Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

Mr. Malthus’ writings made such a powerful impression on the minds of his contemporaries, that in 1834 an entire revolution took place in the Poor Laws of England and Wales. Mr. Gladstone, in an admirable speech on Free Trade, delivered in Leeds in the summer of 1881, refers to the passing of this Act as the most beneficent change that had preceded the long and earnest struggle which immediately followed upon the principles of Free Trade, and which culminated in 1846 in the abolition of the duties on food supplies. Mr. John Stuart Mill is enthusiastic in his admiration of the Act of 1834. In his magnificent and well-known chapter on Popular Remedies for Low Wages (Book ij. chap. 12, § 2.), he thus speaks of the English Law of 1834:—

“To give profusely to the people, whether under the name of charity or of employment, without placing them under such influences that prudential motives shall act powerfully upon them, is to lavish the means of benefiting mankind without attaining the object. Leave the people in a situation in which their condition manifestly depends upon their number, and the greatest permanent benefit may be derived from any sacrifice made to improve the physical well-being of the present generation, and raise, by that means, the habits of their children. But remove the regulation of their wages from their own control; guarantee to them a certain payment, either by law or by the feeling of the community; and no amount of comfort that you can give them will make either them or their descendents look to their own self-restraint as the proper means for preserving them in that state. You will only make them indignantly claim the continuance of your guarantee to themselves, and their full complement of possible posterity.”

“On these grounds some writers have altogether condemned the English Poor Law, and any system of relief to the able-bodied, at least when uncombined with systematic legal precautions against over-population. The famous Act of the 43rd of Elizabeth undertook, on the part of the public, to provide work and wages for all the able-bodied; and there is little doubt that if the intent of that Act had been fully carried out, and no means had been adopted by the administrators of relief to neutralize its natural tendencies, the poor-rate would by this time have absorbed the whole net produce of the land and labour of the country.”

“It is not at all surprising, therefore, that Mr. Malthus and others should at first have concluded against all Poor Laws whatever. It required much experience, and careful examination of different modes of Poor Law management, to give assurance that the admission of an absolute right to be supported at the cost of other people could exist in law and in fact, without fatally relaxing the springs of industry and the restraints of prudence. This, however, was fully substantiated by the investigations of the original Poor Law Commissioners. Hostile as they are unjustly accused of being to the principle of legal relief, they are the first who fully proved the compatibility of any Poor Law in which a right to relief was recognised with the permanent interests of the labouring class and of posterity.”

“By a collection of facts, experimentally ascertained in parishes scattered throughout England, it was shown that the guarantee of support could be freed from its injurious effects upon the minds and habits of the people, if the relief, though ample in respect to necessaries, was accompanied with conditions which they disliked, consisting of some restraints on their freedom, and the privation of some indulgences.”

“Under this proviso it may be regarded as irrevocably established that the fate of no member of the community need be abandoned to chance; that society can and therefore ought to ensure every individual belonging to it against the extreme of want; that the condition, even of those who are unable to find their own support, need not be one of physical suffering, or the dread of it, but only of restricted indulgences and enforced rigidity of discipline. This is surely something gained for humanity, important in itself, and still more so as a step to something beyond; and humanity has no worse enemies than those who lend themselves, either knowingly or unintentionally, to bring odium on this law, or on the principles in which it originated.”

“In the actual circumstances of every country (says Malthus, p. 180, Book iii.) the prolific power of nature seems always ready to exert nearly its full force; but within the limit of possibility, there is nothing, perhaps, more improbable, or more out of the reach of any government to effect, than the direction of the industry of its subjects in such a manner as to produce the greatest quantity of sustenance that the earth could bear. It evidently could not be done without the most complete violation of the law of property, from which everything that is valuable to man has hitherto arisen. Such is the disposition to marry, particularly in very young people, that if the difficulties of providing for a family were entirely removed, very few would remain single at twenty-two. But what statesman or rational government could propose that all animal food should be prohibited, that no horses should be used for business or pleasure, that all people should live upon potatoes, and that the whole industry of the nation should be exerted in the production of them, except what was necessary for the mere necessaries of clothing and houses. Could such a revolution be effected, would it be desirable; particularly as, in a few years, notwithstanding all their exertions, want, with less resource than ever, would inevitably recur.”

“The attempts,” says our author, “to employ the poor on any great sale in manufactures have almost invariably failed, and the stock and materials have been wasted. In those few parishes which, by better management of larger funds, have been enabled to persevere in this system, the effect of these new manufactures in the market must have been to throw out of employment many independent workmen, who were before engaged in fabrications of a similar nature. This effect has been placed in a strong point of view by Daniel De Foe, in an address to Parliament, entitled Giving Alms no Charity. Speaking of the employment of parish children in manufactories, he says, ‘For every skein of worsted these poor children spin there must be a skein the less spun by some poor family that spun it before.’ Sir F. M. Eden, on the same subject, observes, that whether mops and brooms are made by parish children or by private workmen, no more can be sold than the public is in want of.”

“It will be said, perhaps, that the same reasoning might be applied to any new capital brought into competition in a particular trade or manufacture, which can rarely be done without injuring, in some degree, those that were engaged in it before. But there is a material difference in the two cases. In this, the competition is perfectly fair, and what every man on entering his business must lay his account to. He may rest secure that he will not be supplanted, unless his competitor possess superior skill and industry. In the other case, the competition is supported by a great bounty, by which means, notwithstanding very inferior skill and industry on the part of his competitors, the independent workman may be undersold, and unjustly excluded from the market. He himself is made to contribute to this competition against his own earnings, and the funds for the maintenance of labour are thus turned from the support of a trade which yields a proper profit to one which cannot maintain itself without a bounty. It should be observed in general that when a fund for the maintenance of labour is raised by assessment, the greatest part of it is not a new capital brought into trade, but an old one, which before was much more profitably employed, turned into a new channel. The farmer pays to the poor’s rates for the encouragement of a bad and unprofitable manufacture what he would have employed on his land with infinitely more advantage to his country. In the one case, the funds for the maintenance of labour are daily diminished; in the other, daily increased. And this obvious tendency of assessments for the employment of the poor to decrease the real funds for the maintenance of labour in any country, aggravates the absurdity of supposing that it is in the power of a government to find employment for all its subjects, however fast they may increase.”

It is strange how the present generation begins to forget the truths that were clearly seen by the one immediately preceding. We have had a proof of this in the late agitation for Protection versus Free Trade. And on November 5th, 1881, there was another example so given in the case of a deputation of ratepayers of Newington, who waited on Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, to ask him to administer out-door relief instead of building a new workhouse at Champion Hill, at a cost of £200,000. The deputation, which actually contained a professor of political economy, Mr. Thorold Rogers, urged that the system of the workhouse test entailed a cost of 7s. a week to the parish, whereas, if persons were relieved at home, 3s. or 4s. would be all that would be required. Well might a French economist write an essay upon “things that are seen, and things that are not seen”!