Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

The argument made use of by M. Maurice Block, that, in times of war, Great Britain may possibly in some future time be in danger of seeing much of its population starved from want of food supplies, was anticipated by Malthus in a foot-note in chapter x. He there says:—“I should be misunderstood if, from anything I have said in the four last chapters, I should be considered as not sufficiently aware of the advantages derived from commerce and manufactures. I look upon them as the most distinguishing characteristics of civilization, the most obvious and striking marks of the improvement of society, and calculated to enlarge our enjoyments, and add to the sum of human happiness. No great surplus of agriculture could exist without them, and if it did exist, it would be comparatively of very little value. But still they are rather the ornaments and embellishments of the political structure than its foundations. While these foundations are perfectly secure, we cannot be too solicitous to make all the apartments convenient and elegant: but if there be the slightest reason to fear that the foundations themselves may give way, it seems to be folly to continue directing our principal attention to the less essential parts. There has never yet been an instance in history of a large nation continuing with undiminished vigour to support four or five millions of its people on imported corn; nor do I believe that there ever will be such an instance in future. England is, undoubtedly, from her insular situation and commanding navy, the most likely to form an exception to this rule; but in spite even of the peculiar advantages of England, it appears to me clear that if she continues yearly to increase her importations of corn, she cannot ultimately escape that decline which seems to be the natural and necessary consequence of excessive commercial wealth. I am not now speaking of the next twenty or thirty years, but of the next two or three hundred. And though we are little in the habit of looking so far forward, yet it may be questioned whether we are not bound in duty to make some exertions to avoid a system which must necessarily terminate in the weakness and decline of our posterity. But whether we make any practical application of such a discussion or not, it is curious to contemplate the cause of those reverses in the fate of empires, which so frequently changed the face of the world in past times, and may be expected to produce similar, though perhaps not such violent changes in future. War was undoubtedly, in ancient times, the principal cause of these changes; but it frequently only finished a work which excess of luxury and agriculture had begun. Foreign invasions, or internal convulsions, produced but a temporary and comparatively slight effect upon such countries as Lombardy, Tuscany, and Flanders, but are fatal to such states as Holland and Hamburg, and though the commerce and manufactures of England will probably always be supported in a great degree by her agriculture, yet that part which is not so supported will still remain subject to the reverses of dependent states.”

Writing in 1806, Mr. Malthus adds:—“We should recollect that it is only within the last twenty or thirty years that we have become an importing nation. In so short a period it could hardly be expected that the evils of the system should be perceptible. We have, however, already felt some of its inconveniences; and if we persevere at it, its evil consequences may by no means be a matter of remote speculation.”

In the eleventh chapter of his third book our author treats of the prevailing errors respecting population and plenty, and notices some of the arguments which have this very year (1883) been put forward, over and over again, by the disciples of Mr. Henry George, an American writer who has acquired a sudden celebrity for his work on “Progress and Poverty.” “It has been observed,” says Mr. Malthus, “that many countries at the period of their greatest degree of populousness have lived in the greatest plenty, and have been able to export corn; but at other periods, when their population was very low, have lived in continual poverty and want, and have been obliged to import corn. Egypt, Palestine, Rome, Sicily, and Spain are cited as particular examples of this fact: and it has been inferred that an increase of population in any state, not cultivated to the utmost, will tend rather to augment than diminish the relative plenty of the whole society; and that, as Lord Kaimes observes, a country cannot easily become too populous for agriculture, because agriculture has the signal property of producing food in proportion to the number of consumers.... The prejudices on the subject of population bear a very striking resemblance to the old prejudices about specie, and we know how slowly and with what difficulty those last have yielded to juster conceptions. Politicians, observing that states which were powerful and prosperous were almost invariably populous, have mistaken an effect for a cause, and concluded that their population was the cause of their prosperity, instead of their prosperity being the cause of their population; as the old political economists concluded, that the abundance of specie was the cause of national wealth, instead of the effect of it. The annual produce of the land and labour, in both of these instances, became in consequence a secondary consideration, and its increase, it was conceived, would naturally follow the increase of specie in the one case, or of population in the other. Yet surely the folly of endeavouring to increase the quantity of specie in any country without an increase of the commodities which it is to circulate, is not greater than that of endeavouring to increase the number of people without an increase of the food which is to maintain them; and it will be found that the level above which no human laws can raise the population of a country, is a limit more fixed and impassable than the limit to the accumulation of specie.”

“Ignorance and despotism seem to have no tendency to destroy the passions which prompt to increase; but they effectually destroy the checks to it from reason and foresight. The improvident barbarian who thinks only of his present wants, or the miserable peasant, who, from his political situation, feels little security of reaping what he has sown, will seldom be deterred from gratifying his passion by the prospect of inconvenience, which cannot be expected to press upon him under three or four years. Industry cannot exist without foresight and security. Even poverty itself, which appears to be the great spur to industry, when it has passed certain limits almost ceases to operate. The indigence which is hopeless destroys all vigorous exertion, and confines the efforts to what is sufficient for bare existence. It is the hope of bettering our condition, and the fear of want rather than want itself, that is the best stimulus to industry; and its most constant and best directed efforts will almost invariably be found among a class of people above the class of the wretchedly poor.”

This remark of Malthus is a reply to those who say that if food were cheaper and the poor better fed, they would only work as much as was needed to get a scanty supply of food. Experience in our colonies and in the United States shows that the fear of want is an incentive to make the early colonists of a fertile country fervid in their desire to obtain wealth.

“That an increase of population,” says Malthus, “when it follows in its natural order, is both a great positive good in itself, and absolutely necessary to a further increase in the annual produce of the land and labour of any country, I should be the last to deny. The only question is, What is the natural order of this progress? In this point, Sir James Stewart appears to me to have fallen into an error. He determines that multiplication is the efficient cause of agriculture, and not agriculture of multiplication; but though it may be allowed that the increase of people beyond what could easily subsist on the natural fruits of the earth, first prompted man to till the ground: and that the view of maintaining a family, or of obtaining some valuable consideration in exchange for the products of agriculture, still operates as the principal stimulus to cultivation; yet it is clear that these products, in their actual state, must be beyond the lowest wants of the existing population before any permanent increase can possibly be supported. We know that a multiplication of births has in numberless instances taken place, which has produced no effect upon agriculture, and has merely been followed by an increase of diseases: but perhaps there is no instance where a permanent increase of agriculture has not a permanent increase of population, somewhere or other. Consequently agriculture may with more propriety be termed the efficient cause of population, than population of agriculture, though they certainly react upon each other, and are mutually necessary to each other’s support.”

“The author of ‘L’Ami des Hommes’ (Mirabeau’s father), in a chapter on the effects of a decay in agriculture upon population, acknowledges that he had fallen into a fundamental error in considering population as the source of revenue: and that he was afterwards convinced that revenue was the source of population. From a want of attention to this most important distinction, statesmen, in pursuit of the desirable object of population, have been led to encourage early marriages, to reward the fathers of families, and to disgrace celibacy; but this, as the same author justly observes, is to dress and water a piece of land without sowing it, yet to expect a crop.” It is curious that so backward is speculation on this question even in modern France, the most practical Neo-Malthusian country in Europe, that this year has already seen two proposals made by learned Frenchmen to encourage marriage and large families. The first emanated from the son of one of the most distinguished surgeons of Paris, Dr. Richet; the other from a member of the French Corps Legislatif.

“Among the other prejudices,” says Malthus, “which have prevailed on the subject of population, it has been generally thought that while there is either waste among the rich, or land remaining uncultivated in any country, the complaints for want of food cannot be justly founded, or at least that the presence of distress among the poor is to be attributed to the ill-conduct of the higher classes of society and the bad management of the land. The real effect, however, of these two circumstances is merely to narrow the limit of the actual population; but they have little or no influence on what may be called the average pressure of distress on the poorer members of society. If our ancestors had been so frugal and industrious, and had transmitted such habits to their posterity, that nothing superfluous was consumed by the higher classes, no horses were used for pleasure, and no land was left uncultivated, a striking difference would appear in the state of the actual population, but probably none whatever in the state of the lower classes of people, with respect to the price of labour and the facility of supporting a family. The waste among the rich, and the horses kept for pleasure, have indeed a little the effect of the consumption of grain in distilleries, noticed before with regard to China. On the supposition that the food consumed in this manner may be withdrawn on the occasion of a scarcity, and be applied to the relief of the poor, they operate certainly as far as they go, like granaries which are only opened at the time that they are wanted, and must therefore tend rather to benefit than to injure the lower classes of society.

“With regard to uncultivated land,” says our author, “it is evident that its effect upon the poor is neither to injure nor to benefit them. The sudden cultivation of it would undoubtedly tend to improve their condition for a time, and the neglect of lands before cultivated will certainly make their situation worse for a certain period; but when no changes of this kind are going forward the effect of uncultivated land on the lower class operates merely like the possession of a smaller territory. It is indeed a point of very great importance to the poor whether a country is in the habit of exporting or importing corn; but this point is not necessarily connected with the complete or incomplete cultivation of the whole territory, but depends upon the proportion of the surplus produce to those who are supported by it; and in fact this proportion is generally the greatest in countries which have not yet completed the cultivation of their territory.

“We should not, therefore, be too ready to make inferences against the internal economy of a country from the appearance of uncultivated heaths, without other evidence. But the fact is, that no country has ever reached, or probably ever will reach, its highest possible acme of produce, it appears always as if the want of industry, or the ill-direction of that industry, was the actual limit to a further increase of produce and population, and not the absolute refusal of nature to yield any more; but a man who is locked up in a room may be fairly said to be confined by the walls of it, though he may never touch them; and with regard to the principle of population, it is never the question whether a country will produce any more, but whether it may be made to produce a sufficiency to keep pace with an unchecked increase of people. In China the question is not, whether a certain additional quantity of rice might be raised by improved culture, but whether such an addition could be counted on during the next twenty-five years as would be sufficient to support an additional three hundred millions of people. And in this country it is not the question whether, by cultivating all our commons, we could raise considerably more than at present: but whether we could raise sufficient for a population of twenty millions in the next twenty-five years and forty millions in the next fifty years.