Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

There are two chapters in Malthus’s second volume devoted to the consideration of the Agricultural and Commercial Systems about which so much was written by his contemporaries. Mr. Malthus says in Chapter VIII. that there are none of the definitions of the wealth of a state that are not liable to some objections. If the gross produce of the land be taken as indicating wealth, it is clear that this may increase very rapidly whilst the nation is very poor, and, wealth again may increase without tending to increase the funds for the maintenance of labor and population. “Whichever of these definitions is adopted, the position of the economists will remain true, that the surplus produce of the cultivators is the great fund which ultimately pays all not employed in the land. Throughout the whole world the number of manufacturers, of proprietors, and of persons engaged in the various civil and military professions must be exactly proportional to the surplus produce, and cannot in the nature of things increase beyond it. If the earth had been so niggardly of her produce as to oblige all her inhabitants to labor for it, no manufacturer or idle persons could ever have existed. But her first intercourse with man was a voluntary present, not very large indeed, but sufficient as a fund for his subsistence, till by the proper exercise of his faculties he could produce a greater. In proportion as the labor and ingenuity of man increased, again, the land has increased this surplus produce; leisure has been given to a greater number of persons to employ themselves in all the inventions which embellish civilised life; and, although in its turn, the desire to profit by these inventions has greatly contributed to stimulate the cultivators to increase their surplus produce; yet the order of precedence is clearly the surplus produce, because the funds for the subsistence of the manufacturer must be advanced to him before he can complete his work.”

“In the history of the world,” says Malthus, “the nations whose wealth has been derived principally from manufactures and commerce, have been perfectly ephemeral beings, compared with those whose wealth has been agriculture. It is in the nature of things that a state which subsists upon a revenue furnished by other countries, must be infinitely more exposed to all the accidents of time and chance, than one which produces its own. No error is more frequent than that of mistaking effects for causes. We are so blinded by the shrewdness of commerce and manufactures, as to believe that they are almost the sole cause of the wealth, power, and prosperity of England; but perhaps they may be more justly considered as the consequence, than the cause of the wealth. According to the definition of the economists, which considers only the produce of land, England is the richest country in Europe, in proportion to her size. Her system of agriculture is beyond comparison better, and consequently, her surplus produce is more considerable. France is very greatly superior to England in extent of territory and population; but when the surplus produce, or disposable revenue of the two nations are compared, the superiority of France almost vanishes. According to the returns lately made of the population of England and Wales, it appears that the number of persons employed in agriculture is considerably less than a fifth part of the whole.”

This was written by Malthus in 1806, and it is curious to contrast the state of matters which now exists in the United Kingdom. In 1881 she consumed 1,740,000 tons of meat, and only produced 1,090,000 of these herself. She also consumed 607 millions of bushels of grain, and produced only 322 millions of these, so that, although her agricultural skill has greatly increased since the days of Malthus, she imports nearly half of her grain and one-third of her meat supplies.

Malthus was of opinion that the National Debt of England was chiefly injurious because it absorbed the redundancy of commercial capital and kept up the rate of interest, thus preventing capital from overflowing upon the soil. He thought that thus a large mortgage had been established on the lands of England, the interest of which was drawn from the payment of productive labor, and dedicated to the support of idle consumers. “It must be allowed, therefore, upon the whole, that our commerce has not done so much for our agriculture, as our agriculture has done for our commerce; and that the improved system of cultivation which has taken place, in spite of considerable discouragements, creates yearly a surplus produce which enables the country, with but little assistance, to support so vast a body of people engaged in pursuits unconnected with the land.”

About the middle of the eighteenth century, England, says our author, was genuinely, and in the strict sense of the economists, an agricultural nation. With London containing a population of more than four millions, and our other immense cities, this description of England is now quite out of place.

About the middle of the last century, says Malthus, we were genuinely, and in the strict sense of the economists, an agricultural nation. “We have now, however, slipped out of the agricultural system into a state in which the commercial system clearly predominates, and there is but too much reason to fear that even our consumers and manufacturers will ultimately feel the disadvantage of the change. When a country in average years grows more wheat than it consumes, and is in the habit of exporting a part of it, those great variations of price which from the competition of commercial wealth, often produce lasting effects, cannot occur to the same extent. The wages of labour can never rise very much above the common price in other commercial countries; and under such circumstances England would have nothing to fear from the fullest and most open competition.”

Our author thinks (chap. ix. book iii.) that if we were to lower the price of labour by encouraging the import of foreign corn, we should probably aggravate our evils. The decline in our agriculture would be certain. The British grower could not, in his own markets, stand the competition of foreign growers, in average years. Arable lands of a moderate quality would hardly pay the expenses of cultivation. Rich soils alone would yield a rent. Round our towns the appearance would be the same as usual; but in the interior of the country much of the land would be neglected, and almost universally, where it was practicable, pasture would take the place of tillage. This state of things would continue till the equilibrium was restored, either by the fall of British rent and wages, or an advance in foreign corn, or, what is more probable, by the union of both causes. But a period would have elapsed of considerable relative encouragement to manufactures, and relative discouragement to agriculture. A certain portion of capital would be taken from the land, and when the equilibrium was at length restored, the nation would probably be found dependent upon foreign supplies for a great portion of its subsistence: and unless some particular cause were to occasion a foreign demand greater than the home demand, its independence, in this respect, would not be recovered. In the natural course of things, a country which depends for a considerable part of its supply of corn upon its poorer neighbours may expect to see this supply gradually diminish, as those countries increase in riches and population, and have less surplus produce to spare.

This last remark of Malthus has been verified of late years in Europe, for countries from which we used some few years back to receive a considerable amount of our supplies of meat and grain, have now become competitors with us for supplies of these articles from the United States and Australasia. And for other countries his further remark holds true, that the political relations of such a country may expose it, during a war, to have that part of its supply of provisions which it derives from foreign states suddenly stopped or greatly diminished; an event which could not take place without producing the most calamitous effects. “A nation,” he continues, “in which agricultural wealth predominates, though it may not produce at home such a surplus of luxuries and conveniences as the commercial nation, and may therefore be exposed possibly to some want of these commodities, has, on the other hand, a surplus of that article which is essential to the well-being of the whole state, and is therefore secure from want in what is of the greatest importance. And if we cannot be so sure of the supply of what we derive from others, as of what we produce at home, it seems to be an advantageous policy in a nation whose territory will allow of it, to secure a surplus of that commodity, a deficiency of which would strike most deeply at its happiness and prosperity.”

Malthus held that there is no branch of trade more profitable to a country, even in a commercial point of view, than the sale of rude produce. And here he seems to have disagreed with Adam Smith’s views. That illustrious writer on Wealth observes that a trading and manufacturing country exports what can subsist and accommodate but very few, and imports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number. The other exports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number, and imports that of a very few only. The inhabitants in the one must enjoy, said Adam Smith, a much greater quantity of subsistence than what their own land, in the actual state of cultivation, could afford. The inhabitants of the other must always enjoy a much smaller quantity.

Malthus demurs to much of this argument of Adam Smith. For, says he, “though the manufacturing nation may export a commodity which, in its actual shape, can only subsist and accommodate a very few, yet it must be recollected that in order to prepare this commodity for exportation, a considerable part of the revenue of the country has been employed in subsisting and accommodating a great number of workmen. And with regard to the subsistence and accommodation which the other nation exports, whether it be of a great or a small number, it is certainly no more than sufficient to replace the subsistence that has been consumed in the manufacturing nation, together with the profits of the master manufacturer and merchant, which probably, are not so great as the profits of the farmer and the merchant in the agricultural nation; and, though it may be true that the inhabitants of the manufacturing nation enjoy a greater quantity of subsistence than what their own lands in the actual state of their cultivation could afford, yet an inference in favour of the manufacturing system by no means follows, because the adoption of the one or the other system will make the greatest difference in their actual state of cultivation. If, during the course of a century, two landed nations were to pursue these two different systems, that is, if one of them were regularly to export manufacture and import subsistence, and the other to export subsistence and import manufacture, there would be no comparison at the end of the period between the state of cultivation in the two countries; and no doubt could rationally be entertained that the country which exported its raw produce would be able to subsist and accommodate a much larger population than the other.”