In society, as it was in the first years of the nineteenth century, Malthus thinks he can trace out even by his own observation an “oscillation,” or what it is the fashion to call a “cycle,” in the movement of population. History does not show it well, simply because “the histories of mankind which we possess are in general only of the higher classes,”[[152]] and it is the labouring classes to which the observation applies. Their painful experience of the ruder checks has not prevented a “constant effort” in the labouring population to have larger families than they can well support. The consequence is that their numbers are increased; they must divide amongst eleven and a half millions the food that was formerly divided among eleven millions; they must have lower wages and dearer provisions. But this state of distress will so check population that in process of time the numbers will be almost at a standstill, while at the same time, since the demand for food has been greater and labour has been cheaper, the application of capital to agriculture will have increased the available food. The result will be the same tolerable degree of comfort as at the beginning of the cycle, and the same relapse from it as at the second stage. He conceives the two stages to follow each other as naturally as sunshine rain and rain sunshine. The existence of such a cycle may remain concealed from the ordinary historian, if he looks merely to the money wages of the labourer, for it frequently happens that the labourer gets the same sums of money for his wages during a long series of years when the real value of the sums has not remained the same,—the price of bread in what we have called the second stage of the cycle being much dearer than it was in the first, and than it will be in the third.[[153]] Though Malthus expressly qualifies his statements by showing that civilization tends to counteract these fluctuations, it certainly seemed to be his belief in 1803 that on the whole the working classes of Europe, and especially of England, were powerless to escape from them. How far this view is justified will be seen presently.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SAVAGE, BARBARIAN, AND ORIENTAL.
Simile supplanted by Fact—Savage Life—Population dependent not on possible but on actual Food—Indirect Action of Positive Checks—Hunger not a Principle of Progress—Otaheite a Crux for Common Sense—Cycle in the Movement of Population—Pitcairn Island—Barbarian and Oriental—Nomad Shepherds—Abram and Lot—Cimbri and Teutones—Gibbon versus Montesquieu—“At bay on the limits of the Universe”—Misgovernment an indirect Check on Population—Ancient Europe less populous than Modern—Civilization the gradual Victory of the third Check.
The main position of the essay was so incontrovertible, that when the critics despaired to convict Malthus of a paradox, they charged him with a truism. To the friendly Hallam[[154]] the mathematical basis of the argument appeared as certain as the multiplication table, and the unfriendly Hazlitt “did not see what there was to discover after reading the tables of Noah’s descendants, and knowing that the world is round.”[[155]] If the essayist had done nothing more than put half-truths together into a whole, he would have “entrenched himself in an impregnable fortress” and given his work a great “air of mastery.”[[156]] But he would have convinced the understanding without convincing the imagination. Adam Smith himself would have done no more than half his work, if he had been content to prove the reasonableness of free trade without showing, in detail, the effect of it and its opposites. Even the most competent reader has seldom all the relevant facts marshalled in his memory, ready to command; and he will always be thankful for illustrations. The Essay on Population in its second form certainly excelled all economical works, save one, in its pertinent examples from life and history.
Imagination in the narrower sense of the word is to be out of court. Malthus, like Adam Smith, not only leaves little to his reader’s fancy, but makes little use of his own. His own had misled his readers in the first essay, though it had certainly given that little book much of its piquancy; and he resolves for the sake of truth to chain it up, as Coleridge chained up his understanding. The self-denying ordinance is only too fully executed. The style of his essay is truly described by himself[[157]] as having gradually “lost all pretensions to merit.” Edition follows edition, each with its footnotes, supplements, rearrangements, and corrections, till the reader feels that this writer “would be clearer if he were not so clear.”
But the title-page supplies a guiding thread. From the second edition onwards to the last, “Past” and “Present” appear in large letters, “Future” in small. The entire work may therefore be divided according to the three tenses, with the emphasis on the two former. The first book is devoted to the past, the second to the present, and the third and fourth to the future.
The First deals with the less civilized parts of the world as it now is, and the uncivilized past times; the Second with the different states of modern Europe; the Third criticizes popular schemes of future improvement; while the Fourth gives the author’s own views of the possible progress of humanity.
After explaining his principles, Malthus takes a survey of human progress, if not from brute to savage, at least from savage to citizen. He shows us how the rude and simple positive checks become complicated with the preventive; and he leads us up from barbarism to civilization till we find ourselves in a society where the citizens think less of check than of chief end, and less of self-sacrifice than of self-devotion, to some cause or person, and even the inferior members act, at worst, from mixed motives, containing good as well as evil. These are the two extreme ends of his line. It would be useless to deny that he lingers longest over the less pleasing, and gives Godwin some excuse for questioning his logical right to believe in the more pleasing at all.[[158]] At the same time it would have been (even logically) impossible for him to have attacked Godwin for taking abstract views of human nature, and then to have persisted in an abstraction of his own, after all his own European travel and historical studies. His fault had lain in defective premises, not in false reasoning; and he remedies the fault.
Let us take his account in his own order. Beginning with present savagery, which with some qualifications is a picture of our own past, he sifts out the descriptions of Cook, Vancouver, and other travellers, to see what checks to population operate in different grades of savage humanity. At the very bottom of the scale comes Tierra del Fuego, by general consent the abode of pure misery, and therefore naturally the home of a sparse population. Next come the natives of the Andaman Islands and of Van Diemen’s Land. “Their whole time is spent in search of food,” which consists of the raw products of the soil and sea; the whole time of every individual is devoted to this one labour, and there is neither room nor inducement for any other industries. Vice is hardly needed; misery in the shape of perpetual scarcity and famine keeps down the people to the food. Third in the scale of human beings are the New Hollanders, the original inhabitants of North-West Australia, among whom can be traced not only the check of misery, but the check of vice. The women are so cruelly treated at all times, and the children have so harsh an upbringing, that there is no difficulty in understanding how population does not even reach the full limit of the scanty food. War and pestilence make the assurance doubly sure. As savages are entirely innocent of sanitary science, the dirt of their persons and their houses deprives them of “the advantage which usually attends a thinly-peopled country,” comparative exemption from pestilence.[[159]] Even the North American Indians, who are one step higher than the New Hollanders, come under the same condemnation for overcrowding, and for much else besides. The account which Malthus gives of them may be compared with that of De Tocqueville half a century later. Romance has clung to them only because they were the nearest and best known savages of their kind, and their necessary labours were in Europe rich men’s pleasures. But hunting and river-fishing cannot yield much food unless pursued over a wide area. A hunter is so far like the beast of prey which he pursues, that he must go long distances for his food, and must either fly from or overcome every rival. The North American Indian must therefore either go West after his old food, or else he must stay where he is, to beat off the Europeans, or to adopt their food and their habits. “The Indians have only two ways of saving themselves, war and civilization. They must either destroy the Europeans or become their equals.”[[160]] As the civilization of a nation of hunters is almost impossible, their extinction seems inevitable. The question remains, How is this population cut down to the level of its food?
In Malthus’ answer to the question occur three remarks of great general importance. First, what limits the numbers of a people is not the possible but the actual food.[[161]] Second, want destroys a population less often directly by starvation than indirectly through the medium of manners and customs.[[162]] Third, the mere pressure of impending starvation does not lead to progress.[[163]]