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assignable quantity; yet still the power of population, being in every period so much greater, the increase of the human species. can only be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power.

But this ultimate check to population, the want of food, is never the immediate check except in cases of famine. The latter consists in all those customs, and all those diseases, which seem to be generated by a scarcity of the means of subsistence; and all those causes which tend permanently to weaken the human frame. The checks. may be classed under two general heads-the preventative and the positive.

The preventative check, peculiar to man, arises from his reasoning faculties, which enables him to calculate distant consequences. He sees the distress which frequently presses upon those who have large families; he cannot contemplate his present possessions or earnings, and calculate the amount of each share, when they must be divided, perhaps, among seven or eight, without feeling a doubt whether he may be able to support the offspring which probably will be brought into the world. Other considerations occur. Will he lower his rank in life, and be obliged to give up in great measure his former habits? Does any mode of employment present itself by which he may reasonably hope to maintain a family? Will he not subject himself to greater difficulties and more severe labor than in his present state? Will he be able to give his children adequate educational advantages? Can he face the possibility of exposing his children to poverty or charity, by his inability to provide for them? These considerations prevent a large number of people from pursuing the dictates of nature.

The positive checks to population are extremely various, and include every cause, whether arising from vice or misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of human life. Under this head may be enumerated all unwholesome oceupations, severe labour, exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty. bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of common diseases, wars, plagues, and famines.

The theory of population is resolvable into three propositions: I. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very powerful and obvious checks. 3. These checks which keep population on a level with the means of subsistence are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.

226. Malthusianism a Support of Capitalism1

BY PIERCY RAVENSTONE

13

We have new doctrines preached to us. Men, it is now discovered grow more readily than plants. Human beings overrun the world with the rapidity of weeds. Hence the hopeless misery. The earth groans under the weight of numbers. The rich it is now discovered give bread to the poor. Labour owes its support to idleness. Those who produce everything would starve but for the assistance of those who produce nothing. The numbers of the poor are to be checked by all possible means: every impediment is to be placed in the way of their marriages, lest they should multiply too fast for the capital of the country. The rich, on the contrary, are to be encouraged, everything is to be done for their benefit. For though they produce nothing themselves, their capital is the cause of everything produced; it gives fertility to our fields and fecundity to our flocks.

These doctrines are new. It was long the established creed of every statesman, that in the extent of its population consisted the strength, the power, and the opulence of every nation; that it was therefore the duty of every sovereign to increase, by all practicable means, the number of the people committed to his charge. On whatever other points statesmen and legislators might differ, on this they were all agreed. From Lycurgus to Montesquieu the doctrine underwent no change. Marriage was everywhere held up as honourable; children were considered as entitling their fathers to peculiar privilege and the mark of scorn was imprinted on the selfish being who remained single. Poverty gave no exception, it rather increased the obligation. His country gratefully received in children the contribution of him who had nothing else to give. The wealth of a nation consisted in the number and strength of its peasantry. Men did not dream that riches could be separated from numbers. By these newer doctrines pestilence and famine. are ministers of God, executing his eternal decrees, and rescuing us from the necessity of overwhelming wretchedness. The doctrine has robbed Divinity of all the charities of his nature, leaving to him little else than the functions of an enemy of mankind.

The great and the rich could not be much offended at discovering that whilst their rights were augmented, they were entirely absolved from the performance of those actions which the less.

18 Adapted from A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy. 5-24 (1821).

enlightened judgment of other times had classed amongst the most important and essential of their duties. To be merciful to our own faults, to believe our idle expenses meritorious, to set up selfishness as the idol of our idolatry, and to drive away charity, are duties not very repugnant to our nature. They demand no sacrifice in their performance. The temple of virtue will be crowned with votaries, if it be made to lead to the shrine of self-interest.

Those severer morals which taught that the poor were equally partakers of the divine nature with the rich; that they were equally fashioned in the image and likeness of God; that their industry being the cause of all that was produced, and the rich being in reality only pensioners on their bounty, the latter were only trustees. for the good of society; that their wealth was given not for their own enjoyment, but for its better distribution through the different channels of society, were not likely long to maintain their hold on the minds of the wealthy against those sedative doctrines which flattered the passions, converted faults into good qualities, and made even conscience pander to vices.

It is an old and dreary system which represents our fellowcreatures as so many rivals and enemies, which makes us believe that their happiness is incompatible with our own, which builds our wealth on their poverty, and teaches that their numbers cannot consist with our comforts and enjoyments; which would persuade us to look on the world as a besieged town, where the death of our neighbors is hailed with secret satisfaction since it augments the quantity of provisions likely to fall to our share. To consider misery and vice as mere arrangements of the Divinity to prevent the inconvenience of a too great population of the world, is to adopt predestination in its worst form. In committing crimes we should only be executing the will of God; in alleviating the distresses of others, in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, we should be running counter to the decrees of Providence.

But before we can adopt these conclusions, it behooves us to examine on what foundation the system is built. We must remember that it is the common interests of all members which holds society together. Misery is not of God's creation; vice is not the minister of His will. I shall show that the increase in numbers in the human species is wholly uninfluenced by human institutions. It is by no means so varied in its operation as Mr. Malthus has supposed; it affords no ground for alarm; it calls for no restrictive measures, since the increase in subsistence is entirely dependent on the increase in numbers. Every man brings into the world the means of producing his own sustenance. Wherever the numbers of

the people increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence, the fault is not with Providence, but in the regulations of society. Capital is no addition to the wealth of a nation; it conduces nothing to the improvement of the industry; it is merely a new distribution of the property of society, beneficial to some, wholly because it is injurious to others.

227. Malthus versus the Malthusians14

BY LEONARD T. HOBHOUSE

The appearance of the biological theory of progress, of which we have been hearing much of late, was announced by the terrible douche of cold water thrown by Malthus on the speculative optimism of the eighteenth century. The generation preceding the French Revolution was a time of buoyant and sanguine outlook. There floated before men the idea of an age of reason when men should throw off the incubus of the past and resume a life in accordance with nature in a social order founded on a rational consideration of natural rights. Nature both in the politics and the economics of the time assumes a half personal and wholly benevolent character while human restrictions, human conventions, play the part of the villain in the piece. At this point Malthus intervened by calling attention to a "natural" law of great significance. This was the law that human beings multiplied in a geometrical ratio; that it was only by the checks of famine, pestilence, and war that they were prevented from overspreading the earth, and that, to cut the matter short, whatever the available means of subsistence, mankind would always, in the absence of prudential checks, multiply up to the limit at which those means became inadequate. True, the means of subsistence might be extended. New countries might be opened up. New sources of food supply might be discovered. Every such extension, the Malthusian argued, would only redouble the rate of multiplication. Checks would cease, men and women would marry earlier; very soon population would again be pressing on the means of subsistence. The advance in civilization told in the same direction. Population was increasing, must increase. It could be held in check only by the one great barrier of the subsistence limit against which the fringe of advancing population must forever beat in misery. There could be no solution of the social question; for in the nature of things there must be a line where the surf of the advancing tide breaks upon the shore, and that shore was death

"Adapted from Social Evolution and Political Theory, 13-16. Copyright by the Columbia University Press (1911).

from insufficiency of nourishment. You observe that in summarizing the argument I speak partly of Malthus, partly of the Malthusians. Malthus himself, particularly in his second edition, laid stress on the prudential checks. He cannot fairly be accused of fostering the pessimistic views often fastened upon him. But for many a long year after he wrote, the efficacy of the prudential checks appeared to be very slight. It was his first edition that was generally absorbed and that profoundly influenced social thought for nearly a century. It was not till the seventies that there came into operation that general fall in the birth-rate, which has justified Malthus against the Malthusians, has put the calculations of the future growth of population on a radically different basis, and has brought about among other things a complete reconstruction of the biological argument against progress. I venture to think we may draw a lesson from the fate of Malthusianism. Mathematical arguments drawn from the assumption that human beings proceed with the statistical regularity of a flock of sheep are exceedingly difficult to refute in detail, and yet they rest on an insecure foundation. Man is not merely an animal. He is a rational being. The Malthusian theory was one cause of the defeat of its own prophecies It was the belief that population was growing too fast that operated indirectly to check it. Those who fear that population is now growing too slowly, may take some comfort from the reflection. We are not hastily to assume inevitable tendencies in human society, because the moment society is aware of its tendencies a new fact is introduced. Man, unlike other animals, is moved by the knowledge of ends, and can and does correct the tendencies whose results he sees to be disastrous. The alarmist talk of race suicide may serve its purpose if only by admonishing us of the fate of a theory based on what appears to be a most convincing biological calculation.

C. THE COMING OF THE IMMIGRANT

228. The Falling Birth-Rate15

BY EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS

A century ago Malthus startled the world by demonstrating that our race naturally multiplies faster than it can increase its food supply, with the result that population tends ever to press painfully upon the means of subsistence. So long as mankind reproduces

15 Adapted from Changing America, 32-49. Copyright by The Century Company (1912).

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