Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus

by Charles R. Drysdale

And yet it seems that in Arabia, as elsewhere, the direct social encouragements to population are very great. A Mahometan is taught that one of the great duties of man is to procreate children to glorify the Creator. But, as Mr. Malthus truly says, “While the Arabs retain their present manners, and the country remains in its present state of cultivation, the promise of paradise to every man who had ten children would but little increase their numbers, though it might greatly increase their misery.”

The checks to population existing in Africa seem to be chiefly of the positive kind. Incessant warfare, with death by famine or epidemics, are described by the early travellers on that Continent, Park and Bruce, as carrying off whole tribes. Park states that, independently of violent causes, the struggle for food is so great in most African states, that longevity is rare among the negroes. At forty, most of them become grayhaired and covered with wrinkles, and but few of them survive the age of fifty-five or sixty. There was, in his day, but little difficulty in obtaining slaves in times of famine in Africa, as even free negroes were often so pressed with hunger as to entreat, according to Dr. Laidley, to be put on his slave-chain, to save them from starvation. Bruce reports that, in many of the tribes, women begin to be mothers at the age of eleven: and to such a life of privation and care does this rapid reproduction lead, that he speaks of the women in some States near Abyssinia as becoming, at the age of twenty-two, “more wrinkled and deformed by age, than an European woman is at sixty.”

Mr. Malthus, after a very curious account of the checks to population in Northern and Southern Siberia, then passes on in chapter x., to treat of the Turkish Dominions and Persia, and his remarks are especially interesting to our modern politicians. The fundamental cause of the low rate of increase of population in Turkey, he truly remarks, is undoubtedly the nature of the Turkish government. Its tyranny, its feebleness, its bad laws, and worse administration of them, with the consequent insecurity of property, throw such obstacles in the way of agriculture, that the means of subsistence are necessarily decreasing yearly, and with them, of course, the number of people. It is calculated at the present day that population would double only once in 555 years in Turkey, owing to the positive checks caused by its wretched government. The population of modern Turkey is about 28 millions, or only some 16 persons per square mile; and, in 1876, it was stated in governmental reports that the population of the empire was fast declining, and its cultivated lands falling into the condition of deserts. In Europe, as in Asia, we are informed by Malthus, it was the maxim of Turkish policy, originating in the feebleness of government, and the fear of popular tumults, to keep the price of corn low in all the considerable towns. “When Constantinople is in want of provisions, ten provinces are perhaps famished for a supply. At Damascus, during the scarcity of 1784, the people paid only one penny farthing a pound for their bread, whilst the peasants in the villages were actually dying with hunger.”

As to the checks to population in Persia, the dreadful convulsions to which that country has been subject for many hundred years must have been fatal to her agriculture. The periods of repose from external wars and internal commotions have been short and few, and even during the times of profound peace, the frontier provinces were constantly subject to the ravages of the Tartars. Hence the slow increase.

One of the most valuable parts of the Essay on Population is that wherein Mr. Malthus treats of the checks to population in Hindostan and Tibet. In Hindostan, according to the ordinance of Menu, the Indian legislator, marriage is very greatly encouraged, and a male heir is considered as an object of the first importance. Hindoo maidens are married at the age of eleven, and even younger: and become mothers before they attain the age of twelve. For such reasons, Hindostan has been one of the most noted countries in the world for devastations, epidemics, and famines. The lower classes have for centuries been reduced to the extremest poverty, and compelled to adopt the most frugal and scanty mode of subsistence. Whilst the average annual income per head in England was calculated, by Mr. Henry Fawcett in 1870, at about some eighteen pounds; in Hindostan, it was lately stated by Mr. J. Bright, that about two or three pounds sterling for food is all a Hindoo peasant gets. And, as Lord Derby remarked in his admirable Rochdale speech in 1879, the people of Hindostan seem to be a marked example of how very low a standard of living a nation may people down to.

Recent years have made us familiar with the tales of Indian famines; but there is nothing novel in these in the history of that long over-peopled country. One of the Jesuits cited by Malthus says that it is impossible for him to describe the misery to which he was witness during the two years’ famine in 1737 and 1738, and another Jesuit writes, “Every year we baptize a thousand children, whom their parents can no longer feed, or who, being likely to die, are sold to us by their mothers in order to get rid of them.”

Tibet, it seems, according to Malthus, is perhaps the only country where habits tending to repress population are, or were, universally encouraged by the government. Celibacy is there much encouraged among government employés, and the number of monasteries and nunneries is considerable. “But, even among the laity, the business of population goes on very coldly. All the brothers of a family, without any restriction of age or of numbers, associate their fortunes with one female, who is chosen by the eldest and considered as the mistress of the house.” It is evident that this custom, combined with the celibacy of such a numerous body of ecclesiastics, must operate, says Malthus, in the most powerful manner as a preventive check to population. Yet, according to Mr. Turner’s account, it appears that the population of Tibet presses on the means of subsistence. Tibet, in Mr. Turner’s time, seems to have suffered, as England now does, and as we hear that even our wealthy colonies of Victoria and New South Wales do, from a set of paupers created by an extremely unwise system of out-door relief—a system which but too often manufactures the very paupers it wishes to relieve.

Mr. Malthus’ account of the Checks to Population in China and Japan, contained in chapter xij. of his work is one of the most important contributions to the question conceivable. His authorities are Duhalde’s History of China and Sir G. Staunton’s Account of his Embassy to China. According to the former author, writing in 1738, the population of China was then estimated as at least three hundred and thirty-three millions. At present China is said to contain some four hundred millions.

The causes of the great populousness of China are, according to Malthus, its advantageous position as to climate and irrigation, and the very great encouragement given to agriculture by the monarchs of that nation. The Emperor himself every year, to set an example, ploughs a few ridges of land, and the mandarins of every city perform the same ceremony. The whole surface of the empire is, with trifling exceptions, dedicated to the production of food for man alone. There is no meadow, and very little pasture, and no waste land. Even the soldiers of the Chinese army are mostly employed in agriculture.

The extraordinary encouragements given to marriage also contribute to make China more populous in proportion to the extent of its territory than any other country. The permission given by parents to abandon their children, which exists in China, is shown by Sir G. Staunton to facilitate marriage, and cause even greater over-population than in more civilized states where such barbarities are not permitted. The effect of this early marriage and rapid peopling is to subdivide property; and it is a common remark among the Chinese, that fortunes seldom continue considerable in the same family beyond the third generation. One of the Jesuits, writing on China, says: “The richest and most flourishing empire of the world is, in one sense, the poorest and most miserable of all. Four times as much territory would be necessary to put the inhabitants at their ease.”