Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

Fortunately for England, says our author, a spirit of independence still remains among the peasantry. The poor laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this spirit. “They have succeeded in part: but had they succeeded as completely as might have been expected, their pernicious tendency would not have been so long concealed.”

The following paragraph has often been cited by violent democrats as a proof of the hard-heartedness of Malthus. At present, few of the ultra-liberal party in this country are ill-instructed enough to vituperate any one for his opinions in this matter. “Hard as it may appear,” he continues, “in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful. Such a stimulus seems to be absolutely necessary to promote the happiness of the general mass of mankind: and every general attempt to weaken this stimulus, however benevolent its intention, will always defeat its own purpose. If men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon themselves and children, but they are tempted, without knowing it, to injure all in the same class with themselves.”

It is very probable that the independence of character of the English labouring classes was fatally lowered by the system Malthus complains of, for to this very day, in many counties, the following experience of our author holds good. “The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention; and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it; but all that they earn beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the alehouse. The poor laws may, therefore, be said to diminish both the power and the will to save among the common people, and thus to weaken one of the strongest incentives to sobriety and industry, and consequently to happiness.”

No wonder that Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish economist, struggled so hard against the introduction of the English poor laws into Scotland. That poor law in Scotland is at present worse administered than it even is in England, and has done much to create a pauper class. There is, indeed, but little prospect of another poet like Burns arising in modern Scotland. “The Cotters’ Saturday Night” was composed when the parish gave discriminating relief only to the worthy and necessitous.

“These evils,” says Malthus, “attendant on the poor laws seem to be irremediable. If assistance is to be distributed to a certain class of people, a power must be lodged somewhere of discriminating the proper objects, and of managing the concerns of the institutions that are necessary; but any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, and in the common course of things, the exercise of this power may be expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for support. The tyranny of justices, churchwardens, and overseers, is a common complaint among the poor; but the fault does not lie so much in these persons, who probably before they were in power were not more cruel than other people, but in the nature of all such institutions. I feel persuaded that if the poor laws had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been much greater than it is at present.”

The famous 43rd of Elizabeth, which has been so often referred to and admired, enacts that the overseers of the poor “shall take order from time to time, by and with the consent of two or more justices, for setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not by the said persons be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and also such persons married or unmarried, as having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by. And also to raise, weekly or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, and every occupier of lands in the said parish (in such competent sums as they shall think fit) a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wax, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, to set the poor to work.”

“What is this,” exclaims Malthus, “but saying that the funds for the maintenance of labour in this country may be increased at will, and without limit, by a fiat of Government, or an assessment of the overseers. Strictly speaking, this clause is as arrogant and as absurd as if it had enacted that two ears of wheat should grow where one only had grown before. Canute, when he commanded the waves not to wet his princely foot, did not, in reality, assume a greater power over the laws of nature. No directions are given to the overseers how to increase the funds for the maintenance of labour; the necessity of industry, economy, and enlightened exertion, in the management of agricultural and commercial capital, is not insisted on for this purpose; but it is expected that a miraculous increase of these funds should immediately follow an edict of the Government, used at the discretion of some ignorant parish officers.”

Mr. Malthus adds to these denunciations of the Poor Law Act of Elizabeth, as carried out in 1805, the following: “If this clause were really and bonâ fide put into execution, and the shame attending the receiving of parish relief worn off, every labouring man might marry as early as he pleased, under the certain prospect of having all his children properly provided for; and, as according to the supposition, there would be no check on population from the consequences of poverty after marriage, the increase of population would be rapid beyond example in old States. After what has been said in the former part of this work, it is submitted to the reader whether the utmost exertions of the enlightened government could, in this case, make the food keep pace with the population, much less a more arbitrary effort, the tendency of which is certainly rather to diminish than to increase the funds for the maintenance of productive labour.”

In the year 1880 it was found by the census of our most flourishing colony of New Zealand that the population of those fertile islands had actually been able to double in eleven years. But, as Mr. Malthus observes: “After a country has once ceased to be in the peculiar situation of a new colony, we shall always find that in the actual state of its cultivation, or in that state which may rationally be expected from the most enlightened government, the increase of its food can never allow for any length of time an unrestricted increase of population, and, therefore, the due execution of the clause in the 43rd of Elizabeth, as a permanent law, is a physical impossibility.”

One only circumstance, Mr. Malthus seems to think, in the administration of the English Poor Laws at the commencement of this century prevented them from plunging the country into ruin. This was the condition that they contained that each parish should maintain its own poor. “As each parish,” he says, “is obliged to maintain its own poor, it is naturally fearful of increasing their numbers, and every land-holder is, in consequence, more inclined to pull down than to build cottages. This deficiency of cottages operates necessarily as a strong check to marriage, and this check is probably the principal reason why we have been able to continue the system of the poor laws so long.”