Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

“The only criterion,” says Malthus, “of a real and permanent increase in the population of any country is the increase in the means of subsistence. But even this criterion is subject to slight variations, which, however, are completely open to observation. In some countries population seems to have been forced: that is the people have been habituated by degrees to live almost upon the smallest possible quantity of food. There must have been periods in such countries when population increased permanently without an increase in the means of subsistence. China, India, and the countries possessed by the Bedoween Arabs, as we have seen in the former part of this work, appear to answer to this description. The average produce of these countries seems to be but barely sufficient to support the lives of the inhabitants, and, of course, any deficiency from the badness of the seasons must be fatal. Nations in this state must necessarily be subject to famines.”

Almost all the histories of epidemics which we have read tend to confirm the supposition that they are greatly caused by that over-population which, as in Dublin in 1880, leads to over-crowded houses filled by ill-fed and ill-clad inmates. Dr. Short, an author of the last century, shows in his work (Air, Seasons, &c., vol. ii. p. 206), that a very considerable proportion of the epidemic years either have followed or were accompanied by seasons of dearth and bad food. In other places he also mentions great plagues as diminishing particularly the numbers of the poorest classes; and in speaking of different diseases, he observes, that those which are occasioned by bad and unwholesome food generally last the longest.

“We know (says our author) from constant experience that fevers are generated in our jails, our manufactories, our crowded workhouses, and in the narrow and close streets of our large towns, all which situations appear to be similar in their effects to squalid poverty, and we cannot doubt that causes of this kind, aggravated in degree, contributed to the production and prevalence of those great and wasting plagues formerly so common in Europe, but which now, from the mitigation of their causes, are everywhere considerably abated, and in many places appear to be completely extirpated.

“Of the other great scourge of mankind—famine—it may be observed that it is not in the nature of things that the increase of population should absolutely produce one. This increase, though rapid, is necessarily gradual, and as the human frame cannot be supported, even for a very short time, without food, it is evident that no more human beings can grow up than there is provision to maintain. But though the principle of population cannot absolutely produce a famine, it prepares the way for one in the most complete manner, and by obliging all the lower classes of people to subsist merely on the smallest quantity of food that will support life, turns even a slight deficiency from the failure of the seasons into a severe dearth; and may be fairly said, therefore, to be one of the principal causes of famine. Among the signs of an approaching dearth, Dr. Short mentions one or more years of luxuriant crops together, and this observation is probably just, as we know that the general effect of years of cheapness and abundance is to dispose a greater number of persons to marry, and under such circumstances the return to a year which gives only an average crop might produce a scarcity.”

Much has been lately spoken in professional assemblies about recent epidemics of small-pox. It is curious to hear what our author, writing in 1806, or seven years after the discovery of Edward Jenner, has to say. “The small-pox (says Malthus, book 2, ch. xi., p. 61), which at present may be considered as the most prevalent and fatal epidemic in Europe, is of all others, perhaps, the most difficult to account for, though the periods of its return are in many places regular. Dr. Short (Air, Seasons, vol. ii., p. 441), observes that from the history of this disorder it seems to have very little dependence on present constitutions of the weather of seasons, and that it appears epidemically at all times and in all states of the air, though not so frequently in hard frost. We know of no instances, I believe, of its being clearly generated under any circumstances of situation. I do not mean, therefore, to insinuate that poverty and crowded houses ever absolutely produced it; but I may be allowed to remark that in those places where its returns are regular, and its ravages among children, particularly among those of the lowest class, are considerable, it necessarily follows that these circumstances, in a greater degree than usual, must always precede and accompany its appearance; that is, from the time of its last visit, the average number of children will be increasing, the people will, in consequence, be growing poorer, and the houses will be more crowded till another visit removes this superabundant population.”

Other circumstances being equal, it may be affirmed that countries are populous according to the quantity of human food which they produce or can acquire; and happy, according to the liberality with which the food is divided, or the quantity which a day’s labor will purchase. Compare, on this standard of our author, the condition of an agricultural laborer in England, with beefsteak at one shilling the pound in London, with that of Dunedin, where, as we write, it is at fourpence the pound, and wages are at least two and a half those in England for that class. “Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries, and rice countries more populous than corn countries. But their happiness does not depend either upon their being thinly or fully inhabited, upon their poverty or their riches, their youth or their age; but on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each other. This proportion is generally the most favorable in new colonies, where the knowledge and industry of an old state operate on the fertile unappropriated land of a new one. In other cases the youth or the age of a state is not, in this respect, of great importance. It is probable that the food of Great Britain is divided in more liberal shares to its inhabitants at the present period than it was two thousand, three thousand, or four thousand years ago.”

This passage from Malthus shows that he at least does not believe in the view sometimes attributed to him that the position of civilised society is tending continually to become more and more unbearable from pressure of population on food. Malthus saw quite clearly that the prevention of a rapid birth-rate was more and more practised by nations in proportion as they became better educated, and he therefore did not at all take the pessimistic aspect of human society that many believe.

“In a country never to be overrun by a people more advanced in arts, but left to its own natural progress in civilisation; from the time when its produce might be considered as a unit, to the time that it might be considered as a million, during the lapse of many thousand years, there would not be a single period when the mass of the people could be said to be free from distress, either directly or indirectly, from want of food. In every state in Europe, since we have first had accounts of it, millions and millions of human existences have been suppressed from this simple cause, though perhaps in some of these states an absolute famine may never have been known.”

These expressions of Mr. Malthus are entirely opposed to the idea that he held that the future of society was likely to be less bright than that of the past. Still there is a certain sadness in the following sentence, which is the real secret of the unpopularity of the great discoverer’s doctrine. In page 73, book ii., chap. xi., he says: “Population invariably increases when the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by powerful and obvious checks.... Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that unless arrested by the preventive check, premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this work of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic, inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and at one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.”

In Mr. Malthus’s edition of 1806, the third book contains several essays on the different systems or expedients which have been proposed or have prevailed in society, as they affect the evils arising from the principle of population. In chapter i., p. 77, he treats of systems of equality proposed by Wallace, and the illustrious Condorcet. Mr. Wallace, whose name has been adverted to by many writers as one of those who partly saw the importance of the tendency of mankind to increase more rapidly than food, did not seem to be aware that any difficulty would arise from this cause till the whole earth had been cultivated as a garden, and was incapable of any further increase of produce. Mr. Malthus remarks upon this idea of Mr. Wallace, that “at every period during the period of cultivation, from the present moment to the time when the whole earth was become like a garden, the distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind if they were equal. Though the produce of the earth would be increasing every year, population would be tending to increase much faster, and the redundancy must necessarily be checked by the periodical action of moral restraint, vice, or misery.”