Charles R. Drysdale

“ The great error, as Malthus observes, under which Mr. Godwin labors throughout his whole work is in attributing almost all the vices and miseries that prevail in civil society to human institutions. Political regulations, and the established administration of property, are, with him, the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbed of all the crimes that degrade mankind. “Man cannot live (says Malthus) in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. ”

“ The fortunate condition of this country, and the excellence of its laws and government, exempt it, above any other nation, from foreign invasion and domestic tumult, and it is a pardonable love for one’s country, which under such circumstances produces an unwillingness to expose it, in so important a point as the supply of its principal food, to share in the dangers and chances which may happen on the Continent. How would the miseries of France have been aggravated during the revolution if she had been dependent on foreign countries for the support of two or three millions of her people. ”

“ The great law of necessity which prevents population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and evident to our understandings, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The different modes which nature takes to repress a redundant population, do not appear, indeed, to us so certain and regular; but though we cannot always predict the mode, we may with certainty predict the fact. ”

“ Of course any penalty for the production of a large family should fall equally on the rich and the poor, since the miseries inflicted by the well-to-do parent, who produces a large family, on his helpless and innocent offspring, in the shape of life-long celibacy, may fairly be compared with the want of food which such conduct causes among the poor. And any penalty ought to be very small, because, if not so, persons might be led to practise criminal abortion or infanticide, practices most inimical to the welfare and even the existence of society. ”

“ Poverty, and not absolute famine, is the specific effect of the principle of population, as I have before endeavoured to show. Many countries are now suffering all the evils that can ever be expected to flow from this principle, and even if we were arrived at the absolute limit to all further increase of produce, a point which we shall certainly never reach, I should by no means expect that those evils would be in any marked manner aggravated. ”

“ I should be misunderstood if, from anything I have said in the four last chapters, I should be considered as not sufficiently aware of the advantages derived from commerce and manufactures. I look upon them as the most distinguishing characteristics of civilization, the most obvious and striking marks of the improvement of society, and calculated to enlarge our enjoyments, and add to the sum of human happiness. No great surplus of agriculture could exist without them, and if it did exist, it would be comparatively of very little value. ”

“ Malthus lived in our day, he would have been aware that a high marriage-rate is not by any means necessarily followed by a high birth-rate, since, in modern France, where there are the greatest number of married women in proportion to population, over the age of 15, of any European state, the birth-rate is lower than in any other European state. But, in Malthus’ day, human beings were still dominated greatly by instinct, and had not begun to allow reason to prevail in the most important of all human acts, that which leads to the addition of new members to society. ”

“ The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest has been put forward as a plea for allowing over-population to grind the masses in constant misery, and the delusive ideal of the equation of mouths to food in the course of ages by a mere fanciful tendency of organisms to become more perfect, without the exercise of volition, are the latest struggles of the ostrich to burrow with his head in the sand in order to avoid the sight of the inevitable. ”

“ The principal cause of the great populousness of Japan is doubtless the persevering industry of the inhabitants. The checks to population in Japan have been famines, as in China and Hindostan; but the Japanese are also more warlike than the Chinese, and there is much less encouragement given to marriage in Japan than there is in China. Hence the superior enlightenment of the Japanese, and the intelligence which has recently made them so alive to the benefits conferred on mankind by European civilization. ”

“ But what statesman or rational government could propose that all animal food should be prohibited, that no horses should be used for business or pleasure, that all people should live upon potatoes, and that the whole industry of the nation should be exerted in the production of them, except what was necessary for the mere necessaries of clothing and houses. Could such a revolution be effected, would it be desirable; particularly as, in a few years, notwithstanding all their exertions, want, with less resource than ever, would inevitably recur. ”

“ Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most perfect freedom. Mr. Godwin does not think himself that this freedom would lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree with him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural taste, and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select for himself a partner to whom he would adhere, as long as that adherence continued to be the choice of both parties. ”

“ Malthus then, following Hippocrates, points out that in the history of every epidemic, it has almost invariably been observed, that the lower classes of people, whose food was poor and insufficient, and who lived crowded together in small and dirty houses, were the principal victims. “In what other manner can nature point out to us, that if we increase too fast for the means of subsistence, so as to render it necessary for a considerable part of the society to live in this miserable manner, we have offended against one of her laws?” ”

“ Place says: “I am of opinion it would not; so much depends on manners, that it seems to be by no means an unreasonable expectation that, if these were so improved as greatly to increase the prudential habits, and to encourage the love of distinction, the master-spring of public prosperity, and if, in consequence of the course recommended, all could marry early, there would be less debauchery of any kind. An improvement in manners would be an improvement in morals; and it seems absurd to suppose an increase of vice with improved morals.” ”

“ There are no towns sufficiently large to have any prejudicial effects on the human constitution. The greater part of the happy inhabitants of this terrestrial Paradise live in hamlets and farm-houses, scattered over the face of the country. All men are equal. The labors of luxury are at an end, and the necessary labors of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The number of persons and the produce of the island we suppose to be the same as at present. “The spirit of benevolence guided by impartial justice will divide this produce among all the members of society according to their wants. ”

“ Malthus replies: “And yet if the circumstances on which the foregoing reasonings are founded should turn out to be true, it will appear that France has not lost a single birth by the revolution. She has the most just reason to mourn the two millions and a half of individuals which she may have lost, but not their posterity: because, if those individuals had remained in the country, a proportionate number of children born of other parents, which are now living in France, would not have come into existence. ”

“ It is of the very highest importance, therefore, to know distinctly what government cannot do, as well as what it can do. If I were called upon to name the cause which, in my conception, had more than any other contributed to the very slow progress of freedom, so disheartening to every liberal mind, I should say that it was the confusion that had existed respecting the causes of the unhappiness and discontent which prevail in society ”

“ Throughout the whole world the number of manufacturers, of proprietors, and of persons engaged in the various civil and military professions must be exactly proportional to the surplus produce, and cannot in the nature of things increase beyond it. If the earth had been so niggardly of her produce as to oblige all her inhabitants to labor for it, no manufacturer or idle persons could ever have existed. ”

“ But in this progress of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and, in consequence, by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of individuals. Must not there arise a period when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each other; when the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be, either a continual diminution of happiness and population—a movement truly retrograde—or, at least, a kind of oscillation between good and evil. ”

“ To give out-door relief in the present state of public opinion would merely be to offer a premium upon large families, and this could, of course, only result in early death, degradation of the family, and a relapse into barbarism. Even in Australia it has been found possible to raise up a pauper class by such unwise out-door doles, which are no charity at all, but merely a means to degrade and enslave the poorest classes. ”

“ 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. No error is more frequent than that of mistaking effects for causes. We are so blinded by the shrewdness of commerce and manufactures, as to believe that they are almost the sole cause of the wealth, power, and prosperity of England ”

“ The children are sickly from insufficient food. The rosy flush of health gives place to the pallid cheek and hollow eye of misery.”
In as short a period as fifty years the whole of the worst evils of society will certainly re-appear, if population be not checked (says Malthus) by moral restraint, vice, or misery. After showing that a regime of equality would inevitably end in these shallows, so long as the birth-rate was not restricted, Malthus contends that some such laws of private property, as those which at present exist, would be certain to re-appear and misery to be increased. ”

“ Has not prudence the effect of rendering the state of marriage more happy and more attractive? Youth is encouraged to marriage more easily by the example of prosperous and wisely managed households than by the example of households crushed under the tortures of misery.” And M. Villermé, one of the greatest writers on Health that this century has produced, mentions that the workmen of La Croix Rouge, Lyons, had, in his day, an average of only 31⁄4 children to a family; and that “these workmen were the foremost in France for behavior and dignity of character.” ”

“ Causes which affect the number of births or deaths may or may not affect the average population, according to circumstances; but causes which affect the production and distribution of the means of subsistence must necessarily affect population; and it is therefore on these causes, besides actual enumerations, on which we can with any certainty rely. “All the checks to population, which have been hitherto considered in the course of this review of human society, are clearly resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.” ”

“ That illustrious writer on Wealth observes that a trading and manufacturing country exports what can subsist and accommodate but very few, and imports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number. The other exports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number, and imports that of a very few only. The inhabitants in the one must enjoy, said Adam Smith, a much greater quantity of subsistence than what their own land, in the actual state of cultivation, could afford. The inhabitants of the other must always enjoy a much smaller quantity. ”

“ The allowing of the produce of the earth to be absolutely unlimited scarcely removes the weight of a hair from the argument, which depends entirely upon the differently increasing ratios of population and food; and all that the most enlightened governments and the most persevering and best guided efforts of industry can do, is to make the necessary checks to population act more equably, and in a direction to produce the least evil ”