Time has united Norway and Sweden under one king (1814), and Sweden now presents no unfavourable contrast with Norway. Even in 1825 Malthus wrote[[250]] that the progress of agriculture and industry, and the practice of vaccination, had caused a steady and healthful increase of population since 1805. He would be pleased to find too by the census that the population of Norway had increased very greatly in proportion to its poor. The improvement continues. The paupers were about one per cent. of the population in 1869 (when they were nearly five per cent. in England), which seems to have meant a decrease from previous years;[[251]] but between 1865 and 1875 the population had increased fourteen per cent. in spite of considerable emigration.[[252]] Malthus would have recognized with satisfaction that the nation had been “either increasing the quantity or facilitating the distribution” of its food,[[253]] that is to say, improving either its agriculture or its manufactures. It has really done both. Though the growth of the population has been greater in the centres of manufacture, there has been progress also in the country districts. Many of the old customs and laws that hampered agriculture have ceased to exist.[[254]] Malthus himself says that, if Government would remove hindrances to agriculture, and spread sound knowledge about it, it would do more for the population of the country than by establishing five hundred foundling hospitals.[[255]] He need not have confined his recommendation to agriculture; and elsewhere he states the truth in broader terms: “The true encouragement to marriage is the high price of labour, and an increase of employments which require to be supplied with proper hands.”[[256]] Remove hindrances to trade and spread sound knowledge of it—that (in his view) is the way to increase the quantity and facilitate the distribution of the products of agriculture; and, to judge by results, the Norwegian Government has followed it.
Sweden,[[257]] as it then was, furnished a striking contrast to Norway. Malthus had the advantage there of the earliest and most regular of European censuses, beginning with the year 1748, and continued at intervals first of three and then of five years. He found that there was a large mortality, though the conditions of life were superficially the same as in Norway. The only explanation he could see was that the size and shape of the country, as well as its mode of government, did not so forcibly bring home to the people the need of restraint as in Norway, while at the same time the hindrances to good farming were even more serious than in the smaller country. From the very contiguity and general similarity of the two countries, they proved Malthus’ point, by the Method of Difference, almost as well as a deliberate experiment could have done. It was not that Norway had an absolutely small and Sweden an absolutely large population; considerations of absolute greatness or smallness never enter into this, if into any, economical question. But Norway had a moderately large population in proportion to her food, while Sweden had in the same regard an excessive population, a population which was sparely fed even in average years, and decimated by famine and disease in years below the average.
Russia,[[258]] which was the third scene of Malthus’ travels, had this in common with Norway and Sweden, that the movement of its population was unlike that of Central Europe, and that the eccentricity was due to a clearly definable cause. In Norway the shape and climate of the country and the fewness of the available occupations forced the Government and the people to restrain rather than to encourage the increase of numbers; in Sweden, under conditions less simple, the habits of the people conspired with a false policy of the Government to produce an excessive increase. In both cases we have something different from the typical modern society of Central Europe, with its full division of labour, its system of large factories, and its extensive substitution of machinery for hand labour. Russia was as old-fashioned as Norway and Sweden in this respect; and her physical vastness made her a difficult country to know, in these days of slow communication. It is not surprising that the statistics available in the days of Malthus were open to grave suspicion. The death-rate was given as 1 in 60, while in Norway itself it had not been lower than 1 in 48, and it is about 1 in 53 in England now, yet the number of marriages and of births and the size of families were no smaller than elsewhere.[[259]] These facts by themselves would simply suggest a great rate of increase going on in the country concerned; and Malthus allows that there is great scope for such in Russia. But there was one other fact that strengthened his doubts about the vital statistics of that country; contrary to the experience of all other countries, it was said that in Russia more women were born than men. In others, more men are born than women, and the numbers are only equalized gradually, by the greater risks of masculine life, as the years go on. In Sweden, with a climate not milder than Russia, this had long been observed.[[260]] It turned out on inquiry that the Russian method of registration allowed loopholes for more omissions in the deaths than in the births. Public institutions, including hospitals and prisons, had been left out of account; and the deaths in the foundling hospitals were alone quite sufficient to alter the average very significantly for the worse. Malthus’ hatred of Foundling hospitals is only equalled by his dislike of Poor laws. The idea of such institutions was, like that of Pitt’s Poor Bill, purely philanthropic. They were “to enrich the country from year to year with an increasing number of healthy, active, and industrious burghers,”[[261]] that would otherwise be doomed to death soon after birth. It used to be said of the bounty, granted by the Government of India, on slaughtered snakes, that it really kept up the supply, for the natives bred them to catch the bounty. The foundling hospitals had an opposite effect. They were meant to multiply and they tended to destroy. They encouraged a mother to desert her child at the precise time it needed the minute and careful attention that only a mother can give. “It is not to be doubted that, if the children received into these hospitals had been left to the management of their parents, taking the chance of all the difficulties in which they might be involved, a much greater proportion of them would have reached the age of manhood and have become useful members of the state.”[[262]] But, besides increasing the mortality of children, they injure the very “mainspring of population”[[263]] by discouraging marriage and encouraging irregularities. In his talks with his father, Malthus had no doubt discussed the propriety of Rousseau’s conduct in sending his children to the Paris Foundling Hospital. He would certainly have declared against Rousseau. To those who argue that the foundling basket may prevent child-murder, he answers that an occasional murder from “false [?] shame” is saved at a very dear price by the violation of “the best and most useful feelings of the human heart,” which the existence of such an institution teaches to the poor. To relieve parents of the care of their children is bad for the parents,[[264]] because it takes away from them a responsibility essential to full citizenship and civilizing in its effects on human character;—and it is unjust to their fellow-citizens, because, like the Poor Laws, it relieves one portion of society (in this case rather the worst than the poorest) at the expense of all the rest, and finds a career for pauper apprentices to the prejudice of independent workmen and their children.[[265]] In the third place, like the Poor Laws, it promises an impossibility—to relieve all that come. If children are to be received without limit, the resources for maintaining them should be without limit; otherwise an excessive mortality is quite unavoidable.[[266]] The second reason is no doubt an economical commonplace; it is the first and third that are most characteristic of Malthus. He never forgets that human wants and human wills are an element in every economical phenomenon, and therefore considers that the effects of character on actions and of actions on character are of great economical importance. He will not allow that it can be right, even for a Government, to make promises that cannot be performed. These two plain principles give the tone to the later chapters, where he interprets for us the comparatively full statistics of Central Europe and our own England.[[267]]
The law of population may be described (though not in the exact words of Malthus) as among savage peoples the tendency to increase beyond the food, and among civilized to increase up to it. So Professor Rogers founds his estimate of the numbers of the English people in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries on the principle that “there were generally as many people existing in this country as there have been, on an average, quarters of wheat to feed them with.”[[268]]
In the case of highly progressive modern nations such statements would be beyond the truth; and we must either say that they tend to increase not beyond but along with the food, or else we must define food itself very widely. In the first case “tendency” will mean the abstract possibility depending on the one physiological condition; in the others it is the concrete nett possibility depending on all the various conditions together. In a general preface to his chapters on Central Europe, Malthus quite recognizes these distinctions and warns us against exact statements. “It seldom happens,” he says, “that the increase of food and of population is uniform; and when the circumstances of a country are varying either from this cause or from any change in the national habits with respect to prudence and cleanliness, it is evident that a proportion which is true at one period will not be at another. Nothing is more difficult than to lay down rules on this subject that do not admit of exceptions.”[[269]]
After this it is hard to believe what he tells us elsewhere, that “the only criterion of a real and permanent increase in the population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence.”[[270]] It would be at best a negative criterion and sine quâ non,—there can be no increase of numbers without increase of food,—though even then it is not true of a “forced population,” living down to a lower food.[[271]] But there clearly may be an increase of food without an increase of numbers, unless the character of the people is such that they do nothing with the food except increase by it. Therefore, though, within certain wide limits fixed for us by invariable qualities of human nature, predictions are justifiable on the ground of the law of population[[272]] or any other economical laws, none that specify a particular course of action as a result of a particular event are trustworthy, till we know the character of the people concerned.[[273]] Malthus always tries to bear this in mind; and, when he tells us that the lists of births, marriages, and deaths in Mid Europe give more information about its internal economy than the observations of the wisest travellers,[[274]] he is at once interpreting those figures in the light of a principle, and interpreting the principle by means of the figures. This appears when we look at the four chief conclusions of the general chapter in question. The first is the proposition that in the present state of our industrial civilization the marriages depend very closely on the deaths, and the births on the marriages.[[275]] Montesquieu says that wherever there is room for two persons to live comfortably a marriage will certainly take place.[[276]] In old countries experience is usually against any sure expectation of the means of supporting a family; the place for a new marriage is only made by the dissolution of an old. As a rule therefore the number of annual marriages is regulated by the number of annual deaths. “Death is the most powerful of all the encouragements to marriage,”[[277]] while on the other hand the marriages are a frequent cause of the deaths. In almost every country there is too great a frequency of marriages, which causes as it were a forced mortality. Which of these two mutual influences is the more powerful depends on circumstances. In last century the proportion of annual marriages to inhabitants was in Holland generally as 1 in 107 or 108. But in twenty-two Dutch villages it was as 1 in 64. Süssmilch explained this anomaly by the number of new trades in Holland and the new openings for workmen. Malthus would not have denied this possibility, his startling paradox about death being only a particular case of the general principle that “the high price of labour is the real encouragement to marriage.”[[278]] But in this case the explanation ought to have applied to all Holland if to any part of it. The real reason came out when Malthus observed that the mortality, which was as 1 in 36 in Holland generally, was as 1 in 22 in those villages. The additional marriages did not really increase the population. They were caused by the high number of deaths which provided openings for the living; and the high number of deaths was caused by the unhealthiness of the region and of its prevailing industries, which were manufacturing rather than agricultural. The choice in every large population is between having many lives which end soon, and few which last long. Greater healthiness in the conditions of life will result in the latter. We find as a matter of fact that, where there has been the sanitary improvement as well as simply the “replenishment” of an old country, the marriage rate goes down at the expense of the death-rate, and there is an economy of human life and suffering.
Putting the parts of his exposition together, we get something like a deductive scheme of the growth of population in old countries under an industrial revolution like that of the eighteenth century. The first effect of the discovery of new minerals, and even (with some qualifications) of the invention of new machines, is to provide new employment for working men, and many new opportunities for marriage; the proportion of marriages therefore becomes at once greater without any alteration (from this cause at least) in the death-rate. But, when the first burst of progress has passed, and the succeeding improvement is not by leaps and bounds, but at a uniform rate, then the proportion of marriages will decrease, as the new situations are filled up and there is no more room for an increasing population. Once the country is really “old” in the sense of fully peopled and unprovided with new sources of employment, then the marriages will be regulated principally by the deaths, and (the habits of the people remaining the same) will bear much the same proportion to each other at one time as at another. It is not, however, exactly the same proportion for all old countries, simply because the habits and standards of living are different, to say nothing of healthiness or unhealthiness of climate and occupation. For similar reasons it is not the same for towns as for country districts.[[279]] “A general measure of mortality for all countries taken together” would be useless if procurable; but it cannot be procured.[[280]]
Habits, however, are sufficiently fixed to make us certain that “any direct encouragements to marriage must be accompanied by an increased mortality.”[[281]] They spur a willing horse. Montesquieu and Süssmilch, although they both enlarge on the evils of over-population, still think it a statesman’s duty to be, like Augustus and Trajan, the father of his people by encouraging their marriages. But, if many marriages mean many deaths, the princes or statesmen who should really succeed in this patriotic policy might more justly be called the destroyers than the fathers of their people.[[282]]
If Malthus had been asked how a prince could best become a real pater patriæ, he would have named two or three ways. The prince might direct his mind to the improvement of industry, especially of agriculture.[[283]] He might circulate news and knowledge on these subjects;[[284]] or, as we should say now, he might institute agricultural exhibitions, and regular agricultural statistics of home and foreign production. He would in this way increase the population by helping to increase the food.
In the second place, he might benefit trade everywhere by giving it the security of good government and impartial justice, a peaceful foreign policy and light taxation.