Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

Foundling Hospitals, it is clear, in Paris, Vienna, and in all countries, tend to cause women to become thoughtless and heartless. Malthus, indeed, makes a remark which we have recently heard paralleled in Vienna. “An English merchant at Saint Petersburg told me that a Russian girl, living in his family, under a mistress who was considered as very strict, had sent six children to the Foundling hospital, without the loss of her place. And with regard to the moral feelings of a nation, it is very difficult to conceive that they must not be very sensibly impaired by encouraging mothers to desert their offspring, and endeavouring to teach them that their love for their new-born infants is a prejudice, which it is the interest of their country to eradicate.”

Malthus mentions that the population of Russia, in 1796, was 36,000,000. At present it is computed at eighty-five and a half millions, only seven millions of which is found in Asia, and the rest in Europe.

A Government that had a true sense of what was advantageous for its subjects would, instead of offering encouragements to population, and incentives to thoughtlessness on the part of parents, such as foundling hospitals and other charities, encourage, by all means in its power, the feeling of parental responsibility among all classes. To do this, the most direct way would be, to show by some slight fine on the production of large families, that there is no possibility of attaining comfort and a low death-rate without conjugal prudence.

In Chapter ix. of Book ii., Malthus treats on the Checks to Population in the Middle parts of Europe at the beginning of this century. He makes the observation that there are few countries where the poorer classes have so much foresight as to defer marriage till they have a fair prospect of being able to support properly all their children: and in all countries, he adds, a great mortality, whether arising from the too great frequency of marriage, or occasioned by the number of towns and the natural unhealthiness of the situation, will necessarily produce a great frequency of marriage.

In Holland, in the registers of twenty-two villages, Sussmilch noted one marriage to every 64 persons living, the usual rate being about 1 in 120. Malthus says he was for some time puzzled at this high annual marriage-rate, until he found that the mortality in these villages was actually 45 per 1,000 of the population. The extraordinary number of marriages was merely produced by the rapid dissolution of the old marriages by death, and the consequent vacancy of some employment by which a family might be supported. In Norway the mortality in his day was only 22 per 1,000, and the annual marriage-rate 1 in 130. This is a notable contrast with the figures relating to Holland just quoted.

Of late years the birth and death-rate in Holland have been much more satisfactory than they were in the days of Malthus: but the extreme poverty of the working classes in South, as compared with North-Holland, has been recently shown by Mr. S. Van Houten to result in a far higher birth-rate and death-rate in the districts adjoining Rotterdam, than occurs among the more prudent and well-fed inhabitants of Groningen. Still, there have been years quite recently in Holland, when the death-rate has been as high as 29 per 1,000 (1871), and even as lately as 1875 it was 25 per 1,000.

The standard of comfort has greatly changed in several cities in Germany. Thus, in Leipsig, Malthus mentions that, in 1620, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 82: whilst it fell in 1756 to 1 in 120. He observes that, in countries which have long been fully peopled, and in which no new sources of subsistence are opening, the marriages being regulated principally by the deaths, will generally bear nearly the same proportion to the whole population, at one period as another. In Berlin, at the commencement of this century, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 110, whilst it was 1 in 137 at Paris. Berlin, then as now, was probably a very unhealthy city. The death-rate of infants there at present is said to amount to one-half of all born in the first year of life in some years.

Direct encouragements to marriage are, says Malthus, either perfectly futile, or produce a marriage when there is no place for one, thus increasing the mortality. Montesquieu, Sussmilch, and other authors thought that princes and statesmen would really merit the name of fathers of their people, if from the proportion of 1 in 120–125, they could increase the marriages to the proportion of 1 in 80 or 90. But, says Malthus, as this would greatly raise the death-rate and the poverty in the State, such princes would more justly deserve the title of destroyers of the people. Had Mr. 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.

Mr. Malthus mentions that it had been calculated in his time that, when the proportion of the people in towns in any State was to those in the country as 1 to 3, then the mortality was about 28 per 1,000, rising to 32 in 1,000, when the proportion of townsmen to countrymen was as 3 to 7; and falling below 28 per 1,000 when the townsmen are to the countrymen as 1 to 4. This holds true in principle in modern times: and it is out of the question to expect to have the death-rate of large cities as low as it is in country districts inhabited by well-fed peasants.

In chapter vi. our author speaks of the checks to population in Switzerland. From statistics existing in Geneva, it seems that in that town, during the sixteenth century, the probability of life, or the age to which half of those born live, was only 4·88, or rather less than 5; and the mean life was about 18½ years. In the seventeenth century the probability of life was 11½, and the mean life 23¼. In the eighteenth century the probability of life had increased to 27, and the mean life to 32.