Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

A writer in Mr. Malthus’s day, Crome, observes that when, the marriages of a country yield less than four births, the population is in a very precarious state; and he estimates the prolificness of marriages by the proportion of yearly births to marriages. If this had been true, the population of many countries of Europe would be at present in a precarious state, since in many, as in France, the proportion of marriages to births is much under 4 to 1.

“The preventive check,” says Malthus, “is perhaps best measured by the smallness of the proportion of yearly births to the whole population. The proportion of yearly marriages to the population is only a just criterion in countries similarly circumstanced, but is incorrect where there is a difference in the prolificness of marriages or in the proportion of the population under the age of puberty, and in the rate of increase. If all the marriages of a country, be they few or many, take place young, and be consequently prolific, it is evident that to produce the same proportion of births a smaller number of marriages will be necessary, or, with the same proportion of marriages, a greater proportion will be produced.”

Curiously enough, in his day Malthus mentions that in France both the births and deaths were greater than they were in Sweden, although the proportion of marriages was then rather less in France. “And when,” he adds, “in two countries compared, one of them has a much greater part of its population under the age of puberty than the other, it is evident that any general proportion of the yearly marriages to the whole population will not imply the same operation of the preventive check among those of a marriageable age.”

One of the most interesting chapters in the second volume of Malthus’ essay is that which relates to the rapid increase of births after the plagues. According to Sussmilch, very few countries had hitherto been exempt from plagues, which every now and then would sweep away one-fourth or one-third of their population. That writer calculated that above one-third of the people in Prussia were destroyed by the plague of 1711; and yet, notwithstanding this great diminution of the population, it appeared that the number of marriages in 1711 was very nearly double the average of the six years preceding the plague. Hence the proportion of births to deaths was prodigious—320 to 100—an excess of births as great, perhaps, as has ever been known in America. In the four years succeeding the plague the births were to the deaths in the proportion of above 22 to 10, which, calculating the mortality at 1 in 36, would double the population in 21 years.

“In contemplating,” says Malthus, “the plagues and sickly seasons which occur in the tables of Sussmilch, after a period of rapid increase, it is impossible not to be struck with the idea that the number of inhabitants had, in these instances, exceeded the food and accommodation necessary to preserve them in health. The mass of the people would, upon this supposition, be obliged to live worse, and a greater number of them would be crowded together in one house; and these natural causes would evidently contribute to increase sickness, even though the country, absolutely considered, might not be crowded and populous. In a country even thinly inhabited, if an increase of population takes place before more food is raised, and more houses are built, the inhabitants must be distressed for room and subsistence.”

In Chapter xi. we have some general deductions from the preceding views of Society. Mr. Malthus there shows that the main cause of the slow growth of populations in Europe is insufficiency of supplies of food. No settlements, says our author, could have been worse managed than those of Spain, Mexico, Peru and Quito. Yet, under all their difficulties, these colonies made a quick increase in population. But the English North American Colonies added to the quantity of rich land they held in common with the Spanish and Portuguese settlements, a greater degree of liberty and equality. In Pennsylvania there was no right of primogeniture in Malthus’ time: and in the provinces of New England the eldest son had only a double share. The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity of increase almost without a parallel in history. Throughout all the northern provinces the population was found to double itself in 25 years. The original number of persons which had settled in the four provinces of New England, in 1643, was 21,200. Afterwards it was calculated that more left them than went to them. In the year 1760 they were increased to half a million. They had, therefore, all along, doubled their numbers in 25 years. In New Jersey the period of doubling appeared to be 22 years; and in Rhode island still less. In the back settlements, where the inhabitants applied themselves solely to agriculture, and luxury was not known, they were supposed to double their numbers in 15 years.

The population of the United States, says Malthus, writing in 1806, according to the last Census, is 11,000,000. “We have no reason to believe that Great Britain is less populous at present, for the emigration of the small parent stock which produced these numbers. On the contrary, a certain amount of emigration is known to be favourable to the population of the mother country. Whatever was the original number of British emigrants which increased so fast in North America, let us ask. Why does not an equal number produce an equal increase in the same time in Great Britain? The obvious reason is the want of food; and that this want is the most efficient cause of the three immediate checks to population which have been observed to prevail in all societies, is evident, from the rapidity with which even old States recover the desolations of war, pestilence, famine, and the convulsions of nature. They are then for a short time placed a little in the condition of new colonies, and the effect is always answerable to what might be expected. If the industry of the inhabitants be not destroyed, subsistence will soon increase beyond the wants of the reduced numbers; and the invariable consequence will be, that population, which before perhaps was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to increase, and will continue its progress till the former population is recovered.”

The decennial censuses of the United States during this century have been as follows, in round numbers:—In 1800, 5,305,000; in 1810, 7,239,000; in 1820, 9,638,000; in 1830, 12,866,000; in 1840, 17,069,000; in 1850, 23,193,000; in 1860, 31,443,000; in 1870, 38,558,000. If we compare the cypher of 1830—12,866,000—with that of 1800—5,305,000—we see that the population of the States far more than doubled itself in the first thirty years of the century, making all due allowance for immigration, by the simple process of fecundity inherent in the human species.

Mr. Malthus mentions (chapter xi. p. 67), that in New Jersey “the proportion of births to deaths, in an average of seven years, ending 1743, was 300 to 100. In England and France, he says, at that time the highest average proportion could not be reckoned at more than 120 to 100.” At this date, 1880, the proportion of births to deaths in France is as 111 is to 100, and in England it is as 152 is to 100, whereas in Dublin the deaths exceed the births. In New Zealand the births are to the deaths as 340 is to 100. There is nothing, he says, the least mysterious in this. “The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same, that it may be considered, in algebraic language, as a given quantity. 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. If the proportion of the births to the deaths for a few years indicates an increase of numbers much beyond the proportional increased or acquired food of the country, we may be perfectly certain that unless an emigration take place the deaths will shortly exceed the births, and that the increase that has been observed for a few years cannot be the real average increase of the population of that country. If there were no other depopulating causes, and if the preventive check did not act very strongly, every country would without doubt be subject to periodical plagues and famines.”

This is a well-known passage, and shows the genius of the writer as well as any in his work. How immensely superior is his clear enunciation of the attraction between the sexes when compared with the strange speculations of Mr. Herbert Spencer of late years, about the supposed gradual decay of that attraction in proportion to the alleged increase in the weight of the human brain. It is quite deplorable to see what ingenuity has been exercised by latter-day philosophers to get over the plain and inevitable conclusions of Malthus and his common-sense school. 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.