Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

Malthus mentions in his work that Norway is almost the only country in Europe where a traveller will hear any apprehensions expressed of a redundant population, and where the danger to the happiness of the lower classes of people from this cause, is in some degree seen and understood. “This obviously arises from the smallness of the population altogether and the consequent narrowness of the subject. If our attention were confined to one parish, and there were no power of emigrating from it, the most careless observer could not fail to remark that, if all married at twenty, it would be perfectly impossible for the farmers, however carefully they might improve their land, to find employment and food for those that would grow up; but when a great number of these parishes are added together in a populous kingdom, the largeness of the subject and the power of moving from place to place obscure and confuse our view. We lose sight of a truth which before appeared completely obvious; and in a most unaccountable manner attribute to the aggregate quantity of land a power of supporting people beyond comparison greater than the sum of all its parts.”

In Sweden, in Mr. Malthus’ day, the inhabitants of the towns were only one-thirtieth part of the whole population; and the mortality, when Malthus wrote, seems to have been as high as one in 35. The proportion of yearly marriages he found, in Sweden, to be about one in 112: varying from one in 100, in good years, to one in 124, in bad ones. When it is remembered that the marriage-rate in Norway was but one in 135, against one in 112 in Sweden, the reason of the high death-rate is at once explained.

As usual, in Europe at that time, however, Swedish legislators were in the habit of endeavouring to increase population in all sorts of foolish ways, as, for instance, by encouraging strangers to settle in the country. Malthus remarks that, by doing so, the Government of Sweden was merely raising the already high death-rate, and not really increasing the population at all.

According to the economist, Cantzlaer, the principal measures in which the Government had been employed for the encouragement of the population were the establishment of the Colleges of Medicine, and of Lying-in and Foundling Hospitals. Malthus remarks, that “the example of the hospitals of France may create a doubt whether such establishments are universally to be recommended. Foundling hospitals, whether they attain their professed object or not, are, in every view, hurtful to the State.”

The population of Sweden, in 1751, was 2,229,000. It is now 4,400,000. There has recently been, as from Norway, a very large emigration from that State to America. “The sickly periods in Sweden (says Malthus) which have retarded the increase of its population, appear in general to have arisen from the unwholesome nourishment occasioned by severe want. And this want has been caused by unfavourable seasons falling upon a country which was without any reserved store, either in its general exports, or in the liberal division of food to the labourer in common years, and which was therefore peopled up to its produce before the occurrence of the scanty harvest. Such a state of things is a clear proof that if, as some of the Swedish economists assert, their country ought to have a population of nine or ten millions, they have nothing further to do than to make it produce food sufficient for such a number, and they may rest perfectly assured that they will not want mouths to eat it, without the assistance of lying-in and foundling hospitals.”

With regard to the State of Russia at the beginning of this century, Malthus has left us a most interesting account derived from queries made during his travels in that country. At that date, the births in some parts of Russia were, to the deaths, according to Russian statistics, nearly as three to one. This reminds us moderns of 1879, of the birth and death-rate of our happy colony of New Zealand, where in 1877, there was the prodigious birth-rate of 41 per 1000, with the very low death-rate of only 12·4. Russian mortality, in Malthus’ time, must have been very low indeed; and Mr. Tooke, in his View of the Russian Empire, published about that time, made out that the general mortality in Russia was one in 58 of the population annually. This is incredible, we think, in such an uncivilised State as Russia then was.

The birth-rate in Russia was, at that date, about 40 per 1,000, or similar to that of New Zealand. The marriage-rate (one in 90) was vastly higher than that of Norway (one in 130), so that the population of Russia was evidently increasing most rapidly at that time. If we are to give any credit to the healthiness of Russia in Malthus’ time, it is clear that the city of Saint Petersburg was an exception to it, for the half of all persons born there lived only till the age of 25.

With regard to foundling hospitals, Mr. Malthus’ visit to the renowned Russian State hospitals of this description, has often been quoted, and deserves to be attentively studied by all who speak of the question of illegitimacy and charity. Malthus found the mortality in the Maison des Enfans trouvés prodigious. One hundred deaths a month was a common average. The average number of children taken into this charity was at that time ten daily, and the death-rate terrible and heartrending. Children were taken in and no questions asked from the mothers, but were handed over to nurses, and given back to their parents at any time when they could prove themselves able to support them.

The country nurses to whom these unfortunate children were given were paid only some fifteen-pence a week, and the children were received into that hospital without any limit. The children returned from the country (when they did return, for most of them died), at the age of six or seven; and the girls left the charity at 18, the boys at 20. The excessive mortality of the London Foundling Hospital of former days, caused it to be forced almost entirely to close its doors; and to become, what it now is, one of the many useless charities and shams of the metropolis of Mr. Malthus’ native land.

Mr. Malthus also speaks of the great mortality of the Moscow Foundling Hospital, which was instituted in 1786, as follows: “It appears to me that the greatest part of this mortality is clearly to be attributed to these institutions, miscalled ‘philanthropical.’ If any reliance can be placed on the accounts given of the infant mortality in the Russian towns and provinces, it would appear to be unusually small. The greatness of it, therefore, in the foundling hospitals, may justly be laid to the account of the institutions which encourage a mother to desert her child, at the very time when, of all others, it stands most in need of her fostering care. The frail tenure by which an infant holds its life will not allow of a remitted attention, even for a few hours.”