Owen's Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question

by Robert Dale Owen

I extract from the article “Colony,” in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and which is from the pen of Mill, the following paragraph:

“What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it cannot go on unrestrained without producing one or other of two most undesirable effects, either drawing an undue portion of the population to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it is not now the time to enquire. It is, indeed, the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and the moralist can be applied. It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by those who were called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet, if the superstitions of the nursery were disregarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil—a source which if all other sources were taken away, might alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.”

Let my readers bear in mind, that this is from the pen of one of the most justly admired writers of the present day; a man celebrated throughout all Europe, for his works on political economy, and whose writings are not unknown even on this side the Atlantic. He considers the question now under discussion to involve “the most important problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied.” This question, he admits, has ever been “miserably evaded.” Yet even a man so influential and enlightened as Mill, must himself yield to the weakness he reprobates; must speak in parables, as the Nazarene reformer did before him; and, even while commenting on the “miserable evasion” of a subject so engrossingly important, must imitate the very evasion he despises.

I will not imitate it. I am more independently situated than the English economist; and I see, as clearly as he does, the extreme importance of the subject. What he saw and declared ought to be said, I will say.

Before concluding this chapter, let me state distinctly, that I by no means agree with Malthus and other political economists in believing, that, at this moment, there is an actual excess of population in any country (China perhaps excepted) in the known world. I believe that there is more than enough land in every country of Europe to support, in perfect comfort, all its present inhabitants. That they are not supported in comfort, is, in my opinion, attributable, not to overpopulation, but to mal-government. Monopolies favour the rich, taxes oppress the poor, commercial rivalry grinds its victims to the dust. To such causes as these, and not to overpopulation, at the time being, is the mass of distress (felt more or less over the civilized world) to be attributed. Thus, if the enemies of reform would but let us alone, we might long postpone to other and more important discussions, this population question. But they will not. They force it upon us. And though it might have evinced want of judgment to obtrude it unnecessarily or prematurely on the public, it would betray cowardice to evade it now, when thrust upon us.

Besides, though it be undeniable that iniquitous laws and a vicious order of things often produce the result that is falsely attributed to overpopulation, it is yet equally undeniable, that the most perfect system of laws in the world could not ultimately prevent the evils of a superabundant population. And it is no less certain, that, in the meantime, the pressure of a large family on the labouring man greatly augments the evil, and often deprives him of that very leisure which he might employ in devising constitutional means to better his condition, instead of leaving public business in the hands of political gamblers. Thus an answer to the population question is offered as an alleviation of existing evils, not as a cure for them. Population might be but half what it is, and unjust legislation and vicious customs would still give birth, as they now do, to luxury and want. The laws and customs ought to be, must be changed; but while the grass is growing, let us prevent the horse from starving, if we can.

Enough has been said, probably, in this chapter, to determine the question, whether it is, or is not, desirable, in a political point of view, that some check to population be sought and disclosed—some “moral restraint” that shall not, like vice and misery, be demoralizing, nor, like late marriages, be ascetic and impracticable.

CHAPTER V.
THE QUESTION CONSIDERED IN ITS SOCIAL BEARINGS.

This is by far the most important branch of the question. The evils caused by an overstocking of the world, if even inevitable, are distant; and an abstract view of the subject, however unanswerable, does not come home to the mind with the force of detailed reality.

What would be the probable effect, in social life, if mankind obtained and exercised a control over the instinct of reproduction?