that the highest known 
 rate of increase in a particular state of society is the 
 natural or spontaneous rate in all ; ^ we cannot take 
 the height of Chang or of the Hale Child as the 
 natural standard of the height of all. To this 
 Malthus answers, that, if we had observed in any 
 country that all the people who were short carried 
 weights upon their heads, and the people who were 
 tall did not, we should infer that the weights had 
 something to do with the height, — and so, when we 
 find that the increase of a people is fast or slow in 
 proportion as the pressure of certain checks on in- 
 crease is heavy or light, we cannot but believe that 
 the rate would be at its fastest if there were no 
 checks at all. To say with Weyland, in the terms 
 
 1 John Weyland, jnnr., F.B.S. The Principles of Population and Pro- 
 duction as they are affected by the Progress of Society with u. view to 
 Moral and Political Consequences, 1816. 
 
 2 So Arnold Toynbee, Indiistrial Revolution, p. 107. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 379 
 
 of his first cardinal proposition,! that "population has 
 a natural tendency to keep within the powers of the 
 soil to afford it subsistence in every gradation through 
 which society passes," is to say "that every man 
 has a natural tendency to remain in prison who is 
 necessarily confined to it by four strong walls." One 
 might as well infer that the pine of the crowded 
 Norwegian forest has no tendency to have lateral 
 branches, because as a matter of fact there is no room 
 for it to have any.^ 
 
 Weyland thinks that, without any moral restraint, 
 population will keep within limits of the food, in 
 proportion as it reaches a high state of morality, 
 religion, and political liberty.^ Malthus, on the con- 
 trary, would say that, without moral restraint, even 
 morality, religion, and political liberty will not save 
 a people from wretchedness ;* and, for his part, the 
 design always uppermost in his mind when writing 
 has been " to improve the condition and increase the 
 happiness of the lower classes of society." 
 
 One argument of Weyland's^ has some weight in 
 it. With a rich soil, high farming, and abundant 
 food, the bulk of the people of a country might by 
 the natural division of labour be employed in manu- 
 facture, and their unhealthy manner of life in towns 
 might so check population that it might be far from 
 keeping up to the level of the food. Malthus replies 
 
 ' Ch. iii. p. 21. He adds, as Ms second : "This tendency can never 
 be destroyed." 
 ^ Essay, Appendix, p. 517. ' Propos. iii. and iv. 
 
 * Essay, 1. c. p. 521, a very strong passage. 
 ' Append, p. 526. « Pop. ami Prod., pp. 82 seq. 
 
380 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 that this case is rare, for our town populations have 
 increased rapidly, — but, such as it is, he has allowed 
 for it in the second clause of his second proposition : 
 "Population invariably increases where the means 
 of subsistence increase, unless prevented hy some very 
 powerful and obvious checks." ^ 
 
 There are two other critics to whom Malthus 
 replies in some detail, one the visionary Owen, who 
 is embraced in Empson's classification, the other the 
 practical man Arthur Young, who cannot so easily 
 be classified. " I mean," says the latter, " to deal 
 in facts alone, happy when I can discover them pure 
 and unalloyed with prejudice."^ As this was his 
 practice as well as his profession, it may easily be 
 believed that in his voluminous records of fifty years' 
 travelling and experimenting' he has spun rope enough 
 to hang himself. It ought to be added that, like 
 Godwin, he claims the privilege of being inconsistent. 
 Nothing could be more clear than his recognition in 
 his Travels in France of the evils of over-population.* 
 Yet in 1800, in his Question of Scarcity plainly stated 
 and Bemedies considered, he recommends as his remedy 
 that each country labourer who has three children be 
 provided with a cow and half an acre of potato ground.' 
 In other words, he would reduce the English standard 
 of living to the common Irish one, milk and potatoes. 
 
 1 7tli ed., I. ii. 12 n. ; 2ii(i ed., p. 16. 
 
 2 Tour in Southern Counties of England, 1767, p. 342. 
 
 3 Between 1767 and 1820. Cf. above (England). 
 * Travels in France, pp. 408-9 (ed. 1792) and al. 
 
 ^ Essay on Pop., 7th ed., pp. 449, 451 seq. ; Annals of Agriculture, 
 no. 239, pp. 219 seq. (quoted in Essay, App. pp. 496-7). Young had 
 reproached Malthus for denying the right to relief. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CEITICS. 3f 
 
 Malthus replies by giving reasons why people shoul 
 " live dear," and by reminding Arthur Young of hi 
 own comments on the proceedings of the Nations 
 Assembly. Eecognizing their duty to grant relie 
 but wishing to avoid an English Poor Law, th 
 National Assembly set aside fifty millions of franc 
 a year for support of the poor. If it had bee: 
 really a duty, wrote Arthur Young (in his Travels 
 necessity might have occasioned them to extend th 
 relief to one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred 
 millions, and so on, " in the same miserable progressio 
 that has taken place in England."^ Malthus hard! 
 needed to go back to the Travels, as Young himse] 
 confessed in his later writings that his plan di 
 not apply to large cities, and though he still hel 
 by the claim of right, he confessed that his fait 
 must be without works ; in other words, he claime 
 the right to be inconsistent. But he continued t 
 question Malthus' axiom that what cannot be ough 
 not to be ; and he thinks that, if a man marrie 
 without the means to keep a family, he may justl 
 blame society for not providing him with the means 
 He argues, too, that Malthus for the success of hi 
 scheme assumes perfect chastity in the unmarrier 
 Malthus really assumed only that the evils, whic 
 on an average in a civilized country attend th 
 prudential check, are less than the evils of prematui 
 mortality and other miseries entailed by the opposit 
 course ; he declares himself not against but in favou 
 of schemes that improve the condition of the poc 
 
 1 Travels m France, ed. 1792, pp. 438-9. 
 
-382 MALTHTJS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 even on a limited scale ; and he only asks that every 
 such scheme be tested not by its first success, for 
 hardly any scheme of the kind is unsuccessful at first, 
 but by its effect on a new generation. ^ 
 
 This test might be applied to schemes like Owen's 
 and later ones on the same model. Malthus perhaps 
 deals too peremptorily with them. Speaking of 
 Owen's system of the community of labour and goods, 
 and of Spence's Plan for Parochial Partnerships in 
 the Land^ ("the only remedy for the distresses and 
 oppressions of the people," the land to be " the 
 people's farm "), he answers that there are two 
 "decisive arguments against systems of equality": 
 first, the inability of a state of equality to furnish 
 adequate motives for exertion, the goad of necessity 
 being absent, — and, second, the tendency of population 
 to increase faster than subsistence. In reply it must 
 be said that there might be socialism without com- 
 munism ; there might even be communism without an 
 absolute equality, such as would put idle and indus- 
 trious on the same footing ; there might be an 
 approximation of the social extremes, bringing poor 
 and rich nearer, and giving the former not weaker 
 but stronger motives to exertion ; finally, it is not at 
 
 1 App. to Essay, pp. 499, 500. It is not true that " Owen was right 
 as against ifalthus when he regarded a certain amount of comfort as the 
 indispensable condition of a moral life, and thought that a considerable 
 increase of man's powers of production was possible " (Held, Soc. Oesch. 
 Engla7ids, pp. 351-2). Malthus himself did both. 
 
 2 The Plan is quoted by. Cobbett, Pol. Beg., Dec. 14, 1816. Malthus 
 {Pol. Ec. (1820), pp. 434, 435, (1836) p. 378) thinks that " co-proprietor- 
 ship" of Government with the landlords, after the scheme of the 
 Economistes and on the analogy of Oriental " sole proprietorship," might 
 become too ready an engine of taxation for a military despotism. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. i 
 
 all inconceivable that at least one-half of this resu 
 might come, as Godwin wished, by the act of tl 
 rich themselves, which means also as Malthus wishe 
 for it would come from a strong sense of person 
 obligation. It cannot be denied that Malthus, 
 using the argument in question, seems to forget h 
 own admission, that the goad of necessity does m 
 act with effect either on the lowest or on the highe 
 classes.^ Moreover, he allows, there have been case 
 e.g. among the Moravian communities, where industi 
 and community of goods have existed side by sid 
 " It may be said that, allowing the stimulus of ii 
 equality of conditions to have been necessary in ordi 
 to raise man from the indolence and apathy of tl 
 savage to the activity and intelligence of civilize 
 life, it does not follow that the continuance of tl 
 same stimulus should be necessary when this activil 
 and energy of mind has been once gained."^ 
 
 The second of his arguments against Owen is 
 course his more cogent and characteristic one. I 
 we have seen, it is not deprived of its point I 
 the inclusion of moral restraint among the checl 
 to population. It was argued against him th 
 his own ideal of a society where moral restrai: 
 universally prevailed would involve precisely wh 
 is necessary to make such systems as Godwir 
 and Owen's permanently possible.^ There is an £ 
 of conclusiveness in the remark that, in proporti( 
 
 » See above, pp. 87, 112, &c. "^ Essay, 7th ed., p. 284 
 
 2 E. g. by Bagehot, Econ. Stud. (1880), pp. 135 seq., and by SoutI 
 in Aikin's Annual Beview above quoted. 
 
384 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. iv. 
 
 as moral restraint prevails in the world, Malthus 
 approximates to Godwin. But Malthus believes that 
 equality and community would destroy the motive 
 for moral restraint. The passions would still be 
 present, and no man would be in a position where 
 there seemed any need to restrain them ; the restraint 
 would be the interest of the whole society, but not 
 of the individual himself, for the effects were to be 
 borne not by himself, but by the whole society. No 
 doubt the good of the whole societv ought to be a 
 sufficient reason ; but it would be so in a very few 
 men now ; and, unless it were in all men then, the 
 result would be an expansion of population, with the 
 results Malthus described. Owen is aware of this, 
 and suggests artificial checks, allowing men to gratify 
 desire without the usual consequences, and dispensing 
 with any effort of will. Malthus, on the other hand, 
 would throw all the responsibility and burden on the 
 individual, which he thinks it impossible to do with- 
 out allowing the individual his private property.^ No 
 further justification of things as they are is to be 
 found in Malthus ; and, so far from being reactionary, 
 his principles (with all their qualifications) were pro- 
 bably the most advanced individualism that was ever 
 preached in these days. They are adopted in full 
 view of the facts that have been again vividly brought 
 before the public mind in our day by writers who are 
 to our generation what Godwin, Spence, and Owen 
 were to theirs. 
 
 1 III. iii. 286. This and the rest of Ms argument (even its appli- 
 cation to Civil Liberty) is to be found in Aristotle, Politics, ii. 3 and 4, 
 but esp. 5. Ill Si iirjli rovro XavBavuv, &c. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CEITICS. 385 
 
 Malthus seems to believe, with Dugald Stewart, 
 that Utopian schemes are like the tunes of a barrel- 
 organ, recurring at melancholy intervals from age to 
 age with damnable iteration.^ But, unless society 
 itself has moved in a circle, the Utopias will resemble 
 each other no more and no less than do the states of 
 society which they would replace. Our own socialists, 
 therefore, can hardly be dismissed by the stroke of 
 the pen, that classifies them with people so curiously 
 unlike them and each other as Plato, Ball, More, the 
 Fifth Monarchy men, the Ijevellers, Godwin and 
 Spence and Owen. Malthus does not, in fact, so 
 dismiss them. Besides bringing forward his own argu- 
 ment, he examines Owen's attempt to deal with it.^ 
 
 Since Malthus, every complete reform has needed 
 to face in some way or other the question which he 
 treated ; but he left little for others to do. Of the 
 two most prominent schemes of our own day for the 
 reconstruction of society, one, that of Mr. Henry 
 George, involves an unconscious recourse to the old 
 weapons of Godwin, Sadler, and other opponents of 
 Malthus ; Progress and Poverty does not contain any 
 argument not to be found in these writers. The 
 conjecture about a " fixed quantity of human life on 
 the earth" (ed. 1881, p. 97) is hardly an argument. 
 It may be compared with what is stated by St. G. 
 Mivart' to be the basis of Darwinism. "Every 
 individual has to endure a very severe struggle for 
 existence owing to the tendency to geometrical 
 
 ' Essay on Pop., 7th ed,, p. 282. ^ See above, p. 24. 
 
 ^ Genesis of Species, 2nd ed., 1871, p. 5. 
 
 C C 
 
386 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk.it. 
 
 increase of all kinds of animals and plants, while 
 the total animal and vegetable population (man and 
 his agency excepted) remains almost stationary." Mr. 
 Mivart'a reason for excepting man seems to be Mr. 
 George's reason for including him. The latter's more 
 direct arguments against Malthus are as follows : — 
 first, the difficulty is in the future (p. 85) ; — second, 
 Malthus shifts the responsibility from man to the 
 Creator (p. 87) ; — third, Malthus justifies the status 
 quo and parries the demand for reform (p. 88) ; — 
 fourth, Malthus ascribes excessive increase of numbers 
 to a general tendency of human nature, while it is 
 really due to the badness of our institutions in old 
 countries, as in India and Ireland (pp. 101 — 114), 
 or the very thinness of population in new (p. 92) ; 
 — fifth, Malthus does not distinguish between tend- 
 ency to increase and actual increase, and is there- 
 fore refuted by the fact that the world is not yet 
 peopled (p. 94). In the sixth place, we are told, if 
 there had been such a law as the Malthusian, it would 
 have been sooner and more widely recognized (p. 98) ; 
 — that families often become extinct (p. 99), and it is 
 more certain that we have ancestors than that we shall 
 have descendants ; ^ — that better industry would keep 
 a larger population (p. 107) ; — Malthus says that vice 
 and misery are necessary (p. 109) ; — Malthus does not 
 
 ^ The puzzling effect of counting up one's great-grandfathers and 
 great-grandmotliers up to the twentieth degree or so is described by Black- 
 stone as quoted by Godwin {Fopn.) and re-quoted by Hazlitt (Spirit of the 
 Age, 1825, p. 273, ' Godwin '). The puzzle is less if we remember that our 
 remote ancestors must have married into each other's families, or rather 
 were scions in the end of the same families. We cannot go back to a 
 single pair except through the " prohibited degrees." 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 387 
 
 see that vegetables and animals increase faster than 
 population (p. 115), — or that the increase of man in- 
 volves the increase of his food (p. 116), for a division 
 of labour makes man produce more than he consumes 
 (p. 126), and so the most populous countries are 
 always the most wealthy (p. 128) ; — Malthus forgets 
 that the world is wide (p. 119), — and that the 
 tendency to increase is checked by development of 
 intellect,^ — and by the elevation of the standard 
 of comfort (pp. 121, 123);— he forgets that "the 
 power of population to produce the necessaries of 
 life is not to be measured by the necessaries of life " 
 it actually produces, but by its powers to produce 
 wealth in all forms (p. 127) ; — Malthus will not see 
 that twenty men where nature is niggardly {e.g. on 
 a bare rock ?) will produce more than twenty times 
 what one man will where nature is bountiful (p. 
 134) ; — and the Malthusian theory " attributes want 
 to the decrease of productive power" (p. 134) ; — 
 finally Malthus does not know " the real law of 
 population," which is that " the tendency to increase, 
 instead of being always uniform, is strong where a 
 greater population would give increased comfort, and 
 where the perpetuity of the race is threatened by the 
 mortality induced by adverse conditions, but weakens 
 just as the higher development of the individual 
 becomes possible, and the perpetuity of the race is 
 assured" (p. 123). What is right in this view of 
 
 ' We are to understand, therefore, that Malthus and the author agree 
 that population needs a check, and are simply not agreed what the 
 checks are to be. 
 
 C C 3 
 
388 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [i3K. iv. 
 
 the real law of population is common to Mr. George 
 with Mr. Herbert Spencer ; ^ what is wrong is common 
 to him with Godwin.^ 
 
 The view of Karl Marx,' the prophet of the Inter- 
 national and of modern economic Socialism, is built 
 on much more solid foundations. It is a corollary of 
 his view of capital. The general law of the accumu- 
 lation of capital, in these days of large manufactories 
 and machinery, involves not only a progressive addition 
 to the quantity of capital, which is all that Adam 
 Smith contemplated, but a qualitative change in the 
 proportion between fixed capital, such as machinery, 
 and the circulating which is paid in wages. To use 
 the author's words, the progress of accumulation 
 brings with it a relative decrease of the variable 
 component of capital and a relative increase of its 
 constant component. New machinery is constantly 
 supplanting labour without any real compensation in 
 increased demand, either at once or in the long 
 run. The constant element increases at the cost of 
 the variable ; and this can only result in the pro- 
 gressive production of a population which, in relation 
 to capital, is a surplus or superfluity, an over- 
 population ; — the cause which increases the net 
 
 1 See telow, p. 392. 
 
 2 See above, p. 370. The sixteen positions not touched in their own 
 place will be met by a reference to the following places in this book : 
 i. to p. 20, add Essay, 2nd ed. Bk. III. ch. iii. p. 383, ii. to p. 37, iii. to 
 p. 338, iv. to pp. 51, 78, v. to p. 80, vi. to p. 83, viii. to p. 113, ix. to p. 
 376, X. to p. 67, xi. to pp. 231, 297, see Essay, 7th ed. p. 381, xii. to pp. 
 70, 75, 91, xiii. to p. 393, xiv. to pp. 91, 270, xv. to p. 294, xvi. to p. 69, 
 and xvii. to p. 75. 
 
 3 Das Kapital, 7ter Abschn. 23tes Kap. pp. 653 seq. (ed. 1872); cf. 
 646 seq. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CKITIOS. 389 
 
 revenue of tlie country at the same time renders tlie 
 population redundant and deteriorates the condition 
 of the labourer.^ So far from deploring the existence 
 of this redundant class, the capitalists depend on it/ 
 as the reserve of their army. They trust to its 
 cheap labour to save them from the depression 
 which in our days (though never before) appears 
 with unfailing regularity after brisk trade and a crisis. 
 If the hands were not always there for them to 
 employ, they would not at once be able to seize the 
 happy moment of a reviving demand for their goods. 
 "Malthus with his narrow views understands the 
 surplus population to be superfluous absolutely in 
 itself, and not merely in relation to capital ; but 
 even he recognizes that over-population is a necessity 
 of modern industry." ' In proof of these statements 
 he quotes the words of Malthus {Pol. Econ., ed. 1836, 
 pp. 215,* 319, 320) :—" Prudential habits with regard 
 to marriage carried to a considerable extent among 
 the labouring classes, of a country mainly depending 
 upon manufactures and commerce, might injure it." 
 . . . "From the nature of a population, an increase 
 of labourers cannot be brought into [the] market, 
 in consequence of a particular demand, till after 
 the lapse of sixteen or eighteen years ; and the 
 conversion of revenue into capital, by saving, may 
 
 ^ The language of Rioardo, ch. xxxi. p. 236 (quoted by Marx, p. 
 656 n.). Cf. above, p. 297. Cf. also Marx, pp. 427 foil. 
 
 ^ Cf. wliat Prof. Rogers says in Six Centuries, p. 229, of tlie attempt 
 •made in the fifteenth century to increase the " residuum " of agricul- 
 tural labour for the benefit of the farmers and landlords. Also above, 
 p. 164 n. 
 
 ^ Marx, iUd., p. 659. ^ Misprinted in Marx as 254. 
 
390 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 take place mucli more rapidly ; a country is always 
 liable to an increase in the quantity of the funds for 
 the maintenance of labour faster than the increase 
 of population." 
 
 To these charges the answer is, first, that Malthus 
 always recognized that over-population was relative, 
 relative to tlie actual food ; ^ second, that he did not 
 recognize the over-population as necessary ; it took 
 place as a matter of fact, but he believed that, if 
 working men did as he wished them, it would dis- 
 appear ; ^ — and in the third place, the first sentence 
 quoted by Marx from the Political Economy is 
 explained by the second, which he does not quote : 
 " In a country of fertile land such habits would be 
 the greatest of all conceivable blessings." Malthus 
 is comparing Commercial with Agricultural countries, 
 not pronouncing on the general question of wages ; 
 and other passages in his writings^ show that he 
 regarded the high wages, resulting from prudential 
 habits, as a public gain, more than compensating 
 the capitalists' loss of profits. Even Marx himself 
 grudgingly allows that Malthus was more humane 
 than Eicardo in regard to the hours of labour desir- 
 able for the workmen.* In the fourth place, the 
 latter half of the quotation (beginning with the 
 words, " From the nature of a population ") first 
 states an obvious fact which a child could have 
 pointed out, and then a disputable proposition which 
 predicts not an over-population but the reverse of it. 
 
 ' See above, pp. 137, 188, &c. 2 See above, p. 335. 
 
 ^ See above, pp. 299, 335, &c. ■" Das Kap., p. 549 n. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 391 
 
 Marx is seeking to demonstrate the hopelessness 
 of the labourer's position ; and he is too acute not 
 to know that his demonstration would be seriously 
 weakened if he admitted the truth of the Malthusian 
 doctrine and the bare possibility of the adoption of 
 prudential habits by the labourers. This is the real 
 reason of his bitter attacks on the Essay. He says of 
 it : ' " When I say Eden's work on the Poor was the 
 only important writing by a disciple of Adam Smith 
 iu the eighteenth century, I may be reminded of the 
 essay of Malthus. But this book in its first form 
 (and the later editions did nothing but add and adapt 
 borrowed materials) is nothing but a plagiarism from 
 Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, full 
 of schoolboy superficiality and clerical declamation, 
 and not containing a single original sentence. By 
 the way, although Malthus was a clergyman of the 
 Church of England, he had taken the monastic 
 oath of celibacy [!], for this is one of the conditions 
 of a fellowship at the Protestant University of 
 Cambridge. ' Socios coUegiorum maritos esse non 
 permittimus, sed statim postquam quis uxorem 
 duxerit, socius coUegii desinat esse ' {Reports of 
 Canibridge University Commission, p. 172). By this 
 circumstance Malthus is favourably distinguished 
 from the other Protestant clergy, who have cast off 
 the Catholic rule of celibacy. . ? With exception of 
 Ortes^ the Venetian monk, an original and clever 
 
 ' Das Kap., p. 641 n. 
 
 '^ The passage omitted is neither true nor decent. 
 
 • G. M. Ortes Beflessioni sulla popolazimie (1790). 
 
392 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. iv. 
 
 writer, most of the writers on Population are Pro- 
 testant clergymen," a contrast, he goes on, to the 
 days when political economists were all philosophers. 
 Mars adopts ^ the common view that Malthus being 
 a clergyman was the bond-slave of Toryism and 
 the ruling classes, and therefore ready to adopt 
 a principle that attributed over-population to the 
 eternal laws of nature rather than to the historical 
 laws (also natural) of the capitalists' production. Marx 
 does not see that the "eternal laws" in question do 
 not lead to over-population except when the precepts 
 of Malthus are neglected ; and never shows how, 
 apart from these precepts, over-population will be 
 prevented in the renovated society itself, which has 
 nationalized not only the land but all the instruments 
 of production. Would the habits of men be so 
 changed by this stroke of nationalization that the 
 want of ordinary commercial motives would not be 
 felt 1 ^ Would not the millennium of the Socialist, like 
 that of the Christian, postulate a religious conver- 
 sion on the largest scale for its first introduction, 
 to say nothing of its continuance ? Productive Co- 
 operation, depending on the spontaneous action of 
 the labourers for its creation, and on their intelligence 
 and prudence for its success, would nationalize capital 
 more surely ; and it would not make the impossible 
 postulate of Socialism, that a passionless unselfish- 
 ness, which not one in a hundred thousand in our 
 day exhibits at any time, shall at once become the 
 
 ^ Das Kap., p. 549 n. 
 
 2 Cf. above, p. 382, and Maltlms, Exxny, 2nd ed. III. iii. 386, where 
 he says that Duty and Interest must work together. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CEITIOS. 393 
 
 invariable daily rule of all without exception. But 
 Co operation, if it neglects Malthus, will find its work 
 no sooner done than undone. 
 
 It may be thought that there are causes at work 
 which will remove over-population among the working 
 classes even under the present system of separated 
 capital and labour. It is a doctrine of the "finer 
 wits," founded on striking biological analogies, that 
 the general development of intellect in the race will 
 weaken the passion for marriage and supersede the 
 necessity for any checks on it ; ^ — the exercise of the 
 energies of concentration or " individuation " developes 
 these energies at the expense of those of diffusion or 
 " genesis ; " — the individual is made strong in himself, 
 at the expense of his power of creating new indi- 
 viduals. Quite apart from the disagreeable fact that 
 this principle would lessen the pressure most in those 
 classes where lessening is at present least needed, 
 and least where it is most needed, Malthus would 
 probably have pointed oat, first, that unless the 
 appetite is absolutely killed, no physiological check 
 can supersede some control of the will over the 
 passion, — and, second, that intellectual development 
 will more certainly check population by making men 
 alive to their responsibilities and strengthening their 
 power of restraint than by weakening the passion to 
 be restrained. The expounder of the theory is of all 
 people the least likely to teach men that they may 
 
 1 ' Theory of Population,' in Westminster Beii., April 1852, pirated by 
 the German Professor Trail in 1817 (Eitie iieue Bevollcerwigstheorie), and 
 substantially maintained by its author (Mr. Herbert Spencer) in Prin- 
 ciples of Bivlogy, Vol. II. Part vi., ' Laws of Multiplication.' 
 
394 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 become civilized by the progress of their race without 
 the trouble of civilizing themselves individually. But 
 his theory admits the misapplication ; and, if it be 
 said by the misappliers that we ought to tell the 
 truth without fear of consequences, we must answer 
 that in this case the consequences are part of the 
 truth. On the other hand, to theorists like W. R. 
 Greg, who suggest unknown physiological laws that 
 may act as a spontaneous check, Malthus would have 
 replied as to Condorcet : ^ 
 
 " What can we reason but from what we know ? " 
 
 This brief survey of typical critics and comment- 
 ators may be completed by a classification of the 
 former, which, among other advantages, will give a 
 bird's-eye view of the chief points in discussion. 
 Empson classified the opponents of Malthus by their 
 motives,^ a proceeding hardly fair either to them 
 or to the essay itself. It is not fair to them, for as 
 a rule the critics appeal to argument, and must be 
 judged by what they adduce, not by their good or 
 ill will, wisdom or folly, in adducing it ; and not fair 
 to the essay, because few books have owed so much 
 to their reviewers. 
 
 The positions of the critics may be classified as 
 follows : — 
 
 I. Some say the doctrine of the essay is a 
 truism.^, 
 
 II. Others admit that it is unanswerable, but 
 
 1 Essay, lib. ed. 269. 2 Above, p. 377. 
 
 ' E. g. Hazlitt, Reply to Essay on Population, p. 20. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CEITICS. 395 
 
 retain a philosophical faith in the future discovery 
 of some contrary principle.^ 
 
 III. Others find fault with the details of the 
 doctrine, either (a) in regard to the ratios of increase, 
 asserting that no tendency to a geometrical increase 
 of population has been proved, but something much 
 less rapid, even (a few say) a decreasing ratio,^ — and 
 that no mere arithmetical increase of food has been 
 proved, but something much more rapid,^ — or {5) in 
 regard to the checks on population, asserting that no 
 checks are necessary,* — that vice and misery some- 
 times add to population instead of checking it,^ — 
 that to include moral restraint is to stultify the 
 original doctrine,^ — that moral restraint sometimes 
 involves as great evil as excessive numbers, both from 
 the personal practice of it and from the preaching 
 of it to others,^ — that important checks have been 
 omitted, the chief being misgovernment,^ bad laws,' 
 
 ' W. E. Greg, Enigmas of Life, 8tli ed., 1874, pp. 58 seq. This was 
 nearly Godwin's position in his first reply. 
 
 ^ Sadler on Population, and Eeply to Edinhurgh Review. Godwin, 
 Population, Bk. VI. ch. ii., &c. 
 
 ' Carey (H. G), Princ. of Social Science (1858), vol. i. ch. xiv. ; cf. 
 above, p. 74 seq. H. George, Progress and Poverty, pp. 115, 116. Sadler, 
 p. 70, &c. 
 
 * Godwin, Sadler, &e. 
 
 6 Sadler, pp. 354-5, &c. Cf. Adam Smith, W. of N., I. viii. 36. See 
 above, pp. 82, 83. 
 
 ^ Godwin, see above, p. 361. Sonthey, Life and Corresp., III. 188. 
 Bagehot, Econ. Studies, pp. 133 seq. Cf. George, II. ii. 94. Above, pp. 
 362, 381. 
 
 ' Besant, Law of Population, ch. iii. Cf. Malthus, pp. 407 seq. (IV. 
 iv.) ; Cobbett, Talcing Leave of his Countrymen (1817), p. 6 ; Political 
 Begister, 4th Jan. 1817, p. 26, &c,, &o. Above, p. 329. 
 
 ' Qodwin, Population, passim. George, II. ii. 102, 109. Above, 
 pp. Ill, 112. 
 
 ' Godwin, ibid.; George, pp. 138, 259, &c., &c.; Coleridge, MS. n;'te to 
 
396 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 high feeding/ intellectual development/ and those 
 of Owen.^ 
 
 There is, besides, an a priori criticism, which is 
 either (I.) ecclesiastical,* alleging that Malthus con- 
 tradicts the Bible or some other authority, — (II.) 
 theological,^ that he denies Providence, — or (III.) 
 doctrinaire,* that he denies natural rights and the 
 pre-established harmony of moral and economical 
 laws, and the instinct of equality, — or (IV.) ethical 
 and popular,'' that he runs counter to the moral 
 sense and the natural benevolence of men and cos- 
 mopolitan morality. These arguments have been 
 already considered. The fourth of them has, in its 
 last branch, an appearance of truth, because Malthus 
 has certainly pled less for the cosmopolitan than for 
 the domestic and civic virtues. He wishes to lay the 
 foundations solidly and leave the building to others. 
 Cosmopolitan morality can rarely be the found- 
 ation. In the Empire, Christianity may have raised 
 the people, and Stoicism the philosophers, to the 
 wider morality without the training of the narrower, 
 
 p. 358 (of Essay, 2nd ed.), where for "physical constitution of our 
 nature " he would read, "in -the existing system of society." So verbatim 
 Southey in Allan's Aim. Rev. 1. c. 
 
 1 Doubleday, True Law of Population (1841). Above, p. 65. See 
 Herbert Spencer, Biology, Vol. II. pt. vi. ch. xii. pp. 455, 480, &c. The 
 physiologists have amply refuted Doubleday. 
 
 2 Herbert Spencer. See above, p. 393. W. E. Greg, Enigmas. Above, 
 p. 394. 
 
 ^ New Malthusians. See above, p. 24. 
 
 * See above, pp. 365 seq. The orthodoxy of Malthus is proved not by a 
 few orthodox sentences which can be gleaned from him (as from Bacon), 
 or even by the discovery of flaws in the received doctrine, but by the 
 whole logic of the essay. ' See above, pp. 365 seq. 
 
 « See above, p. 336. ? See above, p. 328. 
 
BK. IV.] THE CRITICS. 397 
 
 SO that tlie converts were made better members of 
 their own small communities by becoming members 
 of the commonwealth of the saints and citizens of 
 the great world. But it seems to Malthus that, in 
 the world of to-day, the many conditions of a steady 
 moral progress are best secured if the domestic and 
 civic virtues precede the cosmopolitan. We must 
 not legislate for a world of heroes, but for men as 
 we know them to be ; and a comfortable domestic life 
 (|3joj TsT^siog) must be the common highway to good- 
 ness in a society of ordinary men. If poverty were 
 no evil, churlishness would be no vice. But extreme 
 poverty^ is a real hindrance to goodness. In the 
 apparent exceptions, as in the voluntary poverty of 
 St. Francis, the greatest evil is absent, for there is no 
 struggle for bare life. To abolish that struggle, and 
 help men to comfort, is in some degree to help men 
 to goodness ; and it was the end for which Malthus 
 laboured. The most sure and solid way of reaching 
 it lay, as he thought, in impressing every man with 
 a strong sense of his responsibility for his acts and of 
 his power over his own destiny. To reform a nation, 
 we must reform the members of it, who, if they are 
 good at firdt in spite of their institutions, will at last 
 conform their institutions to the model of their own 
 goodness. To hold men the creatures of society, 
 and make society responsible for their character, Avas, 
 he thought, to mistake the order of nature. Society 
 can feel its responsibility only in its individual 
 members ; and no member of it can free his own 
 ' See above, p. 96. 
 
398 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. iv. 
 
 soul by the purity of a collective or representative 
 conscience. 
 
 The doctrine of Mai thus is, therefore, a strong 
 appeal to personal responsibility. He would make 
 men strong in will, to subdue their animal wants to 
 their notion of personal good and personal goodness, 
 which, he believed, could never fail to develope into 
 the common good and goodness of all. Believers in 
 the omnipotence of outward circumstances and the 
 powerlessness of the human will, to alter them or the 
 human character, may put Malthus beyond the pale 
 of sympathy. But all can enter into the mind of 
 Malthus and understand his work, who know the 
 hardness of the struggle between the flesh and the 
 spirit, and yet believe in the power of ideas to change 
 the lives of men, and have faith not only in the 
 rigour of natural laws, but in man's power to conquer 
 nature by obeying her. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY, 
 
 Parentage — Early Education — Graves and "Wakefield — Course at 
 Cambridge — Correspondence with his Father — Change in Studies 
 — The Crisis and the Curacy — Efi'ect of the Essay on its Author — 
 Early and Late Styles — Life from 1799 to 1834 — Ingrata Patria ? — 
 — East India College — Professor's Lectures — Hie Jacet. 
 
 The few facts that are known of the life of Malthus 
 bring us nearer to him than we can come in his 
 writings, and show us how well, on the whole, his 
 antecedents and surroundings fitted him for his 
 work. Our chief authorities are Bishop Otter's bio- 
 graphical preface to the second edition of our author's 
 Political Economy, which was posthumously published 
 in 1836, and Professor Empson's notice of the book 
 in the Edinburgh Review for January 1837.^ Otter 
 was the college companion and life-long friend of 
 Malthus ; Empson was his colleague at Haileybury. 
 The information they give us, though meagre, is 
 trustworthy ; and happily it can be supplemented 
 by hints from other quarters. 
 
 His father, Daniel Malthus, was born in 1730, and 
 
 ' The authorship of the article is shown by Macvey Napier's Letters 
 svh data, and that of the biogr. preface by Empson's art., p. 472. 
 
400 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 went to Queen's College, Oxford, in 1747/ the year 
 when Adam Smith went home from Balliol to 
 Scotla,nd. He left without a degree, not because of 
 the Articles, for he subscribed them at matriculation,^ 
 or from Dr. Johnson's reason of poverty, for he was 
 a gentleman commoner, but probably from a con- 
 tempt for the distinction itself.' His mind was active 
 and open, and he seems to have formed literary 
 friendships that stood his son in good stead after- 
 wards. He liked to stay up in Oxford in vacation, 
 working hard at his own studies in his own ways, 
 and seeing none but chosen friends. He wrote to his 
 son in later years, " I used to think Oxford none the 
 less pleasant and certainly not the less useful for 
 being disburdened of some of its society ; I imagine 
 you will say the same of Cambridge."* On leaving 
 the university he married and went to live in Surrey 
 at a quiet country house on the way from Dorking 
 to Guildford, still known by its old name of the 
 Rookery. Of his eldest son, who took his grand- 
 father's name of Sydenham,'^ we know little except that 
 in due time he married, and had two sons, Sydenham 
 and Charles, and a daughter Mary. Mary died single 
 in 1881 in her eighty-second year, Charles in 1821 
 
 1 "Daniel Malthus, 17, Sydenham de parochia Sti. Giles Londini 
 Armigeri Alius " (Matriculation entry, Easter term, 1747). 
 
 2 See Gibbon's Memoirs, p. 46 (ed. Hunt and Clarke), and Jeffrey's 
 Life, i. 40. 
 
 » Cf. Wealth of Nations, V. i. art., pp. 341 foil. 
 
 * Biogr. pref. to Pol. Econ. (1836), p. xxvi. 
 
 ^ The name Malthus itself is probably Malt-hus, or Malthouse (cf. 
 Shorthou'^e, Maltby), which still occurs as a surname in England. 
 Francis (or, some say, Thomas) Malthus wrote on ' Fireworks, fortifica- 
 tion, and arithmetic,' in French and in English, 1629. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 401 
 
 in his fifteenth, their father in 1821 in his sixty- 
 eighth. Sydenham, our author's nephew, who died 
 in 1869, was proprietor of Dalton Hill, Albury, where 
 members of his family were, til] recently, still living ; 
 his son, Lieut.-Col. Sydenham Malthus, C.B., of the 
 94th Eegiment, served with distinction in the Zulu 
 war a few years ago. 
 
 Daniel's second son, Thomas Eobert, familiarly 
 known as Robert, was born at the Rookery on 14tli 
 February, 1766, the year when Rousseau came to 
 England. His mother seems to have died before 
 her husband ; she is not mentioned in our meagre 
 biographies.^ His father, full of the teaching of the 
 Emile, and by no means prejudiced by his Oxford 
 experience in favour of the ordinary conventional 
 training of the English youth, seems to have sent 
 his sons to no public school of any kind, and in 
 all probability brought them up at home under his 
 own eye for the first eight or nine years of their 
 life. We may think of Robert, therefore, as passing 
 his childhood without privation, if without luxury, 
 in the home of an English country gentleman of 
 moderate fortune, who was devoted to books and 
 botany, fireside and hillside philosophizing,^ and the 
 improvement of his house and grounds, — a man full 
 of life and originality, gifted with vigorous health, 
 and joining in his boys' walks and games.' In his 
 
 1 Except perhaps in a letter quoted by Otter, biogr. pref. p. xivii. 
 (date 1788). 
 
 ^ I. C. p. XXV. 
 
 ' I. c. pp. XXV and ixvi, which show, however, that at fifty-seven the 
 strength had failed a little. 
 
 D D 
 
403 MALTHUS AND HIS WOEK. [bk. t. 
 
 quiet little valley it was easy for Daniel Malthus to 
 picture to himself a Millennial Hall of the future 
 in store for every one else, on the type of his own 
 Rookery, with no worse interruption than the rooks 
 that cawed there nightly on the hill above him. 
 From his son's description^ and his own letters, we 
 gather that he was one of the best sort of the 
 Enlightened followers of Nature. He knew Rousseau 
 personally, and became his executor;^ but they were 
 liker in views than in character ; Daniel Malthus had 
 a deeper vein of reverence and a stronger inclination 
 to put theory into practice.' The neighbours thought 
 him an amiable and clever man who was an ornament 
 to his parish, but decidedly eccentric, for he made few 
 friends and was fondest of his own and his children's 
 company.* He was versed beyond his compeers in 
 French and German literature, or he would hardly have 
 been credited with having translated Faul et Virginie, 
 D'Ermenonville's Essay on Landscape, and the Sorrows 
 of Werther. We have Robert's authority for saying 
 that, although he wrote no translations, he wrote 
 many pieces that were very successful, but always 
 anonymous.^ With much of his son's talent, he had 
 no power, like his son's, of sustained intellectual effort. 
 He saw the boy's promise early, and gave him 
 
 1 " He was not born to copy the works of otliers." — Letter in Qe/rdl. 
 Mag., Feb. 1800. See above, p. 7, and Otter, p. xxii. 
 
 2 Otter, pp. xxi, xxii. 
 
 2 So he urges Eobert continually to " apply his tools. " "I hate to see 
 a girl working curious stitches upon a piece of rag." — Otter, p. xxvi. 
 
 ■> Gentl. Mag., Jan. 1800, p. 86 ; cf. Feb. 1800, p. 177 ; Otter, p. xxvi. 
 
 '' Monthly Mag., March 1800, Otter, p. xxii. What and where were 
 the pieces we are not told. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGEAPHY. 403 
 
 au education which is condemned by Robert's chief 
 biographer as irreguhir and desultory, but had a 
 method in it. He believed that sons are always 
 what their fathers were at their age, with the same 
 kind of faults and virtues ; and the men whose 
 influence would have been best for himself w^ould, 
 he thought, be the best teachers for Eobert. At 
 the same time he believed with the " Emile " that 
 a sort of laissez /aire was the best policy in the 
 education of children ; they should be left to grow, 
 and use their own eyes and hands and heads for 
 themselves. At the age of nine or ten, say in the 
 year 1776, Robert was accordingly delivered over to 
 Mr. Eichard Graves, Rector of Claverton, near Bath, 
 to be taught little but Latin and good behaviour, 
 along with a few other boys, most of them older 
 than himself. Graves, who was Daniel's senior by 
 some years, had been intimate with the poet 
 Shenstone at Pembroke College, Oxford, " a society 
 which for half a century " (on Johnson's partial 
 testimony) " was eminent for English poetry and 
 elegant literature." From his novel. The Spiritual 
 (Quixote, or the Summer s Ramble of Mr. Geoffry 
 Wildgoose^ we should not fancy him the best guide 
 for ingenuous youth. The book is a coarse and 
 offensive satire on Whitfield and Wesley ; ^ and shows 
 
 ' Written in 1772, and republished in Mrs. Barbauld's series of 
 British Novelists, 1820. Graves lived at Claverton from 1750 till his 
 death in 1804, in bis ninetieth year. He became Fellow of All Souls in 
 1730, and may have known Daniel Malthus at Oxford. 
 
 ^ Whom he names and quotes freely. Tucker, in Light of Nature, 
 shows the same open dislike of them, but with miich more good-humour 
 and taste. 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 Graves as a clergyman to be liker Laurence Sterne 
 than Dr. Primrose. " Don Roberto," however, as the 
 tutor nicknamed his pupil, was fonder of fun and 
 fighting than of his books, and at the ripe age of 
 ten is not likely to have been troubled about the 
 universe or about clerical consistency. From Graves 
 he passed^ into the hands of a much better man, 
 Gilbert Wakefield, a clergyman who had rebelled 
 against the Articles, turned dissenter, and become 
 classical master of an academy at Warrington, 
 founded in 1779 "to provide a course of liberal 
 education for the sons of dissenters, and particularly 
 for dissenting ministers."^, About one- third of the 
 boys at the Warrington Academy were sons of 
 members of the Church of England, who were, like 
 Daniel Mallhus, liberal in their opinions, and wished 
 their sons to be likewise. Wakefield held decided 
 views on education ; and they were in close accord- 
 ance with Daniel and the Emile. "The greatest 
 service of tuition," he said, " to any youth, is to 
 teach him the exercise of his own powers, to conduct 
 him to the hill of knowledge by that gradual process 
 in which he sees and secures his own way, and rejoices 
 in a consciousness of his own faculties and his own 
 proficiency. Puppies and sciolists alone can be 
 expected to be formed by any other process."' The 
 tutor's best service is to point the pupil to the best 
 authors and give him advice (not lectures) when he 
 
 1 In 1780 or thereabouts. 
 
 2 Wakefield's Life (1804), vol. i. p. 214. It is curious to rameinber 
 that Marat is said to have been an usher at a Warrington School a short 
 time before this. ' Wakefield's Life, i. p. 344. 
 
BK. v.] biography; 405 
 
 wants it. There was self-denial as well as wisdom 
 in Wakefield's view, for in one case at least the 
 pupil showed his proficiency by departing from the 
 opinions of his tutor. & 
 
 Wakefield, himself a Fellow of Jesus,^ procured 
 Malthus an entrance to that college, and directed 
 his studies till he matriculated there as a pensioner 
 (or ordinary commoner) on 17th December, 1784, 
 beginning residence in 1785.^ Eobert esteemed him 
 highly. He described him twenty years afterwards ' 
 as a man " of the strictest and most inflexible inte- 
 grity," who gave up not only prospects of preferment, 
 but even opportunities of usefulness, rather than deny 
 the truth and ofi"end his conscience, — a man hot and 
 intemperate in public controversy,* but modest and 
 genial in society, never advancing his opinions till 
 challenged, nor trying to m.ake converts to them, 
 but urging others to an independent study of the 
 facts, — finally, a genius cramped by its own learning 
 and good memory, never taking time and pains to 
 do itself justice in its writings. Though a foe to the 
 thirty-nine Articles, Wakefield was a stout believer in 
 Christianity, and attacked Paine's Age of Reason in 
 a rough style that contrasts strongly with the sober 
 remarks of Malthus on Paine's Bights of Man. 
 
 1 Elected in 1*776. See Life, i. p. Ill ft. 
 
 ^ Otter, J. c. p. xxvii ft. 
 
 ' Letter in App. II. to "Wakefield, lAje, ii. pp. 454 — 463. A comparison 
 of this letter with Wakefield, JAfe, ii. p. 334, and Otter, I. c. p. xxiv ft. 
 (" by his own acknowledgment "), makes it almost certain that the letter 
 is by Malthus. 
 
 * a. g. with such very different men as Watson, Bishop of Llandafi^, 
 and Thomas Paine. 
 
406 MALTHUS AXD HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 Up to 1785, therefore, his father and Wakefield 
 had the largest share in the education of Mai thus ; 
 and their influence was shown in the very fact that 
 the opinions of Malthus were not fixed by them. 
 His opinions were to be of his own forming ; and, 
 having never learned the schoolboy's ambition of 
 prize-taking,^ he found time at college not only for 
 what would give him the best degree, but for every 
 study that interested him, especially history and 
 poetry and modern languages, as in his later years 
 for Italian literature. Frend, author of a political 
 tract, Peace and Union, Avhich broiight him the 
 honour of prosecution,^ was his college tutor, and 
 spoke highly of him.' It says much for his mathe- 
 matical powers that in spite of his wide general read- 
 ing he took the ninth place among the wranglers of 
 his year, 1788. If he had been confining himself, 
 as his father supposed, to the beaten track, he might, 
 like Paley, have reached the senior wranglership.* 
 After the Tripos he proposed to study at Cambridge 
 and at home on a plan of his own. His father, on 
 the false analogy of his own experience, had warned 
 him against the abstract studying of scientific and 
 mathematical principles apart from their applications ; 
 he must not " work curious stitches on a piece of rag " ; 
 he must become a practical surveyor, mechanic, and 
 
 1 Thougli at college he took several prizes for Latin and Greek and 
 English Declamations. We may hope that his defect of utterance had 
 not become pronounced at that date, or that the declamations were not 
 always declaimed. 
 
 2 Wakefield, Life, ii. p. 9. 3 Qtter, I. u p. xxv. 
 
 ' Otter himself was fourth wrangler in 1790, and E. D. Clarke junior 
 optime in the same year. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 407 
 
 navigator. The son had answered that there would 
 be ample time after the Tripos to make the appli- 
 cations, and there was little enough time in three 
 years to study the principles. But thereafter, " if 
 you will give me leave to proceed in my own plans 
 of reading for the next two years (I speak with sub- 
 mission to your judgment), I promise you at the 
 expiration of that time to be a decent natural philo- 
 sopher, and not only to know a few principles, but 
 to be able to apply these principles in a variety of 
 useful problems." ^ In reality, so far from having his 
 father's tendency to abstract speculation, he was (as 
 he says himself) rather "remarked in college for 
 talking of what actually exists in nature or may be 
 put to real practical use." ^ 
 
 Though the son had the best of this personal con- 
 troversy, he would have done well to have responded 
 to his father's letters in the spirit in which they were 
 written ; in one instance at least, his father complains 
 that Eobert " drove him back into himself." But 
 this was rare. His father describes him as an. ad- 
 mirable companion, sympathetic and generous, and 
 making everybody easy and amused about him.' 
 He was a favourite at home. When the family was 
 removing from the Eookery at Dorking to the 
 Cottage * at Albury in 1787, he was told : " You must 
 find your way to us over bricks and tiles and meet 
 with five in a bed and some of us under hedges, but 
 
 1 Otter, I. c. p. xxviii. ^ I. c. p. xxvii. ^ I c p. xxviii. 
 
 * On the road leading out of Albury towards Guildford, a snug little 
 low-roofed house clinging to a hill slope, less ambitious than the Rookery, 
 but not without its pleasant garden walks, trees, and shrubberies. 
 
408 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 everybody says they will make room for Eobert. ' It 
 was Robert's own warm heart that led him to give 
 those years of leisure after the Tripos to studies very 
 different from those of his first plan. Social problems 
 were competing for his attention with scientific. 
 
 In 1797 he took his Master's degree. In the 
 same year he got a fellowship at his college ; wrote 
 but, on his father's advice, did not print the Crisis ; ' 
 and took a curacy near Albury. If the Crisis did 
 nothing more, it showed how the attention of the 
 man was fixing itself on the subjects that engrossed 
 him during life, and how his character was changing 
 from gay to grave. It is difiicult for a reader of 
 the later Essay or the Political Economy to conceive 
 that the writer could ever have been very merry in 
 heart or light in touch ; and there is a still wider 
 distance between the pugnacious Don Eoberto, never 
 long without a black eye, and the grave gentle host 
 of Miss Martineau at the East India College. The 
 change in style between his early writings and his 
 later was due to a real change in character, produced 
 by the concentration of his thoughts on the problem 
 of poverty. The success of the first Essay on Popula- 
 tion ^ fixed for him the work of his life. He was to 
 set one neglected truth clearly before the world ; and 
 lie devoted himself wholly to it, pushing his inquiries 
 not only by study of authorities and facts at home,' 
 
 ' See above, p. 7. 
 
 2 Of which the genesis has been suflficiently described above, Bk. I. ch. i. 
 
 = One of his sources is shown by Msmy, IV. ix. 438 : " In some con- 
 versations with labouring men during the late eoarcities." Cf. the tract 
 on Tlie. High Price of Provisions, p. 10, &c. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGEAPHY. 409 
 
 but by his own ' and his friends' ^ travels, and by 
 conversation and correspondence with all that were 
 likely to give him anything in conference.^ He sacri- 
 ficed to it, fortunately or unfortunately, his youthful 
 buoyancy and freshness of style, though in speculation 
 his opinions passed from pessimism to a moderate 
 optimism, and he was never too old in spirit to unlearn 
 a fault. 
 
 In his mature writings the composition is less faulty 
 than the diction, which is certainly too Johnsonian. 
 The composition is a little bald and often diffuse ; 
 but the meaning of each sentence is always clear, and 
 in economical writing that is the first of virtues. In 
 a work of imagination we may desire to have the 
 greatest number of the greatest ideas put into each 
 sentence ; but a scientific treatise is more often con- 
 cerned with a single truth in its full development ; 
 and the perpetual recurrence of the same phrases in 
 different connections is unavoidable, in proportion to 
 the thoroughness of the discussion. Great variety of 
 language would either imply in the writer or cause in 
 
 ' See above, pp. 48, 49 (abroad), and p. ]95 (in Ireland). 
 
 ' Clarke (E. D.) {Life by Otter, vol. ii. p. 15) refers to a letter from 
 Malthus, asking abont the Foundling Hospital at St. Petersburg (date 
 March 1800). Of. ibid., p. 39 : "As for Malthus, tell liim he is not 
 worth writing to. He is wrapped np in other matters and obliterating 
 all traces of his pilgrimage. . . He is a great deal trap de plomb pour wi 
 tourist " [sic\. So he draws on Mackintosh when the latter is in India, 
 ■ in 1804. See Mackintosh's Life (1836), p. 215. 
 
 ^ E. g. Eicardo, Senior, and Dr. Thos. Chalmers (who paid him a 
 flying visit in October 1822 : Life by Hanna, vol. ii. p. 358), and Francis 
 Horner {Memoirs and Corresp., e. g. vol. i. p. 406). In i. 436 of his 
 Memoirs Horner speaks of having gone vrith John Whishaw, the bar- 
 rister, to visit Malthus at Haileybury in 1 808, and takes occasion to praise 
 his mere love of truth above the eloquence and versatility of other."!, 
 though that, he says, may look like a decision in favour of dulness. 
 
410 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk v. 
 
 llie reader some confusion of thought. It is not sur- 
 prising, then, to find Malthus saying substantially the 
 same thing in nearly the same words, whether he is 
 presenting his views on Population directly in a book 
 on the subject, or placing them in their economical 
 context in a book on Political Economy, or touching 
 them incidentally in a Corn Law pamphlet or (Quarterly 
 article, or answering questions about them before a 
 Commons Committee. His abundant metaphors in 
 the first essay ^ had simply led to misunderstanding ; 
 and he deliberately renounced fine writing for high 
 thinking, present popularity for permanent usefulness.^ 
 The first essay was the turning-point in his literary 
 life. Except the pamphlets on Haileybury College, 
 all his later writings are economical. His personal 
 history, being uneventful, was, like a time of dull 
 annals, presumably happy. The fine portrait of him 
 by Linnell,^ taken in his old age, gives a pleasing 
 impression, not only of mildness and firmness, but 
 of serene contentment, without any trace of physical 
 sufi"ering or physical defect, though it is certain he 
 had the latter.* In person he was tall and " elegantly 
 formed."* 1799 is the year of his first Continental 
 
 ' 'E. g. the reservoir, p. 106 ; but the most extravagant is perhaps the 
 botanical figure, on p. 273, where he says that " the forcing manure," 
 employed to cause the French Revolution, has "burst the calyx of 
 humanity.'' Macaulay uses a similar metaphor of precisely the same 
 event, in the Essay on Burleigh. 
 
 2 His own command of metaphor made it the easier for him to turn 
 the edge of an opponent's. See e. g. his handling of Weyland's Giant, 
 Musket-ball, and Swaddling-clothes, in Essay, Append, pp. 514 — 521. 
 
 ^ Engraved by Fournier for the Dictionnaire de V Economie Politique, 
 art. ' Malthus.' « See below, p. 418 n. 
 
 5 Gentl. Mag., March 1835, p. 324. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 411 
 
 journey.^ In January 1800 his father died, at the age' 
 of seventy. In the same year appeared the tract on 
 The High Price of Provisions. In 1802 Malthus was 
 again on the Continent.^ In June 1803 he published 
 the second (or quarto) essay, which seems, from a 
 passage in Edward Clarke's Travels, to have been 
 long expected by his friends. " I am sorry," writes 
 Clarke to him from Constantinople on 16th March, 
 1802, "to find you confess your breach of duty in 
 not having written a book. But you have been 
 engaged in the press, because I heard at the Palace 
 that you had published a new edition of your Popu- 
 laiion, and, moreover, I was there assured so long 
 ago as last year that you had written a work on the 
 Scarcity of Corn. How does this accord with your 
 declaration 1 Perhaps it is a pamphlet, and therefore 
 strictly not ' a book.' "^ 
 
 It is not impossible that Clarke had heard this 
 rumour from Lord Elgin, and Lord Elgin from Pitt 
 himself, for Pitt had visited Cambridge on the eve 
 of the dissolution following the Peace of Amiens. On 
 the 16th (December 1801) he was present at the Com- 
 memoration dinner in Trinity College Hall.* The visit 
 is described by Otter:' "It happened that Mr. Pitt 
 
 ' Essay (7th ed.), II. iii. 148, where " winter of 1788 " ia perhaps for 
 1798, though it is 1788 in the second and all subsequent editions ; or 
 else "preceding" may be wrong. Of. BAqh Price of Prov., p. 2. 
 
 ^ Cf. above, pp. 48, 127, which should be read in conjunction with 
 this Biography. ■ 
 
 ' Life of Clarke, vol. ii. p. 183. We know from a footnote in the essay 
 itself (7th ed., p. 194) that part of it at least was written, in 1802. 
 
 * Stanhope, Life of Pitt, iii. p. 36; cf. p. 53. "Our election at 
 Cambridge was perfectly quiet. " 
 
 ' Life of (Mrke, ii. 203-4 n. 
 
412 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK [bk. v. 
 
 was at this time upon a sort of canvassing visit at 
 the university. . . At a supper at Jesus Lodge in 
 the company of some young travellers, particularly 
 IMr. Malthus, &c., he was induced to unbend in a very 
 easy conversation respecting Sir Sidney Smith, the 
 massacre at Jaffa, the Pacha of Acre, Clarke, Carlisle,^ 
 &c." Though the talk was largely on poetry and 
 foreign politics, it may easily have embraced econo- 
 mics ; and the personal meetiDg may have helped to 
 gain Malthus his appointment as Professor of History 
 and Political Economy at Haileybury College. With 
 or without Pitt, the appointment was made in 1805 ; 
 and in view of it Malthus was able to carry out, 
 on 13th March 1804, his marriage with Harriet 
 Eckersall (daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton 
 House, St. Catherine's, near Bath), to whom he had 
 probably been for some years engaged.^ In 1806 he 
 published the third edition of the essay (in two 
 volumes), in 1807 the fourth edition, and also the 
 letter to Samuel Whitbread on his Bill for amending 
 the Poor Laws. If it is true that he visited Owen 
 at New Lanark, it must have been in the course of 
 the next seven years.' There is nothing signed from 
 his pen in that time but a letter to Lord Grenville in 
 
 1 Earl of Carlisle, the poet. See Engl. Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 
 
 2 Otter, I. c. p. xxyi. Cf. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 210-12. Gentl. Mag., 
 April 1804, p. 374. A compliment which Otter pays him (in an obituary 
 in the AthencBum, 10th Jan. 1835), that his servants stayed long with 
 him, wnnld fall more naturally to his wife. 
 
 2 Mr. Sargant {Life of Owen, p. 85) says, on the authority of Mr. 
 Holyoake, that Malthus visited New Lanark in its palmy days. Owen's 
 work then was after Malthus' own heart ; he was reforming the world 
 by beginning with one individual corner of it. Cf. Essay, III iii. 
 £82 ft. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 413 
 
 defence of the East India College ;^ but in 1814 and 
 1815 he wrote the Observations on the Corn Laws, the 
 Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of restricting Im- 
 portation, and The Nature and Progress of Rent. In 
 1807 he had been with Horner in Wales, impressing 
 Horner, as they went together from Eaglan to Aber- 
 gavenny, with his idea that the people should "live 
 dear";^ and in 1817 he visited Kerry and Westmeath. 
 In the same year, 1817, he published the fifth edition 
 of his essay. 1818 would be memorable to him as 
 the year when Mackintosh joined him at Hailey- 
 bury as Professor of General Polity and Law in 
 succession to Mr. Christian. In 1819 Malthus appears 
 as Fellow of the Royal Society, though the honour 
 did not tempt him back into physical science.' In 
 1820 appeared the first edition of the Political 
 Hconomy. In 1821, Thomas Tooke, the author of 
 High and Low Prices, founded the Political Economy 
 Club, James Mill drafting the rules. Malthus, Grote, 
 and Ricardo were among its members ; and the 
 survivors are said to remember well the "crushing 
 criticisms" by James Mill of Malthus' speeches.* 
 
 1823 is the year of the tract on the Measure 
 of Value and the Quarterly article on Tooke; 1824 
 of the paper on Population in the Supplement to 
 
 1 See below, p. 423. 
 
 ^ Memoirs of Horner, i. 436-7; cf. p. 406. Cf. Miss Martineau, Hist, of 
 Peace, Introdiictioii, II. i. 257. 
 
 ' He was made a member of tbe Prencb Institute, and, in 1833, one of 
 the five foreign Associates of the Acad, des Sciences Mor. and Pol., and a 
 member of the Royal Academy of Berlin (Otter, I. c. p. xli). See Chas. 
 Comte, Notice, and Gamier, Diet, de VEc. Pol. 
 
 « Bain, Ufe of James Mill (1882), p. 199. 
 
414 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [be. t. 
 
 the Encyclopcedia Britannica, and the article on the 
 New Political Economy in the Quarterly Bevieio} 
 In 1825 he lost a daughter, and went for his own 
 and his wife's health- to the Continent. In that 
 year he contributed his first paper to the Eoyal 
 Society of Literature, of which he had been made an 
 Associate two years before ; and that year saw Empson 
 take the place of Mackintosh at Haileybury. In 1826 
 was published the sixth edition of the essay, the 
 last published in his lifetime. In 1827 we find him 
 before the Emigration Committee, and we have from 
 his pen the Definitions in Political Economy, and the 
 second paper contributed to the Royal Society of 
 Literature. In 1829 letters passed between him and 
 W. Nassau Senior, which were appended by the latter 
 to his Lectures on Population. In 1830 he wrote 
 the Summary Vieiv, which involved no new effort. 
 Indeed his whole time seems to have been spent in 
 revising his Political Economy in the light of his 
 public and private discussions with Eicardo, though 
 he did not live to print the new edition himself. 
 Shortly before his death he said to some one who 
 rebuked him for his delay : " My views are before 
 the public. If I am to alter anything, I can do little 
 more than alter the language, and I don't know if I 
 should alter it for the better" (Empson, /. c. p. 472). 
 
 1 All that is certainly known of the bulk of his contributions to the 
 Edin. Eeview is that, like those of James Mill and Mackintosh, they do 
 not occur before the twentieth number of it (in July 180*7). See Bain, 
 Life of James Mill, p. 75 n. Horner mentions (Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 437) 
 the article on Newenham's Population of Ireland, 1808, and another (of 
 which he had seen the MS.) Feb. 1811 (Vol. II. p. 68). But see above, 
 p. 285, note. 
 
BK. V.J BIOGEAPHY. 415 
 
 He was one of the first Fellows of the Statistical 
 Society, founded in March 1834, and its first Annual 
 Eeport contains a high eulogy on him and his work ; 
 but he did not live to take much share in its proceed- 
 ings. He died suddenly of heart disease on Monday, 
 29th December, 1834, on a visit to Mr. Eckersall at 
 St. Catherine's, where he was spending Christmas 
 with his wife and family. He is buried in the Abbey 
 Church at Bath, in the north aisle of the nave. Of 
 his three children, two survived him, of whom one, 
 a daughter, is still living.^ 
 
 Brougham, in a letter to Macvey Napier (31st 
 Jan., 1837), denies the truth of an assertion of 
 Empson's, that Lords Lansdowne and Holland tried 
 to get preferment for Malthus, but failed ; on the 
 contrary, he had himself, he says, offered Malthus a 
 living, but Malthus had declined it in favour of his 
 son, Henry,^ "who got it, and I believe now has it." 
 Henry, however, did not become vicar of Effingham 
 (near Leatherhead in Surrey) till 1835, the year 
 after his father's death, — or of Donnington (near 
 Chichester in Sussex) till 1837, the year when 
 Brougham was writing. The second appointment 
 may have been due to Empson's reproach or Otter's 
 influence. Henry died in August 1882 at the age 
 of seventy-six. Since, between the two parishes, 
 
 ' The apocryphal story of his eleven daughters is given and exposed 
 by Gamier, Diet, de VEc. Pol., art. ' Malthus.' 
 
 ^ Otter's son-in-law. " Hal " in his childhood was asked what he would 
 have done if, like the Gcod Samaritan, he had found a man half dead by 
 the roadside ; he answered (on the analogy of flies), " I should have 
 killed him outright." Contrast the child's answer with his father's 
 remarks on the same parahle in Essay, IV. xi. 447. 
 
41 H MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. y. 
 
 lie kept as many as four curates at a time, tlie 
 combined salaries of the two, amounting to £6/^2, 
 seem a small income.i His father himself told Gallois, 
 the French publicist, in 1820, that all his works till 
 then had not brought him above £1000. Gallois, 
 repeating this to the poet Moore, slily remarked that 
 in England poetry seemed to be better paid than 
 useful learning.^ There is no reason for the belief 
 that Malthus was made rich by the second essay,^ 
 or indeed by anything else. He did not go the 
 right way to be rich. He could no doubt have got 
 Church preferment if he had pursued it like Paley. 
 At the end of his days, even if he had desired it, 
 he was too mild a partisan to be a grata persona 
 to the Whigs in office ; he had acquiesced in the 
 Eeform of 1832, but without enthusiasm,* having a 
 livelier interest in social than in political changes. 
 But the world after all used him kindly. Of worldly 
 comfort, after 1805, he had enough ; and he was 
 fully satisfied, as he had reason to be, with his lot in 
 the East India College. It gave him nearly thirty 
 years of the leisure which Godwin had justly counted 
 the true riches of life. 
 
 1 Clergy List, 1881. 
 
 2 Moore's Memoirs, Journals, &o. (ed. Eussell, 1853), vol. iii. p. 148, 
 date Sept. 1820. Moore himself .speaks of meeting Malthus and his wife 
 when he was on a visit to Mackintosh at Haileybury in May 1819. Ibid., 
 ii. 315. 
 
 2 Volksvermshrung, p. 9. Kautsky sometimes trips, but he is more 
 accurate than most of Malthus' foreign biographers. Chas. Comte (in his 
 Notice historique sur la me et les travaux de M. T. R. Malthus, read to 
 Acad, of Mor. and Pol. Sciences, 28th Dec, 1836) converts Haileybury 
 into Aylesbury (p. 31). 
 
 * Pol. Econ. (1836), p. 380 n. Sydney Smith wrote to Grey about hira 
 without success, in 1831 (Holland's Life of Sydney Smith, vol. ii, p. 328). 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 417 
 
 The position had its cares, for the college was an 
 educational experiment. Governor-General Wellesley^ 
 had proposed to found a college at Fort William, 
 Calcutta, for the general education of the civil servants 
 of the Company as well as their special instruction in 
 Oriental languages. He pointed out that their func- 
 tions, judicial, administrative, diplomatic, were now 
 totally unlike their names of writer, factor, and 
 merchant, and they needed something higher than 
 the commercial training which was all that was then 
 required of them. The Directors of the East India 
 Company carried out his wishes so far as to allow 
 Fort William College to do the advanced training in 
 languages ; but they thought that the general educa- 
 tion should be given before the cadets left England, 
 and at the end of 1805 they passed a scheme for 
 establishing for that purpose a college at Hailey- 
 bury, near Hertford. On their nomination, instead of 
 going out at once to India, the future civil servants 
 of India were to spend two or three years at Hailey- 
 bury, and to vecQiYe Jirst a General education on the 
 lines of Oxford and Cambridge, and second a Special 
 education to prepare them for their duties in their 
 province.^ The Professor of " History and Political 
 Economy " and the Professor of " General Polity and 
 
 ' Richard, the brother of Wellington. See his Minute of 18th August, 
 1800, quoted by Malthus in his Statements. 
 
 ^ E. India Register and Directory (Hatchard), year 1807, pp. xxiv seq. 
 " Preliminary view of the establishment of the E. India College." These 
 two branches of the Haileybury programme correspond in their subjects 
 to the Competitive and the Further examinations of candidates for the 
 Civil Service of India as at present conducted. Malthus claims the 
 credit of making the test in Oriental languages a necessary condition 
 of final appointment (Statements, p. 100). 
 
 E E 
 
418 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 the Laws of England " were regarded as giving both 
 the general and the special kinds of training. " As 
 the study of law and political economy " (so runs the 
 scheme) " is to form an essential part in the general 
 system of education, it will be required that, in the 
 lectures upon these subjects, particular attention be 
 given to the explanation of the political and com- 
 mercial relations subsisting between India and Great 
 Britain." ^ The two professors were required to 
 give " (1) a course of lectures on general history and 
 on the history and statistics of the modern nations 
 of Europe, (2) a course of lectures on political 
 economy, (3) a course of lectures on general polity, 
 on the laws of England and principles of the British 
 Constitution." ^ The other subjects were Classics, 
 Oriental Languages, Mathematics, and Natural Phi- 
 losophy. The college course lasted, as a rule, two 
 years, each year consisting of two terms of about five 
 months each (Feb. to June, Aug. to Dec.) ; and there 
 were periodical examinations, honour lists, and prizes. 
 The ages of the pupils ranged from as low as fifteen 
 to as high as twenty-two, and about forty joined 
 every year. Malthus would seldom have a class 
 beyond twelve or fourteen, all in the later year of 
 their course.^ 
 
 The general discipline of the classes and the sur- 
 veillance or want of surveillance of the pupils in their 
 private rooms were rather on the model of an unre- 
 
 1 Accordingly Malthus gets many of his illustrations from India, e. g. 
 Pol. Ec. (2nded.), pp. 154-5. 
 ^ Ind ia Register, 1. c. p. xxv. 
 ' There must be some on the Pension List who still remember him. 
 
BK. v.] EIOGBAPHY. 419 
 
 formed Oxford college than of a public school.^ Sense 
 of personal responsibility and habits of self-govern- 
 ment were to take the place of the schoolboy's fear 
 of punishment. Unhappily, before learning the new 
 motives, the boys too often abused the absence of 
 the old/ 
 
 About half of the professors were in holy orders 
 and did duty in the college chapel. If Mai thus took 
 his turn with the rest, we need not suppose with his 
 clerical biographer that he magnified the office. His 
 sermons would always be earnest ; they might often 
 perhaps be too long. His week-day lectures, unless 
 he made them liker the first essay with its fine writing 
 than the later books with their plain unvarnished 
 arguments, could not have been very fascinating to 
 immature youths, especially as the lecturer had a 
 slight defect in utterance.^ Eight years of teaching 
 convinced him that Political Economy was not, as 
 he once thought, too hard for boys of sixteen or 
 seventeen ; — "they could not only understand it," he 
 said, " but they did not even think it dull." * We 
 
 ^ From the first there was a school, affiliated with the college though 
 not confined to its future pupils. The present school is of later origin. 
 
 2 Statements, p. 103, &c. This idea of the proper preparation for a 
 civilian's career in India chimes in with Malthus' idea of the first requisite 
 of good citizenship at home and everywhere. 
 
 ' A hare-lip. Miss Martineau, who describes it, adds that " his vowels 
 at least were sonorous, whatever might become of the consonants." But 
 she understood him without her ear trumpet. Auiohiogr.,i.S27-8. Of. 
 above, p. 58. Sydney Smith says, " I would almost consent to speak 
 as inarticulately if I could think and act as wisely." Life by Holland, 
 vol. ii. p. 326. He attributes a similar physical defect to Talleyrand, 
 with perhaps as much seriousness. Life by Holland, vol. ii. pp. 256-7. 
 
 * Letter to Lord &renmlle (1813), p. 14. Cf. what he says of the import- 
 ance of teaching Political Economy in elementary schools, &c. Essay, 
 IV. ix. 438 n. 
 
 E E a 
 
420 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 may hope it was so ; but in view of the whole case, 
 it is probable that our author's labours, in the class- 
 room and out of it, were far from light, and that the 
 pleasantness of the life was purchased with a large 
 share of discomfort. 
 
 The physical surroundings were all that could be 
 desired. " We are so rural and quiet here, that there 
 can be no greater contrast [to London]. This house 
 is in a cluster of tall shrubs and young trees, with a 
 little bit of smooth lawn sloping to a bright pond, in 
 which old weeping willows are dipping their hair, and 
 rows of young pear trees admiring their blooming faces. 
 Indeed, there never was such a flash of shadowing 
 high-hanging flowers as we have arouud us ; and 
 almost all, as it happens, of that pure, silvery, 
 snowy, bridal tint ; and we live, like Campbell's sweet 
 Gertrude, ' as if beneath a galaxy of overhanging 
 sweets, with blossoms white.' There are young 
 horse-chestnuts with flowers half a yard long, fresh, 
 full-clustered white lilacs, tall Guelder roses, broad- 
 spreading pear and cherry trees, low thickets of 
 blooming sloe, and crowds of juicy-looking detached 
 thorns, quite covered with their fragrant May-flowers, 
 half open, like ivory filigree, and half shut like 
 Indian pearls, and all so fresh and dewy since the 
 milky showers of yesterday ; and resounding with 
 nightingales, and thrushes, and skylarks, shrilling 
 high up, overhead, among the dazzling slow-sailing 
 clouds. Not to be named, I know and feel as much 
 as you can do, with your Trossachs, and Loch 
 Lomonds, and Inverarys ; but very sweet, and vernal, 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 421 
 
 and soothing, and fit enougli to efface all recollections 
 of hot, swarming, whirling, and bustling London 
 from all good minds." ^ 
 
 Equally pleasant is a glimpse of the daily life at 
 HaUeybury, given by Miss Martineau, who saw it in 
 1833. Malthus considered her one of his best 
 expositors ; — " whereas his friends had done him all 
 manner of mischief by defending him injudiciously, my 
 tales had represented his views precisely as he could 
 have wished ; " — and he was at the pains to seek her 
 out in London and bring her down to the college.^ 
 " It was a delightful visit, and the well-planted county 
 of Herts was a welcome change from the pavement 
 of London in August . . . My room was a large and 
 airy one, with a bay window and a charming view." ^ 
 She found desk, books, and everything needed for 
 her work. Her entertainers had guessed from her 
 books that she must be, like Malthus himself,* fond 
 of riding ; and she found her riding-habit and whip 
 ready. Exploring the green lanes round Amwell, 
 Ware, and Hertford, on horseback, in parties of five 
 or six, seems to have been the chief amusement. 
 " The subdued jests and external homage and occa- 
 sional insurrections of the young men, the archery 
 of the young ladies, the curious politeness of the 
 Persian professor [Ibrahim], the fine learning and 
 
 1 Jeffrey, Life, vol. ii. pp.. 339, 340. To Mrs. C. Irnies, 9t]i May, 1841. 
 ' Autobiogr., i. 327. Other visits of Malthus to her are recorded, 
 
 lii. 83, i. 253. For her view of him and his Trork see especially i. 
 200, 209, 253, 331. 
 
 2 lb. I. pp. 328-9. 
 
 * Cf. 1st Essay, pp. 225-6, which shows him on the Hunting-Field. 
 
422 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 eager scholarship of Principal ^ Le Bas, and the some- 
 what old-fashioned courtesies of the summer evening 
 parties are all over now, except as pleasant pictures 
 in the interior gallery of those who knew the place, 
 of whom I am thankful to have been one." 
 
 When she again visited Haileybury, Malthus was 
 gone ; Professor Jones was in his chair, and Empson 
 in his house, probably one of the most comfortable 
 in a building which, if smaller, was much more 
 picturesque than the present school.^ 
 
 The " occasional insurrections of the young men " 
 were a feature of the college from the beginning. 
 Sydney Smith writes to Lord Holland in June 1810, 
 when there was talk of making Mackintosh professor 
 at Haileybury : " The season for lapidating the pro- 
 fessors is now at hand ; keep Mackintosh quiet at 
 Holland House till all is over ; " ^ and to Whishaw 
 in January 1818, when the appointment had been 
 made : " His situation at Hertford will suit him very 
 well, peltings and contusions always excepted. He 
 should stipulate for 'pebble money,' as it is technically 
 termed, or an annual pension in case he is disabled 
 by the pelting of the students. By the bye, might 
 it not be advisable for the professors to learn the 
 use of the sling {balearis habena) 1 It would give 
 them a great advantage over the students."* The 
 
 1 A slip of the pen for " Professor." The Principal was J. H. 
 Batten, F.E.S. 
 
 ^ Where the fear expressed in some quarters (see Statements, 
 p. 87) that the place would become a barrack has been realized 
 architecturally. 
 
 ' Life by Holland, vol. ii. p. 73. 
 
 * I. c. vol. ii. p. 150. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGEAPHT. 423 
 
 lapidations were probably no v/orse than similar 
 scenes at our English and Scotch Universities that 
 have not yet destroyed the credit of these institu- 
 tions. But the opponents of the college complained of 
 much more than the insubordination of the students. 
 Lord Grenville had made an attack on it (in April 
 1813), on the ground that it separated the future 
 Civil servants from the ordinary life of Englishmen, 
 and prevented them from becoming imbued with 
 " English manners, English attachments, English 
 principles, and I am not ashamed to say English 
 prejudices."^ Malthus, who had gone up to London 
 to hear Granville's speech in the House of Lords, 
 became champion of the college, and had no 
 difficulty in meeting this assault. The defence of 
 the professors, as set forth by him in 1817,^ was that 
 the plan of the college was good in theory and had 
 proved good in practice. The insubordination was 
 due to the dependence of the professorial staff upon 
 the Company's Directors, who had (till then) withheld 
 from the teachers their best means of discipline, the 
 power of expulsion. 
 
 The students were as little likely as army or navy 
 cadets to become un-English ; and they were much 
 less likely to form a caste at Haileybury than if they 
 
 1 Debate in House of Lords, April 9th, 1813, Hansard, pp. 750, 751. 
 
 * ' Statements respecting the East India College, with an appeal to 
 facts in refutation of the charges lately brought against it in the Court 
 of Proprietors ' (1817). Cf. his ' Letter to Lord Grenville, occasioned by- 
 some observations of his Lordship on the E. India Co.'s establishment for 
 the education of their Civil servants ' (1813). Cf. Edin. Bev., Deo. 1816. 
 The Letter to Lord Grenville (1813) states the case a little less fully ; 
 but both pamphlets contain substantially the same arguments. 
 
424 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v. 
 
 had been sent to an Indian college. The details of 
 this extinct controversy need not detain us. It is 
 enough to say that Malthus discharged his part with 
 great vigour and something of his early vivacity. At 
 the best, it must be confessed, the college was a 
 compromise ; and the unavoidable difHculties of the 
 situation were quite enough to try the mettle of the 
 teachers. The cadets of the first year might be fifteen 
 or they might be eighteen, and there was no natural 
 aristocracy of senior boys to check the juniors. Those 
 of the younger age were physically and mentally 
 more like schoolboys than undergraduates, and unfit, 
 as yet, for the quasi-independent life of the latter. 
 Many were unwilling to go to India at all, and it 
 was their parents or guardians who really feared the 
 expulsion of incorrigibles. But it was better that 
 the unfit should be rejected in England, where they 
 could find other openings, than in India, where they 
 could find none ; and it was better their training 
 should be carried on where the climate, the expense, 
 and the moral, social, and intellectual advantages were 
 in keeping with their age and their state of pupilage. 
 " Little other change is wanting," in the system as 
 it then was, " than that an appointment should be 
 considered in spirit and in truth, not in mere words, 
 as a prize to be contended for, not a property already 
 possessed,^ which may be lost. If the Directors were 
 to appoint one-fifth every year beyond the number 
 finally to go out, and the four-fifths were to be the 
 
 1 A property it often was, in the most literal sense, being bought and 
 sold for cash. See Hist, of Peace, Introd. II. ii. 329-30. 
 
BK. v.] BIOGEAPHY. 425 
 
 best of the whole body, the appoiDtments would then 
 really be prizes to be contended for, and the effects 
 would be admirable. Each appointment to the college 
 would then be of less value ; but they would be more 
 in number, and the patronage would hardly suffer. 
 A Director could not then, indeed, be able to send 
 out an unqualified son. But is it fitting that he 
 should ? This is a fair question for the consideration 
 of the Legislature and the British public."^ In these 
 matters, at least, Malthus was no reactionary. 
 
 In spite of Joseph Hume and its other enemies, the 
 college lived out its half-century, and does not die 
 out, on the pages of the India Register, till the death 
 of the Company in 1858. Its monopoly was gone 
 some time before then. An Act of 1827 provided, 
 theoreticallj'', for the examination and appointment 
 of India Civil servants who had not studied at 
 Hertford College. In 1833 provision was made for" 
 the limited competition which Malthus had recom- 
 mended.^ In 1855 came the end. The Company was 
 " relieved of the obligation to keep up the college ; " 
 the reign of open competition, ushered in by Macau- 
 lay's Eeport (Nov. 1854), brought a new order of 
 things ; and the college was only continued till those 
 who had joined it at the time of the change had been 
 able to finish their course.' There are numbers of old 
 
 * iSfa4emen<s, p. 103 n. 
 
 ' Candidates were to be nominated in groups of four, the best of the 
 four to have the appointment. Cf. Mill and Wilson's £rii. India, Vol. 
 IX. Book III. ch. ix. p. 381. 
 
 ^ The steps of the change may be followed in the fourth Report 
 (1858) of the Civil Service Commissioners, pp. xix seg. and 228 seq. Cf. 
 also their first Eeport (1855). 
 
426 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK. [bk. v, 
 
 officials, like Sir William Muir, who still hold it 
 in affectionate remembrance ; ^ but except in their 
 memory it exists no more. 
 
 The work of Malthus was less in the East India 
 College than in his writings. But his connection 
 with the college was perhaps the most important of 
 the external facts of his life ; and it has helped to 
 preserve a record of scenes and incidents which reveal 
 the character more clearly than all the adjectives of 
 panegyrists. Otter, Empson, Miss Martineau, Sydney 
 Smith,'' and Horner,' may supply the panegyrics ; and 
 the eulogy of Mackintosh is remarkable : " I have 
 known Adam Smith slightly, Eicardo well, Malthus 
 intimately. Is it not something to say for a science 
 that its three great masters were about the three best 
 men I ever knew ? " * 
 
 His epitaph in Bath Abbey, probably from the pen 
 of Otter, is given on the following page. 
 
 ^ For proofs of their regard, see the letters quoted in the blue-hook of 
 18T6 on "the Selection and Training of candidates for the Civil Service 
 of India,'' passim, and Trevelyan's " Competition Wallah '' (1864), pp. 7, 
 ,8, 15, 16, butcf. 149. 
 
 2 See Works, Review of Rennel, footnote. 
 
 2 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 436, &c. 
 
 * Quoted in Empson, Edin. Rev., Jan. 1837, p. 473. Sinclair's ' Corre- 
 spondence' (1831), amongst other curious matter, gives the autographs 
 of the three great masters (I. 101). 
 
BK. v.] BIOGRAPHY. 427 
 
 SACRED TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 C^e ieb. S;&omas ^ohivt gtall^us, 
 
 LONG KNOWN TO THE LETTERED WORLD 
 
 BY HIS ADMIRABLE WRITINGS ON THE SOCIAL BRANCHES OF 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 PARTICULARLY BY HIS "ESSAY ON POPULATION." 
 
 ONE OF THE BEST MEN AND TRUEST PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 OF ANY AGE OR COUNTRY, 
 
 RAISED BY NATIVE DIGNITY OF MIND 
 
 ABOVE THE MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE IGNORANT 
 
 AND THE NEGLECT OP THE GREAT, 
 
 HE LIVED A SERENE AND HAPPY LIFE, 
 
 DEVOTED TO THE PURSUIT AND COMMUNICATION 
 
 OF TRUTH, 
 
 SUPPORTED BY A CALM BUT FIRM CONVICTION OF THE 
 
 USEFULNESS OF HIS LABOURS, 
 
 CONTENT WITH THE APPROBATION OF THE WISE AND GOOD. 
 
 HIS WRITINGS WILL BE A LASTING MONUMENT 
 OF THE EXTENT AND CORRECTNESS OP HIS UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 THE SPOTLESS INTEGRITY OF HIS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 THE EQUITY AND CANDOUR OP HIS NATURE, 
 
 HIS SWEETNESS OP TEMPER, URBANITY OF MANNERS, 
 
 AND TENDERNESS OP HEART, 
 
 HIS BENEVOLENCE AND HIS PIETY, 
 
 ARE THE STILL DEARER RECOLLECTIONS OP HIS FAMILY 
 
 AND PKIEND3. 
 
 Born Feb. I4, 1766. Died Dec. 29, 1S34. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbot, Chas., mover of Enumer- 
 ation Bill, 173, 178 
 
 Africa, 105, 111 
 
 America, North, 17, 28, 69 seg. ; 
 Indians, 89 seq., 105, 111, 143, 
 167, 174, &c. ; cf. 369, 370 
 (American increase) 
 
 America, South, 88 
 
 Anderson, Adam, 173, 174 
 
 Anderson, Jas., 221, 377 
 
 Arabs, 109, 110 
 
 Aristotle, 113, 211, 214, 319, 356, 
 384 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 22, 47, 66, 124, 
 
 396 
 Bagehot, Walter, 227, 383 
 Ball, John, 385 
 Bamford, Sam., 298 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 43, 44, 323, 325, 
 
 331 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 201 
 Bert, Paul, 371 
 Births, no criterion of numbers, 
 
 149 ; or of increase, 179, cf. 161 
 Board of Agriculture, 176, 186, 216 
 
 —218 
 Booth, David, 362, 371 
 Bosanqviet, Chas., 291 
 Bounties, 31, 217, 220, &c. 
 Brassey, Thos., 257 
 Brougham, H., 228, 415 
 Brown, Dr. J,, 'Estimate,' 173 
 Bruckner, Dr. John, of Norwich, 8 
 Buckle, H. T., 22, 33 
 Bullion Committee, 285 seq. 
 
 Caird, Jas., 69, 75, 76, 245 
 Cairnes, J. E., 138, 245, 261 
 
 Cannibalism, 94 
 
 Carey, H. C, 65, 68, 70, 239, 395 
 
 Census, Swedish, 132 ; English, 
 B. I. ch. vii. 
 
 Chalmers, Geo., 174 
 
 Chalmers, Dr. Thos., 316, 409 
 
 Chartism, 298 
 
 Checks on population, classified, 
 52, 81, passim B. I. and B. IV. 
 
 China, 112, 113 
 
 Clarke, Edw., 48, 127, B. V.. 
 passim 
 
 Cobbett, Wm., 6 and note, 287, 
 290, 298, 338, 363, 395 
 
 Cobden, R., 225, 287, 353 ; cf. 55 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., the Poet, 22, 48, 
 95, 111, 371 seq. ; the MS. notes 
 genuine 1 374 ; cf. 48, 377 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 20, 344 ; cf. 213 
 
 Comte, Charles, 413, 416 
 
 Condorcet, Marquis de, 11, 22 — 
 24, 30, 31, 375, &c. 
 
 Conversion of the world, the pos- 
 tulate of Socialism as of Chris- 
 tianity, 392 
 
 Cook, Captain, prxssim B. I. ch. iv. 
 
 Co-operation, 232, 300, 352, 392 
 
 Copleston, Dr. E., 363 
 
 Com Laws, B. II. ch. i. ; corn as 
 measure of value, 224, 255-6 
 
 Corn Law Catechism, 227, 308 
 
 Cosmology of Malthus, 34 seq. 
 
 Cosmopolitanism, 347, 356, 396 ; 
 cf. 328 
 
 Cripps, 127 
 
 Critics of Malthus, 1, 45, B. IV. 
 passim 
 
 Currency, 226-7, and B. II. ch. iii. 
 
 Cycle, 83, 84, 147 
 
INDEX. 
 
 429 
 
 Darwin, Chas., 24, 46, 363 
 Decreasing returns, law of, 234 
 
 seq. ; cf. 37, 74, 78 
 'Definitions in Pol. Econ.,' 211, 
 
 265, and generally B. II. ch. ii. 
 Dependence on the foreigner, 217, 
 
 225, 233 ; dependent poverty, 
 
 310 
 Depopulation controversy, 173 seg. 
 Depreciation of currency, 285, and 
 
 generally B. II. ch. iii. ; cf. 
 
 227, 248-9 
 Distribution, when keeping pace 
 
 with production, 166 
 Doubleday, Thos., 396 
 Dyer, T. H., 339 
 
 EcKBRSALL, Harriet (Mrs. Mal- 
 
 thus), 412 ; cf. 322 
 Economists, 47, 247, 248, 276 
 Economy, political, its method, 
 
 &c., B. II. ch. i. ; Club first 
 
 founded, 263, 413 ; place among 
 
 the studies of youth, 419 
 Eden, Sir Fred., 'the State of the 
 
 Poor' (1797), 248, 310, &o. 
 'Edinburgh Eeview,' notice of 
 
 Malthus, 43 ; connection with 
 
 Malthus, 33, 329, 364, 371, 412 ; 
 
 but see ' Malthus, T. R. ' ; notice 
 
 of Godwin, 12, 368, 371 
 Educiititm, 56, 77, 275, 298, 301, 
 
 340, 341 ; cf. 403, 404, 419, 420 
 
 E;.rypt, 111 
 
 Emigration, B. I. ch. v. ; Commons 
 
 Committee, I. e. and 195 seg., 
 
 240, 377 
 Empson, Wm., 43, 213 n. ; his 
 
 classification of critics, 377, 394 ; 
 
 life of Malthus, 399 
 Enclosures, 176, 215, 217 
 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' article 
 
 of Malthus in Supplement, 70 
 
 seq. 
 England, B. I. ch. vii. 
 Essay on Population, editions, 2 ; 
 
 origin, 5, 32, &c. ; B. I. passiTn, 
 
 B. IV. passim 
 Ethics of Malthus, B. III. 
 Euler, 69, 369 
 
 Factory Acts, 301, 343, 345 
 Fawcett, Mrs., 240 
 Fawcett, Prof., 273 
 Ferguson, Adam, 297 
 
 Fifth Monarchy Men, 385 
 
 Finland, 48, 127 
 
 Foundling Hospitals, 134, 135 ; cf. 
 
 409 
 Fox, Ch. J., 29, 31, 338 
 Fox, Henry, 173 
 France, B. I. ch. vi. 
 Franklin, Benj., 10, 14, 63, 369 
 Frend, tutor of Malthus, 406 
 Fyffe, C. A., 161 
 
 Gallois, 416 
 
 Garnier, his article on Malthus in 
 ' Diet, de I'Econ. Pol.,' 214, 410, 
 415 
 
 George, Henry, 38, 40; cf. 236, 
 382 ; on population, 385—388 
 
 George III., 29, 324 
 
 Germany, 126, 183 
 
 Gibbon, Edw., 21 n., 107, 108, 400 
 
 Giff'en, E., 72 n., 78 n. 
 
 Gilbert's Act, 27 
 
 Glut, or over-production, B. II. 
 ch. iii. 
 
 Godwin, Wm., 7 ; Pol. Justice, 9 
 —11, &c. ; cf. 355, 371 ; En- 
 quirer, 13, 14; cf. 355 — 371 ; 
 Caleb Williams, 10 ; Memoir of 
 Mary WoUstonecraft, 21 ; St. 
 Leon, 21, 22, 31 ; Parr's Sermon, 
 43 n., 45, 358 ; Population, 43, 
 87, 364 seq. ; character, 58 ; in 
 hands of 'Edinburgh Review,' 
 12, 368, 371 
 
 Government, influence on popula- 
 tion, 112, &c. ; due to our 
 wickedness 1 9 ; acting from 
 passion, 225 ; Whig, as patrons, 
 415, 416 
 
 Grahame, Jas., 376 seq. 
 
 Graves, Rich., tutor of Malthus, 
 404 seq. 
 
 Green, T. H., 354 
 
 Greg, W. R., 41, 394 
 
 Grote, George, 413 
 
 Hailbybdrt College, Malthus' 
 lectures in, 214, 222, 229, 416 
 seq. ; raison d'etre and death, 
 415 seq. ; physical surroundings, 
 420 
 
 Hallam, H., 85, 363 
 
 Hazlitt, W., 85, 329, 372, 386, 394 
 
 Held, Adolf, 41, 325, 331, 382 
 
 Highlands, 150, 187—190 
 
430 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ' High Price of Provisions,' 43, 49, 
 
 215, 307, 408, 411 
 ' High Price of Gold Bullion,' 285 
 History, needs to be re-written, 
 
 83 ; of English commerce, 25, 
 
 282, 283, 298 ; Com Laws, 219 ; 
 
 currency, 286—290 
 Holcroft, friend of Godwin, 22 
 Holland, B. I. ch. v. 
 Holj'oake, G. J., 412 
 Horner, Francis, B. Y. passim; cf. 
 
 285, 340, &c. 
 Hume, David, 31, 32, 99, 115 n., 
 
 116, 135, 173, &c., &c. 
 Hume, Joseph, 425 
 Huntingford, Bishop, 377 
 
 India, child murder, 117 ; cf. 115 
 India Civil Servants, 417 seq. 
 Ingram, . Disquisitions on Popula- 
 tion, 329 
 Ireland, 146, 172, and B. I. ch. vii. 
 d'lvernois. Sir F., 154, 163 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, 329 ; description 
 of Haileybury, 418 
 
 Kant, E., 309, 321, 323 
 Kautsky, Karl, 416 
 
 Labour, as the measure of value, 
 and as earning wages, B. II. 
 ch. ii. 
 
 Land and its rent, B. II. ch. i. 
 
 Lassalle, 268 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 26, 177, 202 
 
 Leslie, Cliffe, 138, 165, 210, 252 
 
 Levasseur, E., 164 seq. 
 
 Leveller.-?, 385 
 
 Locke, J., 13 
 
 Luddites, 290 
 
 Luxuries, 215, 225, 295. See Stan- 
 dard of living. 
 
 Lyell, Sir Chas., 46 
 
 Macaulat, T. B., 272, 336 ; review 
 
 of Sadler, 377, 410, 425 
 MacCulloch, J. R., 33, 40, 167, B. 
 
 II. ch. i. passim 
 Mackintosh, Sir Jas., B. Y. passim; 
 
 cf. 336 
 Macleod, H. D., 287 
 Malthus, Daniel, 7, 399 seq.; cf. 
 
 135, 324 
 Malthus, Henry, 6, 415 
 
 Malthus, T. R., his several works ; 
 Crisis, 7, 30 ; Essay on Popula- 
 tion, B. I. chs. i. ii. and passim ; 
 High Price of Provisions, 43, 49, 
 307, &c. ; Letter to Whitbread, 
 215,313 ; Article on Newenham, 
 93, 195, 202 ; other articles in 
 ' Edinburgh ' and ' Quarterly,' 
 33, 212, 271, 275, 285 and note, 
 288, 290, 329, 371 ; Observations 
 on the Com Laws, 222, 223 ; 
 Grounds of an Opinion, 227 ; 
 Nature and Progress of Rent, 
 229 ; Political Economy, 210— 
 214 ; Measure of Value, 254 ; De- 
 finitions in Political Economy, 
 211, 265 ; article in Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica,,71 ; Papers read be- 
 fore Royal Society of Literature, 
 263 ; Evidence before Emigration 
 Committee, 144 seq. ; Summary 
 View, 80 ; Tracts on East India 
 College, 423 ; correspondence 
 wiih Godwin, Senior, Napier, 
 Ricardo, Clarke, Sinclair, see 
 under these names ; letter on 
 Wakefield, 405 ; style, 50, 265, 
 304, 408, 409 ; character, 57, and 
 B. V. passim 
 
 Man on the earth. See Cosmology 
 and Ethics 
 
 Manufacturer, late and early sense, 
 26 
 
 Marat, 404 
 
 Marcet, Mrs., 272 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, 3, 57, 58, 85 , 
 287, 323, and B. V. passim 
 
 Marx, Karl, 84, 257, 268, 388 seq. 
 
 Mean, golden, 225 and note, 295, 
 320 
 
 Mercantile theory, 47 
 
 Middle classes, 225 
 
 Mill, Jas., 208, 209, 273, 276, 280, 
 281, 293, 413, 414 
 
 — John, 209, 239, 244, 71, 273, 281 
 Millennium, Godwin's, 16 ; Social- 
 istic and Christian, 392 
 
 Milne, Joshua, 71, 72 
 
 Minimum of wages, 217, 268, &c. ; 
 
 of prices, 279 
 Mivart, St. George, 385 
 Montesquieu, 32, 108, 109, 138, &c. 
 Moore, Dr. John, 311 
 
 — Thomas, 416 
 
 Moral impossibility, &c., 53 
 
INDEX. 
 
 431 
 
 Moral restraint, 49—53, 118, 119, 
 
 383, &c., &c. 
 — Philosophy of Malthus, B. III. 
 Moravians, 383 
 ' Mordecai Mullion,' 297 
 More, Sir Thos., 11 n., 27, 385 
 Muret, 148 seq., 174, 377 
 
 Napier, Macvey, 6, 43, 71, 314, 
 
 398, &c. 
 Nationality, 346-7 
 Nationalization of land, 236, 382, 
 
 392 
 ' Nature ' defined, 337 ; ' Nature's 
 
 mighty feast,' 305 
 Navigation Act, 228-9 
 Necessaries and luxuries, 117, 118, 
 
 122 
 New and old Malthusians, 24, 375 ; 
 
 cf. 384 
 Newenham, reviewed by Malthus, 
 
 93, 195 
 ' New School of Political Economy,' 
 
 275 seq. 
 Norway, B. I. oh. v. 
 
 Ortbs, G. M., 391 
 
 Otaheite, B. I. ch. iv. 
 
 Otter, Bishop, 48, 127, B. V. 
 
 passim 
 Over-popnlation, 117, 145, 164, &c. 
 Over-production, B. II. ch. iii. ; cf. 
 
 57, 215 ; of food not possible, 
 
 232, 294 
 Over-profits, see under Rent, esp. 
 
 230 
 Owen, Robert, 11 n., 24, 267, 301, 
 
 377, 380, 382 seq., 412 
 
 Paine, Thos., 9, 336, 405 
 
 Paley, W., 34, 38 and note, 39, 43, 
 
 269, B. III. passim, &c. 
 Parr, Dr. S., 43 ; see Godwin 
 Peace of Paris, 35, 220 
 Perfectibility of man, 11, 22 ; see 
 
 Condorcet, Godwin 
 Petty, W., 68, 186, 369 
 Pitcairn Island, 102 
 Pitt, W., B. 1. chs. i., ii. ; cf. 227, 
 
 363 ; B. II. ch. iv. &c., &c. 
 Plato, 66 n., 101 n., 113 ; cf. 385 
 Poland. 249 
 
 Political justice. See Godwin 
 Politics of Malthus ; see B. III. ; 
 
 cf. 198, 225, 298, &c. 
 
 Poor Bill of Pitt, 6, 29, 43 
 Poor Laws, English, 6, 27, 29, 215, 
 135, &c., B. II. ch. iv. 
 
 — Foreign, 313 
 
 Population, B. I. pa'^sim, B. IV. 
 passim; of. esp. 212 
 
 Populousness of ancient nations, 
 31, 32, 113—117 
 
 Postulates of 1st Essay, 16, 47 ; cf. 
 B. I. ch. ii., Theses 
 
 Potatoes, 194—198, 203, 204, 217, 
 380 
 
 Price, Dr. E., 31, 32, 39, 174 ; but 
 esp. 175, 176, cf 377 
 
 Production in relation to distribu- 
 tion, 166, and passim; in rela- 
 tion to consumption, 296 
 
 Productive labour, 212 
 
 Property, private, 76, 236 ; cf. 18 
 
 Prosperity, criterion of national, 
 123 
 
 Protection, B. II. ch. i. 
 
 Prussia, B. I. ch. v. 
 
 'QcARTBELY Eeview,' articles of 
 Malthus in, 212, 285 seq. 
 
 — attitude to Malthus, 363-4 
 
 ' Querist,' Berkeley's. See Wall of 
 
 Brass 
 de Quincey, 266, 297, 363 
 
 Eatio, geometrical and arithme- 
 tical, 17, 66, and generally B. I. 
 ch. iii. ; B. IV. esp. 369 
 Eaynal, Abbi5, 26, 28, 97, 336, 337 
 Eevolution, Industrial, in England, 
 25, 282 
 
 — in France, 7, 11, 27, 154 seq., 
 336, &c. 
 
 Eicardo, D., 57, B. II. passim; let- 
 ters to Malthus, 213, 265 note, 
 414 ; Pol. Econ. and Taxation, 
 209 ; High Price of Bullion, 
 285 ; Low Price of Corn, 238 ; 
 contrasted with Malthus, 265 6. 
 
 Eickman, J., 179 seq., 338 
 
 Eogers, Prof. Thorold, 37, 96, 136, 
 238, 240, 269, &c. 
 
 Eome, B. I. ch. iv. 
 
 Roscher, W., 210, 267 
 
 E(rtisseau, J. J., 7, 27, 135, 401 
 
 Russia, B. I. ch. v. 
 
 Sadler, Mich., 377 seg;- 
 Sargant, W. L., 412 
 
432 
 
 IKDEX. 
 
 Say, J. B., 51, 208, 292 seq. 
 
 Scotland, B. I., ch. vii. 
 
 Sorope, G. Poulett, 377 
 
 Senior, W. 
 
 Short, 369 
 
 Simonin, 376 
 
 Sinclair, Sir John, 186, 216, 368, 
 
 369, 370, 426 
 Sismondi, Ohas. de, 209, 296, 415 
 Smith, Adam, 3, 5, 9, 26, 31, 33, 
 
 47, 56, 57, 86, 95, 105, 117 and 
 
 passim 
 Smith, Sydney, B. V. passim 
 Socialism, 214, 252, 312, 382 seq. 
 Society, Royal, 413 ; of Literature, 
 
 263, 414 ; Statistical, 415 
 Southey, Robt, 4, 11, 338, 374, 
 
 377, 383 
 Speenhamland Act, 30 
 Spence, Wm., Great Britain Inde- 
 pendent of Commerce, 247, 293 
 Spence, author of ' The Land the 
 
 People's Farm,' 382, 385 
 Spencer, Herbert, 393, 396 
 Standard of Comfort, 117, 120 seq., 
 
 137, 140, 194, 195—198, 269, 
 
 295, &c., &c. 
 State insurance, 24 
 Steuart, Sir J., 32 
 Stewart, Dugald, barrel^gaii, 585 
 Struggle for existence, 20, 47, 119 ; 
 
 not leading to progress, 96, 112 
 Styles, Dr. B., 357, 369 
 ' Summons of Wakening,' 365 
 Sumner, Dr. J. B., Archbisbop of 
 
 Canterbury, 12, 34, 38, 307 
 Sunday Schools, 298 
 Suspension of cash payments, 284 
 
 seq. 
 Siissmilch, J. P., 39, 115, 124 seq., 
 
 139, 369 
 Sweden, B. I. ch. v. ; of. 72, 73, 
 
 370 
 
 Taine, 121 
 Tallevrand, 418 
 Teleology, 319 se^-, 326 
 Tendency, B. I. ch. iii. passim, 
 esp. 61, 65, 66 
 
 Theses. See Postulates 
 
 Thompson, Perronet, 227, 308 
 
 Thornton, W. T., 130 n., 210, 273 
 
 de Tocqueville, 89 
 
 Tooke, Thos., 288, 291, B. II. ch. 
 iii., passim,, 412, &c. 
 
 Torrens, B,., contrasts Malthus un- 
 favourably with Ricardo, 265 
 
 Townsend, Joseph, 32, 64 
 
 Toynbee, A., 314, 378 
 
 Tucker, Abraham, 35, 164, B. III.- 
 passim, esp. 324, 403, &c. 
 
 Tucker, Josiah, 33, 324 
 
 Turkey, 112 
 
 United States. See America 
 Utilitarianism, 39, 53, and B. III. ; 
 cf. 213, 374-5 
 
 Vice and virtue defined, 81, 327, 
 
 330 ; cf. 374 
 Voltaire, 27, 33 
 
 Wages, B. II. cb. ii. ; cf. 226 ; 
 
 review of wages for five centuries, 
 
 247-8 
 Wages Fund, 270 seq. 
 Wakefield, Gilb., tutor of Malthus, 
 
 339, 404 
 Walker, F. A., 210, 244 
 Wall of Brass, 201, 250-1 
 Wallace, A. B., 46, 47 
 Wallace, Dr. Robt., 8, 9, 20, 31, 
 
 126, 173 
 War, reparable and irreparable 
 
 evils of, 155 seq. 
 Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, 11, 
 
 405 
 Wealth, as subject of Pol. Econ., 
 
 210, 212 
 Wesleyan movement, 26 ; cf. 403 
 West, Sir Edw., 222, 234-5, 240 
 Weyland, J., 377, 410 
 Whishaw, John, 409 
 Whitbread, Samuel, 29, 31, &c. 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 21 
 
 Young, Arthur, 69, 159 seq. 178, 
 201, 216, 380 
 
 R. Clay ct- Smis, Bread Street Hill, Lemdon, B.C.