Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

Mr. Malthus then adds: “For my own part, I feel not the slightest doubt, that if the introduction of the cow-pox should extirpate the small-pox, and yet the number of marriages continue the same, we shall find a very perceptible difference in the increased mortality of some other diseases. Nothing could prevent this effect but a sudden start in our agriculture; and should this take place, which I fear we have not much reason to expect, it will not be owing to the number of children saved from death by the cow-pox inoculations, but to the alarms occasioned among the people of property by the late scarcities, and to the increased gains of farmers, which have been so absurdly reprobated. I am strongly, however, inclined to believe, that the number of marriages will not in this case remain the same; but that the gradual light which may be expected to be thrown on this interesting topic of human inquiry, will teach us how to make the extinction of a mortal disorder, a real blessing to us, and a real improvement in the general health and happiness of the society.”

In these admirable remarks Malthus points out that whenever we make improvements in the science of health, we must be contented to lessen the birth-rate, if we would really secure the benefits we might expect. Thus, if drainage, good water supply, and the extirpation of fevers are to be of service to us, it must be that we are determined to have fewer children. For, if we have an equally high birth-rate, and no great addition to our food supplies from abroad or from our own soil, we must die inevitably of some other chronic, although different, maladies than those produced by bad drainage and fevers, or small-pox. In no case can we have a birth-rate of 40 per 1,000 in an old country, without a high death-rate.

CHAPTER XII.

In Chapter VI. of Book IV. Mr. Malthus treats of the effects of the knowledge of the principal cause of poverty on Civil Liberty, observing at the outset that it may appear to some that a doctrine which attributes the greatest part of the sufferings of the lower classes of society exclusively to themselves, is unfavorable to the cause of liberty, affording, it may be said, a tempting opportunity to governments of oppressing their subjects at pleasure, and laying all the blame on the improvident habits of the poor. Our author contends that, on the other hand, the pressure of distress on the lower classes of people, with the habit of attributing the distress to their rulers, appears to him to be the rock of defence, the castle and the guardian spirit of despotism, affording as it does to the tyrant the unanswerable plea of necessity.

“The patriot who might be called upon by the love of his country to join with heart and hand in a rising of the people for some specific attainable object or reform, if he knew that they were enlightened respecting their own situation, and would stop short when they had attained their demand, would be called upon by the same motion to submit to very great opposition rather than give the slightest countenance to a popular tumult, the members of which, at least the greatest number of them, were persuaded that the destruction of the Parliament, the Lord Mayor, and the monopoly would make bread cheap, and that a revolution would enable them all to support their families. In this case it is more the ignorance and delusion of the lower classes of people that occasions the oppression, than the actual disposition of the government to tyranny.”

Mr. Malthus observes that the circulation of Paine’s Rights of Man was said to have done great mischief among the lower and middle classes in this country: and that might be true; but that was because Mr. Paine in many important points had shown himself totally unacquainted with the structure of society, and the different moral effects to be expected from the physical difference between this country and America. Mobs of the same description as those collections of people known by that name in Europe could not at that day exist in America. The number of people without property was, then, at that time, from the physical state of the country, comparatively small: and therefore the civil power which was needed to protect property, did not require to be so large. Mr. Paine argued that the real cause of riots was always want of happiness, and maintained that such was always due to something being wrong in the system of Government. But this is evidently not always the case. The redundant population of an old state furnishes materials for unhappiness, unknown to such a state of that of America.

Nothing would so effectually counteract the mischief caused by Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (says our author), as a general knowledge of our true rights. “What these rights are, it is not now my business to explain: but there is one right which man has generally been thought to possess, which I am confident he neither does nor can possess, a right to subsistence when his labor will not fairly purchase it. Our laws (in 1806) indeed say that he has this right, and bind the society to furnish employment and food to them who cannot get them in the regular market; but in so doing they attempt to reverse the laws of nature; and it is in consequence to be expected, not only that they should fail in their object, but that the poor who were intended to be benefited should suffer most cruelly from this inhuman deceit which is practised upon them.”

Malthus adds that the Abbé Raynal had said that before all other social laws, man has a right to subsistence. “He might just as well have said that every man had a right to live 100 years. Yes! He has a right to do so, if he can. Good social laws enable truly a greater number of people to exist than could without them; but neither before nor since the institution of social laws can an unlimited number exist. Consequently, as it is impossible to feed all that might be born, it is disgraceful to promise to do so.

“If the great truths on these subjects were more generally circulated, and the lower classes could be convinced that by the laws of nature, independently of any particular institution, except the great one of property, which is absolutely necessary in order to attain any considerable produce, no person has any claim or right on society for subsistence, if his labor will not purchase it, the greatest part of the mischievous declamation on the unjust institutions of society would fall powerless to the ground. If the real causes of their misery were shown to the poor, and they were taught to know how small a part of their present distress was attributable to government, discontent would be far less common.