[242-12] See Bastiat's beautiful words, in which he characterizes the holy ignorance of children, the modesty of young maidens, the severity of public opinion, etc., as a law of limitation: (Harmonies, 437 seq.)
[242-13] Compare Proudhon, Contradictions, ch. 13.
[242-14] That want of employment or of business has rather a preventive tendency, see Malthus, Principle of Population, VII, ch. 14.
[242-15] Malthus, P. of P., II, ch. 13. I formerly called this natural law by the name of the investigator who earned the largest share of scientific merit in connection therewith. It cannot, indeed, be said, that he was the first to observe it. Compare even Machiavelli, Discorsi (between 1515 and 1518), II, 5. And so Giovanni Botero taught that the number of the population depended not so much on the number of congiungimenti so much as on the rearing of children. (Ragion di Stato, 1592, VII, 93 ff.) The virtù generativa degli uomini, which is always the same, is found face to face with the virtù nutritiva delle citta. The former would continue to operate ad infinitum, if the latter did not limit it. The larger a city is, the more difficult it is to provide it with the means of subsistence. In the last instance, the slave-sales of Guinea, the cannibalism of the Indians, the robber-system of the Arabians and the Tartars, the migration of nations, crimes, litigation, etc., are traced back to the narrowness of the means of subsistence. (Delle Cause della Grandezza delle Città, 1598, Libr. III.) Sir Walter Raleigh (ob. 1618), was of opinion that the earth would not only be full but overflowing with human beings were it not that hunger, pestilence, crime, war, abstinence welcome sterility, etc. did away with the surplus population. (History of the World, I, ch. 8, 4. Discourse of war: Works, VII, 257 ff.) According to Child, Discourse of Trade, 371 ff., 149, the population is always in proportion to the amount of employment.
If England could employ only 100 men while 150 were reared, 50 would have to emigrate or perish; and so, too, conversely, occasional vacancies would soon be filled. Similarly Davenaut, Works II, 233, 185; who, however, in the practical application of this law of nature, adopts the error of his contemporary, G. King, the statistician, according to whom the population of England would increase to 11,000,000 (II, 176) only after 600 years. Benjamin Franklin's Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of new Countries, etc., 1751, are very good. Franklin here shows that the same tables of mortality do not apply to town and country, nor to old nations and new ones. The nation increases more rapidly in proportion as it is easy to contract marriage. Hence the increase is smallest in luxurious cities and thickly populated countries. Other circumstances, being equal, hunting nations require the largest quantity of land for the purpose of subsistence, and industrial nations least. In Europe, there was a marriage in every 100 of the population per annum; in America, on every 50; 4 children to a marriage in the former, and 8 in the latter.
Population diminishes as a consequence of subjugation, bad government, the introduction of slavery, loss of territory, loss of trade and food. He who promotes the opposite advantages may well be called the "father of his country." Further, D. Hume, Of the Populousness of the Ancient Nations: Discourses No. 10. Per contra, Wallace, On the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times, in which the superior populousness of antiquity is maintained, 1753. Wallace relied chiefly on the more equable distribution of land, and the smaller luxury of the ancient nations. Herbert, Essai sur le Police des Grains (1755), 319 ff. Les Intérêts de la France mal entendus, par un Citoyen (Amsterd., 1757), I, 197.
Steuart threw light especially on the connection between mortality and the number of marriages (Principles, I, 13); and he claims, with the utmost confidence, that only the want of the means of subsistence, using the expression in its broadest sense (I, 15), can put a limit to the increase of population (I, 14). He calls wrongful procreation (falsche Zeugung) the chief cause of pauperism (II, 1), and his views on public charity have a strong Malthusian complexion (I, 14). Compare further A. Young, Political Arithmetics (1774), I, ch. 7. Townsend, Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786), makes a happy use of the example of the Island of Juan Fernandez, in which a colony of goats was developed, first alone, and afterwards in a struggle with a colony of dogs, to illustrate the laws of the development of population as limited by the supply of food. Compare the same author's Journey through Spain, II, 8 seq.; 358 ff., III, 107. G. M. Ortes, Riflessioni sulla Popolazione,[TN 74] delle Nazione per rapporto all'Economia nazionale, 1790, ascribes geometrical progression to the increase of population (cap. I) precisely as in the case of other animals; only, in the case of the latter, a limit is put to their increase by forza, and in the case of man, by ragione. When the population of a country has attained its proper development, celibacy is as necessary in order to keep it so as marriage. Otherwise the door would be opened to extreme pauperism, to the debauchery of the "venus vaga," to eunuchism and polygamy (4). Strangely enough, Ortes asserts that no people are richer per capita than any other. The distribution of wealth among the apparently richer, operates to make individuals heap wealth together in greater quantities (8).
Malthus himself wrote his classical work under the influence of a very intelligible reaction (1st ed., 1798; 2d ed., 1803). For a whole generation, the European public had had no other view broached but that the tree of human kind might keep on growing even until it reached the heavens, if care were only taken to manure the ground, to water the roots and prune the branches according to the latest world-improving recipes. Malthus, in opposition thereto, called attention to the limits placed by nature to the number of mankind. He demonstrated that it was not merely arbitrary laws which opposed the Utopian happiness of all, but in part the niggardliness of nature; and in greater part the passions and sins of men themselves. If he sometimes described the limits as narrower than they really are, and if an occasional coarse expression escaped him, we need not wonder. His polemic was well founded, and he was at the time still a young man (born 1766, ob. 1834). He modified much in the later editions of his work. For instance, he stopped the unsavory sentence in which he says that a man born into the world already occupied, whose family cannot support him, and whose labor society does not need, has not the smallest right to demand the smallest particle of food, and is really superfluous in the world; that there is no place for him at the great banquet of nature; that nature bids him go hence and does not hesitate herself to execute the command. P. Leroux in a small pamphlet in answer to Malthus, quotes this sentence at least forty times. Moreover, Möser, who certainly is not considered a misanthrope, was not only acquainted with the Malthusian law, but develops it in words, and with consequences which strongly recall the very words which raised such a storm against Malthus. Compare Patr. Phant. I, 42; II, 1; IV, 15 (against vaccination); V, 26.
The opinions of political economists in our own day are, as might be expected, divided on some of Malthus' expressions and on his practical counsels. He has indeed but few such one-sided followers as Th. Chalmers, On Political Economy in Connexion with the moral State and moral Prospects of Society, 1832. Malthus' fundamental views, however, are truly scientific. (Κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ![TN 75]) Compare Baudrillart, Manuel, 424 seq., and A Walker, Science of Wealth, who strangely enough (452) opposes Malthus, and yet is (458) virtually of the same opinion. Even the better class of socialists base themselves on the same view, without, however, thanking Malthus for it. Thus for instance, K. Marlo, System der Weltökonomie (1848, 52), passim. For an excellent history of the theory of population, see R. Mohl, Gesch. und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften, III, 409 ff. (1858).