Malthus

“ Malthus! The Malthusian theory,—the law of the increase of the population in geometrical, and of the means of subsistence in arithmetical proportion, and the wise and natural means of restricting the population,—all these have become scientific, indubitable truths, which have not been confirmed, but which have been employed as axioms, for the erection of false theories. In this manner have learned and cultivated people proceeded; and among the herd of idle persons, there sprung up a pious trust in the great laws expounded by Malthus. ”

“ Malthus still perseveres in almost all his extreme conclusions, yet as those conclusions are for the most part unwarrantable assumptions, disproved even by his own concessions, and shew nothing more than Mr. Malthus’s qualifications for the delicate office of conscience-keeper to the rich and great, I am so far from considering them as new and important discoveries, that I must be excused if I consider them as in the highest degree false and dangerous, and treat them accordingly. ”

“ Malthus opens the flood-gates of vice and misery, and they are overwhelmed by them, all at once. In short he must suppose either that this extraordinary race of men, in proportion as population increases, are gradually reduced in size, ‘and less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room, throng numberless, like that pygmean race beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves’ ”

“ When we hear of the Malthusian doctrine about population, we picture its author as a cold-blooded, economical Herod, who would gladly have ordered a massacre of the innocents. Let no one tell us that the Reverend Richard Malthus was an amiable clergyman, who was greatly beloved by the small parish to which he ministered. In spite of all his church wardens might say, we would not trust our children in the hands of a man who had suggested that there might be too many people in the world. But in such cases we should remember that a man’s theories do not always throw light upon his character. ”

“ Malthus has just made so many exposures of his intellectual infirmities—which, but for this volunteer display, we might never have known. Of all the men of talents, whose writings I have read up to this hour, Mr. Malthus has the most perplexed understanding. He is not only confused himself, but is the cause that confusion is in other men. ”

“ Malthus himself tells us, whether he would have us believe in the new revelation or the old, it is impossible that any one should. If we are to consider those as Mr. Malthus’s real and chastized opinions which are the least like himself, which most flatly contradict his former assertions, which being forced from him may be looked upon as confessions of the truth, I see nothing in these that in any manner interferes with the common sense of mankind. ”

“ I mention only to set aside some respectable and wearisome gentlemen such as Ingram, Jarrold, Weyland, and Grahame, who considered Malthus chiefly as impugning the wisdom of Providence. They quote the divine law, 'Increase and multiply'; think that Malthus regards vice and misery as blessings, and prove that population does not 'tend' to increase too rapidly. Jarrold apparently accepts the doctrine which Malthus attributes to Süssmilch, that lives have been shortened since the days of the patriarchs, and the reproductive forces diminished as the world has grown fuller. ”

“ The result of these labours appeared in the greatly enlarged and more mature edition of his work published in 1803. In 1805 Malthus married happily, and not long after was appointed professor of modern history and political economy in the East India Company’s College at Haileybury. This post he retained till his death suddenly from heart disease on the 23rd of December 1834. Malthus was one of the most amiable, candid and cultured of men. ”

“ Malthus always proceeds in his disapprobation of any thing, that comes in the prepossessing garb of an evil. He is only confident and severe in his decisions against those hidden mischiefs, which lie concealed under a delusive appearance of good. There is something in the prospect of dearth and barrenness which is perfectly congenial to the disposition of Mr. Malthus. He is unwilling to give up a subject which promises so much scope for his singular talents of bringing good out of evil. ”

“ To judge from the references which for many years used to be, and to some extent still are, made to Malthus, still more from the way in which the term "Malthusian" is still often used, he might be supposed to have been a reprobate anarchist and revolutionary, who had before his eyes neither the fear of God, nor the love of man, nor the respect of morality and public opinion. ”

“ It is always easier to quote an authority than to carry on a chain of reasoning. Mr. Malthus’s reputation may, I fear, prove fatal to the poor of this country. His name hangs suspended over their heads, in terrorem, like some baleful meteor. It is the shield behind which the archers may take their stand, and gall them at their leisure. He has set them up as a defenceless mark, on which both friends and foes may exercise their malice, or their wantonness, as they think proper. ”

“ Malthus, this rascally tax-gatherer, this vile nuisance, is a very sacred sort of character, a privileged person, one of the most indispensable and active instruments in the procession of vice and misery, those harbingers of human happiness; and all our reproaches and indignation should fall on the poor peasant, for bringing beings into the world whom he could not maintain, in ‘the face of the clearest warning, and in defiance of the express command of God,’ as proved by the tax-book. ”

“ The argument of Malthus, adopted by many English economists, as well as by the naturalists of the Darwinian school, is contrary, not only to pure fraternity, but also to strict justice. Malthus reasons as if there were at this very time not enough food on the earth for all the men; as if in the existing state of society there were to be found no men enjoying superfluity, while there are, however, men who have nothing to live upon. ”

“ 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 50population, 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. ”

“ Malthus may be considered as one of those rare and fortunate writers who have attained a scientific reputation in questions of moral and political philosophy. His name undoubtedly stands very high in the present age, and will in all probability go down to posterity with more or less of renown or obloquy. It was said by a person well qualified to judge both from strength and candour of mind, that "it would take a thousand years at least to answer his work on Population." ”

“ If the behaviour is not quite what Malthus supposed, if the consequences are not quite what he inferred, that may falsify his conclusions, but does not impair the value of his method. The objections which were made when his doctrine was new—that it was horrible and depressing, that people ought not to act as he said they did, and so on—were all such as implied an unscientific attitude of mind; as against all of them, his calm determination to treat man as a natural phenomenon marks an important advance over the reformers of the eighteenth century and the Revolution. ”

“ Malthus in person, some discontented man of talents, who could not bear the distresses of others with the fortitude of a man and the resignation of a Christian, might undertake to question Mr. Malthus, whether the laws of nature or of God, to which he had piously sacrificed so many victims, signified any thing more than the limited extent of the earth, and the natural impossibility of providing for more than a limited number of human beings ”

“ I consider, therefore, the general principles of Malthus as not only true, but so important, that the exposition and illustration of them is a real and lasting benefit to mankind. The real error of Malthus lay simply in his supposing, that moral restraint is necessarily or generally weakened by a legal provision against destitution ”

“ Having frighted away the boldest champions of modern philosophy, this monstrous appearance, full of strange and inexplicable horrors, is suffered quietly to shrink back to its natural dimensions, and we find it to be nothing more than a common-sized tame looking animal, which however requires a chain and the whip of its keeper to prevent it from becoming mischievous. Mr. Malthus then steps forward and says, ‘The evil we were all in danger of was not population,—but philosophy. Nothing is to be done with the latter by mere reasoning. ”

“ Malthus retains of his old philosophy, as how many of their old feelings his readers retain on the subject, on which he will be able to build as many false conclusions as he pleases, and with more safety to himself, than if he still persevered in the direct and unqualified assertion of exploded error. ”

“ All is involved in that doctrine; it is in effect the right even of living that Malthus denies to a host of men. To solve the question he has recourse to Nature, which knows neither pity nor justice; he should, on the contrary, have appealed to the reason and freedom of man. In fact, it is not only at the "banquet of Nature," as Malthus asserts, that the new-comers demand a place, it is more, and above all at the banquet of humanity; they are men, and men have called them into existence: did any one consult them before giving them the light? ”

“ Malthus is perpetually threatening us in order to reconcile us to those we bear, I deny the possibility of their existence upon any known principles of human society, either in its improved, or unimproved state. ”

“ Malthus has shown some awkwardness or even reluctance in softening down the harshness of his first peremptory decision. He sometimes grants his grand exception cordially, proceeds to argue stoutly, and to try conclusions upon it; at other times he seems disposed to cavil about or retract it:—‘the influence of moral restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all.’ It is indeed difficult (more particularly for so formal and nice a reasoner as Mr. Malthus) to piece such contradictions plausibly or gracefully together. ”

“ Malthus ‘sits umpire, and by decision more embroils the fray by which he reigns’: for he is not quite undetermined in his choice between good and evil, but is always inclined to give the preference to vice and misery, not only as the most natural, but as the most safe and salutary effects of this principle, as we prescribe a low diet and blisters to persons of too full a temperament. ”

“ 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.” [182] Life itself may be bought too dear. ”

“ No author is more talked about, when questions of political economy or social science are under consideration, than Malthus; no dogma than what is called the Malthusian theory. But, according to the view of the author of this book, very few of those who have so much to say about the man and his doctrines know what they really are. "Malthus," he says, "was the best abused man of the age" ”

“ He adverted in terms of severity to the secrecy that had been maintained as to the real originators of the prosecution. In discussing the questions involved, his lordship referred to the theory of Malthus as “a theory which astonished the world, though it is now accepted as an irrefragable truth, and has since been adopted by economist after economist. That the evils arising from over-population,” he continued, “are evils which, if they could be prevented, it would be the first business of human charity to prevent, there cannot be any doubt. ”

“ In this respect we have the advantage over Malthus that we are aware, as he was not, of the great fact of organic evolution. We discover, then, that an actual consequence of the pressure of population, leading as it does to the struggle for existence, and, in the main, the survival of higher types, is that the rate of fertility falls. This conception of the fall in the birth-rate—which, it is maintained, has been a great factor in all organic progress—was entirely absent from the mind of Malthus. In a word, the unlimited multiplication which Malthus observed leads to its own correction. ”

“ Finally, as we have seen, Malthus, after having contributed 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 posterity”) there are substantially four arguments:—Malthus has changed his position; the world is not peopled ”

“ The procreation of human kind has failed to support the elaborate theory of Malthus, but had the sage philosopher transferred his calculations from the sons of men to works of fiction, then indeed he might stand forth the prophet of a striking truth. The extensive plain over which this flood is spread seems even to be extending its limits, and a spongy soil of unlimited [Pg 668] capacity is ready ever to absorb the fresh advance of waves. It is indeed striking to observe how authors and men of talent have increased, so vastly out of all proportion with other classes of men. ”