[296] The statement that population doubles every twenty-five years might appear to be confirmed by the growth of population in the United States. It is curious to find that the population there during the nineteenth century conforms exactly to Malthus’s formula. In 1800 it was 5 millions. Doubling four times (4 periods of 25 years = 100) gives us a population of 80 millions, which is actually the figure for 1905, five years after the end of the century. But of course this is pure chance, the increase resulting from immigration rather than a rising birth-rate.
[297] It was in this connection that Malthus penned those famous words which have been so frequently brought up against him, although they were omitted from a later edition. “A 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 right 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.…” On the other hand, let us remember his services in reorganising public assistance in England in 1832.
[298] “The effect of anything like a promiscuous intercourse which prevents the birth of children is evidently to weaken the best affections of the heart and in a very marked manner to degrade the female character. And any other intercourse would, without improper arts, bring as many children into the society as marriage, with a much greater probability of their becoming a burden to it.” (P. 450.)
[299] “These considerations show that the nature of chastity is not, as some have supposed, a forced produce of artificial society; but that it has the most real and solid foundation in nature and reason; being apparently the only virtuous means of avoiding the vice and misery which result so often from the principle of population.” (P. 450.)
He also notes that this virtue has usually been especially commended to women, but that “there is no reason for supposing that the violation of the laws of chastity are not equally dishonourable for both sexes.” Malthus evidently believed in one moral law for both sexes.
Consequently whenever the reverend gentleman is reproached with encouraging blasphemy, a point upon which he is particularly sensitive—for example, when it is pointed out that God’s injunction to man was to increase and multiply—he has no difficulty in showing that if procreation is the will of Providence, chastity is dictated by Christianity, and that the glorious work of chastity is to aid Providence in keeping even the balance of life.
[300] “Of the other branch of the preventive check, which comes under the head of vice, though its effect appears to have been very considerable, yet upon the whole its operation seems to have been inferior to the positive checks.” (P. 140.)
“I have said what I conceive to be strictly true, that it is our duty to defer marriage till we can feed our children; and that it is also our duty not to indulge ourselves in vicious gratifications; but I have never said that I expected either, much less both, of these duties to be completely fulfilled. In this and a number of other cases, it may happen that the violation of one of two duties will enable a man to perform the other with greater facility.… The moralist is still bound to inculcate the practice of both duties, and each individual must be left to act as his conscience shall dictate.” (P. 560.)
[301] “I should be extremely sorry to say anything which could either directly or remotely be construed unfavourably to the cause of virtue; but I certainly cannot think that the vices which relate to the sex are the only vices which are to be considered in a moral question.” (P. 462.) Malthus omits to mention the particular vice which he has in mind. “I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that the prudential check [note the word—no longer “moral restraint”] to marriage is better than premature mortality.” (P. 560.) We are far removed from the first edition, where there is no mention of a third alternative between chastity and vice.
[302] “Abject poverty is a state the most unfavourable to chastity that can well be conceived.… There is a degree of squalid poverty in which if a girl was brought up I should say that her being really modest at twenty was an absolute miracle.” (P. 464.) And elsewhere he writes: “I maintain that the diminution of the vice which results from poverty would afford a sufficient compensation for any other evil that might follow.”