IV.—Moral Restraint and Discriminate Charity
As it appears that in the actual state of every society which has come within our view the natural progress of population has been constantly and powerfully checked, and as it seems evident that no improved form of government, no plans of emigration, no direction of natural industry can prevent the continued action of a great check to population in some form or other, it follows that we must submit to it as an inevitable law of nature, and the only inquiry that remains is how it may take place with the least possible prejudice to the virtue and happiness of human society.
All the immediate checks to population which have been observed to prevail in the same and different countries seem to be resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery; and if our choice be confined to those three, we cannot long hesitate in our decision. It seems certain that moral restraint is the only virtuous and satisfactory mode of escape from the evils of over-population. Without such moral restraint, and if it were the custom to marry at the age of puberty, no virtue, however great, could rescue society from a most wretched and desperate state of want, with its concomitant diseases and famines.
Prudential restraint, if it were generally adopted, would soon raise the price of labour by narrowing its supply, and those practising it would save money and acquire habits of sobriety, industry, and economy such as should ensure happy married life. Further, postponement of marriage would give both sexes a better opportunity to choose life-partners wisely and well; and the passion, instead of being extinguished by early sensuality, would burn the more brightly because repressed for a time, and attained as the prize of industry and virtue, and as the reward of a genuine attachment.
Moral restraint in this matter is a Christian duty. There are, perhaps, few actions that tend so directly to diminish the general happiness as to marry without the means of supporting children. He who commits this act clearly offends against the will of God, for he violates his duty to his neighbours and to himself, and listens to the voice of passion rather than fulfils his higher obligations. The duty is intelligible to the meanest capacity.
It is simply that he must not bring beings into the world whom he cannot support. When once this subject is cleared from the obscurity thrown over it by parochial laws and private benevolence, every man must see his obligation. If he cannot support his children they must starve; and if he marry in the face of a fair probability that he shall not be able to support his children, he is guilty of all the evils which he thus brings upon himself, his wife, and his offspring.
When the wages of labour are barely sufficient to support two children, a man marries and has five or six, and finds himself in distress. He blames the low price of labour. He blames the parish and the rich and social institutions; but he never blames himself. He may wish he had never married; but it never enters into his head that he has done anything wrong. Indeed, he has always been told that to raise up children for his king and country is a very meritorious act.
The common people must be taught that they themselves in such a case are to blame, and that no one has power to help them if they act thus contrary to the will of God. Those who wish to help the poor must try to raise the relative proportion between the price of labour and the price of provisions, instead of encouraging the poor to marry and overstock the labour market. A market overstocked with labour and an ample remuneration to each labourer are objects perfectly incompatible with each other.
It is not enough, however, to abolish all the positive institutions which encourage population, but we must endeavour at the same time to correct the prevailing opinions which have the same effect. The public must be made to understand that they have no right to assistance, and that it is the duty of man not only to propagate his species but to propagate virtue and happiness.