Tried by such a standard Malthus certainly fails to give us a perfect political philosophy, and seems little farther advanced than his master Adam Smith, who taught that the state was profitable only for defence, for justice, and for such public works as could not be so well done by individuals. With all his regard for the nation, Malthus looks at social problems too much from the individual’s point of view. He speaks much, for example, of the good effect, on the individual man, of the domestic ideal, and of the ideals of personal prosperity in the world, both built on security of property and liberty of action. He speaks little of the duty of the citizen to the community, and of the return he owes it for his security and liberty. The citizen in his picture of him seems to have nothing but duties to his family and nothing but claims on the state. The citizen is lost in the householder. He is content to be let alone, and does not positively and actively recognize his identity with the legislative power, and his obligation to repay service with service. Later political philosophy would press the counter-claims of the community on the citizen. It would demand, for example, that he shall neither leave his lands waste nor preserve his game, if either practice is contrary to the public good. It would keep in mind that the holders of large fortunes owe more to the public for protection of them than the holders of small, and should bear a heavier burden of taxes. It would not leave men to do as they willed with their own.[[814]]
In regard to the lowest classes that are hardly to be called citizens, for they are struggling in hopeless weakness for mere bread, Malthus never seems to see that his own acknowledgment of their powerlessness to rise must justify much more than the mere establishment of compulsory education for their children or even mechanics’ institutes for themselves. It would justify the adoption of such measures as will make their surroundings likely to give and preserve to them a higher standard of living. It would sanction measures of “local option” to keep away from them the infection of dangerous moral diseases; and it would enforce the obligation on the owners of houses to make them habitable and healthy. It would give town and country tenants secure tenure by law, where an insecure tenure of custom had induced them to spend labour on their holdings.
The older economists had the just idea that security in possession was the first condition of industrial progress; but they did not see that this very principle would justify very large restrictions on the use of property, and that the restrictions would increase in largeness as the property approached the nature of a monopoly; they did not see that for the public interest it may be as necessary to prohibit deer forests as to pull down unsanitary dwellings or enforce vaccination.
The reason was that for a long time in England it was a hard enough task for reformers to secure the negative freedom of being let alone, the freedom of trade and of the press and of local government, with the abolition of privileges. Cobden’s attempt to resolve Politics into Economics was well-timed and fruitful in its generation; and the Manchester school has still a part to play in our own time. But the special work of political reform in the future is to achieve the positive freedom, “the maximum of power, for all members of human society alike, to make the best of themselves.”[[815]] Of this programme neither Malthus nor any writer of his day had any clear conception. He himself had no claim to a seer’s vision; and the horizon of his opponents was never wider than his own.
It is time to go back to the Essay and confront its opponents. We have now a sufficient knowledge of the economics and philosophy of Malthus to be able to sympathize with him under misconception, or at least to understand what appearance an objection would wear to his mind. Not that we have a complete picture of the man, or even a view of his entire mental furniture, which is more than this curta supellex; but we see enough to judge the cause of the Essay on its merits, not prejudiced, favourably or unfavourably, by the life and character of the author.
BOOK IV.
THE CRITICS.
Three Questions for the Critics—Parr and Thoughts on Parr—Pulpit Philosophy—Godwin’s Blessing in 1801—The Cursing in 1820—Theology—The Command to Noah—The Ratios—Population “fitful”—S. T. Coleridge among the Economists—James Grahame—Empson’s Classification of Critics—Weyland and Arthur Young—“Cannot, therefore ought not”—Spence’s Plan and Owen’s—Progress and Poverty—Das Kapital—Herbert Spencer—Classification of Critics—Ethics of the Hearth and of the World—End and Means of Malthus.
The critics of Malthus had three questions before them: Do the conclusions of Malthus follow from his premises? Does he himself draw them? Are they true as a matter of fact? The answers will be best given by a short survey of the principal critics with whom Malthus contended in his lifetime, and those who have most formidably contended with his followers since his death.
There is a sense in which the Essay on Population begins and ends with Godwin, for it begins and ends with the question of human perfectibility. The relations of Malthus and Godwin are as it were the tale on which the play is founded.
Godwin’s Political Justice was written in 1793, his Enquirer in 1797, and Malthus’ Essay in 1798. Others kept the ball a-rolling. On the Easter Tuesday of 1800 Dr. Samuel Parr preached an anniversary sermon in Christ’s Hospital before the Corporation of London. He chose his text from Galatians vi. 10: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” Like Butler’s sermons in the Rolls Chapel, the discourse was really a treatise on moral philosophy. It began by contrasting the selfish and the benevolent system of ethics, pronouncing both of them faulty. If the one has done less harm, the other has done less good than might have been expected, for it has been connected with the new doctrine of universal philanthropy. The new doctrine is false because local neighbourhood of all men is impossible, vi terminorum, and a widening out of the feelings that usually prevail between local neighbours would only make those feelings thin and watery.[[816]] Man’s obligations cannot be stretched beyond his powers; he has no powers, and therefore no obligation to do good unto all men.[[817]] Love of the universe, in the intense sense of the word love, can only belong to the omnipotent Being who has the care of the universe upon Him. We, being men, must only see to it that our benevolence is of His quality, extending, like His, to the unthankful and to the evil. But a universal philanthropist exaggerates and pampers this one particular form of the duty of benevolence at the expense of the rest, and forgets duties that lie near to him, towards kindred and friends and neighbours; he neglects common duties of life in favour of the uncommon and fanciful. Very different is “the calm desire of general happiness,” which draws those that are near still nearer, and makes us value and assist the benevolent institutions, like Christ’s Hospital, which are at our own doors.