Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

“Again—Remove all fear from the tyranny or folly of the people, and the tyranny of government could not stand a moment. It would then appear in its proper deformity, without palliation, without pretext, without protection.

“Good governments are chiefly useful to the poorer classes, by giving them a clearer view of the necessity of some preventive check to population. And in despotic governments it is usually found that the checks to population arise more from the sickness and mortality consequent on poverty, than from any such preventive check.”

Mr. Malthus contends that “the most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all the evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments. The falsity of these accusations, and the dreadful consequences that would result from their being generally admitted and acted upon, make it absolutely necessary that they should at all events be resisted: not only on account of the immediate revolutionary horrors to be expected from a movement of the people acting under such impressions, a consideration which must at all times have very great weight, but on account of the extreme probability that such a revolution would soon terminate in a much worse despotism than that which it had destroyed. Whatever may be, therefore, the intention of those indiscriminate accusations against governments, their real effect undoubtedly is to add a weight of talents and principles to the prevailing power which it would never have received otherwise.”

“Under a government constructed upon the best and purest principles, and executed by men of the highest talents and integrity, the most squalid poverty and wretchedness might universally prevail from an inattention to the prudential check to population, and as this cause of unhappiness has hitherto been so little understood, that the efforts of society have always tended rather to aggravate than to lessen it, we have the strongest reason for supposing that in all the governments with which we are acquainted, a great part of the misery to be observed among the lower classes of the people arises from this cause.”

The inference, therefore, which Mr. Godwin, and in latter days Mr. Hyndman and the Democratic Federation, have drawn against governments from the unhappiness of the people is palpably unfair, and before we give a sanction to such accusations, it is a debt we owe to truth and justice, to ascertain how much of this unhappiness arises from the principle of population, and how much is fairly to be attributed to government. When this distinction has been properly made, and all the vague, indefinite, and false accusations removed, government would remain, as it ought to be, clearly responsible for the rest, and the amount of this would still be such as to make the responsibility very considerable. “Though government has but little power in the direct relief of poverty, yet its indirect influences on the prosperity of its subjects is striking and incontestible. And the reason is, that though it is comparatively impotent in its efforts to make the food of a country keep pace with an unrestricted increase of population, yet its influence is great in giving the best direction to those checks, which in some form or other must necessarily take place.”

The first great requisite, says Mr. Malthus, to the growth of prudential habits is the perfect security of property, and the next perhaps is that respectability and importance which is given to the lower classes by equal laws, and the possession of some influence in the framing of them. The more excellent, then, is the government, the more does it tend to generate that prudence and elevation of sentiment by which alone in the present state of our being can poverty be avoided.

Mr. Malthus was greatly opposed to despotic government; and he remarks that it has been sometimes asserted, that the only reason why it is advantageous that the people should have some share in the government, is that a representation of the people tends best to secure the framing of good and equal laws; but that if the same object could be obtained under a despotism, the same advantage would accrue to the community. If, however, the representative system, by securing to the lower classes of society a more equal and liberal mode of treatment from their superiors, gives to each individual a greater personal respectability and a greater fear of personal degradation, it is evident that it will powerfully co-operate with the security of property in animating the exertions of industry, and in generating habits of prudence, and thus more powerfully tend to increase the riches and prosperity of the lower classes of the community, than if the same laws had existed under a despotism.

But, says our author, though the tendency of a free constitution and a good government to diminish poverty is certain, yet its effect in this way must necessarily be indirect and slow, and very different from the immediate and direct relief which the lower classes of people are too frequently in the habit of looking forward to as the consequences of a revolution. This habit of expecting too much, and the irritation occasioned by disappointment, continually give a wrong direction to their efforts in favor of liberty, and continually tend to defeat the accomplishment of those gradual reforms in government, and that slow amelioration of the lowest classes of society, which are really attainable.

The following passage might be well studied in these days of proposed schemes for land confiscation and communism. “It is of the very highest importance, therefore, to know distinctly what government cannot do, as well as what it can do. If I were called upon to name the cause which, in my conception, had more than any other contributed to the very slow progress of freedom, so disheartening to every liberal mind, I should say that it was the confusion that had existed respecting the causes of the unhappiness and discontent which prevail in society; and the advantage which governments had been able to take, and indeed had been compelled to take, of this confusion, to confirm and strengthen their power. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that a knowledge generally circulated, that the principal cause of want and unhappiness is only indirectly connected with government, and totally beyond its power to remove; and that it depends upon the conduct of the poor themselves, would, instead of giving any advantage to government, give a great additional weight to the popular side of the question, by removing the danger with which from ignorance it is at present accompanied; and these tend in a very powerful manner to promote the cause of rational freedom.”

Mr. J. S. Mill, who was more of a Socialist than Mr. Malthus and a greater optimist, admits that it would be possible for the State to ensure employment at ample wages to all that are born. But, he adds, if it does this, it is bound in self-protection, and for every purpose for which the State exists, to see that no one should be born without its consent. That is, he seems to favor the framing of a statute directed against the production of large families.