Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

M. Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel proscription which terminated in his death during the French Revolution, and the posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work which he proposed to write. By the application of calculations to the probabilities of life and the interest of money, Condorcet proposed that a fund should be established, which should assure to the old an assistance produced in part by their own former savings, and in part by the savings of individuals, who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. These establishments, he observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of the state. Mr. Blackley brought forward a somewhat similar proposal in 1880. Condorcet adds that by the just application of such calculations, means might be found of more completely preserving a state of equality, by preventing credit from being the exclusive privilege of large fortunes, and yet giving it a basis equally solid, and by rendering the industry and activity of commerce less dependent on great capitalists.

Mr. Malthus criticises the schemes of Condorcet as follows:—“Supposing for a moment that they would give no check to production, the greatest difficulty remains behind. Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for a family, almost every man would have one; and were the rising generation free from the killing frost of misery, population must increase with unusual rapidity.” And Condorcet himself saw this, for he says: “But in this progress of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and, in consequence, by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of individuals. Must not there arise a period when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each other; when the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be, either a continual diminution of happiness and population—a movement truly retrograde—or, at least, a kind of oscillation between good and evil. Shall we ever arrive at such a period? It is equally impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of an event, which cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained improvements of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.”

To this Mr. Malthus replies that the only point in which he differs from Condorcet in the paragraph just cited is with regard to the period when it may be applied to the human race. Condorcet thought that his age of iron would not come until a very distant era. Our author remarks, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men surpassed their subsistence had long ago arrived; and that this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery has existed ever since we have any history of mankind, and continues to exist at the present moment.

“M. Condorcet (says Malthus) however goes on to say that should the period which he conceives to be so distant ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates of the perfectibility of man, need not be alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the difficulty in a manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed that the ridiculous prejudice of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes either to a promiscuous concubinage which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the difficulty in this way will surely, in the opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners which the advocates of equality, and of the perfectibility of man, profess to be the end and object of their views.”

It is from passages such as these that Mr. Malthus differs so much from the so-called New-Malthusians, who look for the solution of the population difficulty to the “small-family system” of the French. It would seem that the great French writer, Condorcet, had a prophetic knowledge of what the effect of the great French Revolution would be, a revolution which, by converting the cultivator of the soil of that state into the proprietor, has made France the most prudent country in the known world in the question of the size of families. Mr. Bonar, too, in a clever pamphlet, published in 1880, shows that Mr. Malthus retained somewhat the same phraseology as he uses here, in his 7th edition, page 512, where he thus speaks: “If it were possible for each married couple to limit by a wish the number of their children, there is certainly reason to fear that the indolence of the human race would be very greatly increased.” Had he lived in 1881, and seen how rapidly the industry of France is increasing, her wealth developing, and poverty diminishing in that happiest of modern European states in the face of the lowest European birth-rate (26 per 1,000), he would have been the first, we doubt not, to retract these crude expressions, and to see wherein the virtue consists.

M. Condorcet seems to have entertained some very hopeful ideas as to the perfectibility of the human frame, and to have thought that though man would not become absolutely immortal, yet that the duration between his birth and his natural death would increase without ceasing, would have no natural term, and might properly be expressed by the term indefinite. Malthus demurs to these speculations. He thinks that the average duration of human life will, to a certain extent, vary from healthy or unhealthy climates, from wholesome or unwholesome food, from virtuous or vicious manners, and from other causes; but it may be fairly doubted whether there has been really the smallest perceptible advance in the natural duration of human life since we had any authentic history of man. “What can we reason but from what we know?”

“The capacity of improvement in plants and animals, to a certain extent, no person can possibly doubt. A clear and decided progress has already been made, and yet I think that it would be highly absurd to say that this progress has no limits.... The error does not seem to lie in supposing a small degree of improvement possible, but in not discriminating between a small improvement, the limit of which is undefined, and an improvement really unlimited. As the human race could not be improved in the same way as the domestic animals, without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to breed should ever become general.” Here, again, we prefer the injunction of Professor Mantegazza to consumptive parents: ‘Amate, ma non generate’ (‘Marry but do not reproduce’). The speculations of Condorcet seem, to a certain extent, to have been revived in modern days by Mr. H. Spencer and Dr. B. W. Richardson. The former of these distinguished authors seems to look forward to a time when the wants of mankind shall by the process of evolution become equated to their powers of acquiring food, without calling in the will; and Dr. Richardson seems to look forward to a far greater longevity for individuals of the human species than has been experienced in its past history.

“When paradoxes of this kind (says Malthus) are advanced by ingenious and able men, neglect has no tendency to convince them of their mistakes. Priding themselves on what they conceive to be a mark of the make and size of their own understandings, of the extent and comprehensiveness of their views, they will look upon this neglect merely as an indication of poverty and narrowness of the mental exertions of their contemporaries, and only think that the world is not yet prepared to receive their sublime truths. On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied with a perfect readiness to adopt anything warranted by sound philosophy, may have a tendency to convince them that in forming unfounded and improbable hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds of science, they are contracting it; so far from promoting the improvement of the human mind, they are obstructing it; they are throwing us back again almost into the infancy of knowledge, and weakening the foundations of that mode of philosophising under the auspices of which science has of late made such rapid advance. The late rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems to have been a kind of mental intoxication, arising perhaps from the great and unexpected discoveries which had been made in various branches of science. To men elate and inspired with such successes, everything appears to be within the grasp of human powers, and under this illusion they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved with those where the progress had been marked, certain and acknowledged.”

The great antagonist of Mr. Malthus at the commencement of this century was Mr. Godwin, who, in his work on Political Justice, gives a magnificent picture of a system of equality, which, by his account, is to regenerate society. On page 458 of book IV. of that work Mr. Godwin thus speaks:—“The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, then, are the immediate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anxiety or pain for his restless wants, each would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbours, for they would have no subject of contention; and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporeal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the inquiries of all.”

The great error, as Malthus observes, under which Mr. Godwin labors throughout his whole work is in attributing almost all the vices and miseries that prevail in civil society to human institutions. Political regulations, and the established administration of property, are, with him, the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbed of all the crimes that degrade mankind. “Man cannot live (says Malthus) in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual. Every individual would be under a constant anxiety about corporeal support, and not a single intellect would be left free to expatiate in the field of thought.”