It was during this state of things,with population rapidly increasing,that Malthus wrote.Yet he was not thinking directly of the Poor Law,but of Godwin,who,under the influence of Rousseau,had in his Inquirer ascribed all human ills to human government and institutions,and drawn bright pictures of what might be in a reformed society.Malthus denied their possibility.
Under no system,he contended,could such happiness be insured;human misery was not the result of human injustice and of bad institutions,but of an inexorable law of nature,viz.,that population tends to outstrip the means of subsistence.This law would in a few generations counteract the effects of the best institutions that human wisdom could conceive.It is remarkable that though in his first edition he gave a conclusive answer to Godwin,Malthus afterwards made an admission which deducted a good deal from the force of his argument.To the 'positive check' of misery and vice,he added the 'preventive check'of moral restraint,namely,abstinence from marriage.To this Godwin made the obvious reply that such a qualification virtually conceded the perfectibility of society.But Malthus still thought his argument conclusive as against Godwin's Communism.If private property was abolished,he said,all inducements to moral restraint would be taken away.His prophecy has,however,since his time,been refuted by the experience of the communistic societies in America,which proves that the absence of private property is not incompatible with moral restraint.
Is Malthus's law really true?We see that it rests on two premisses.The first is,that the potential rate of increase of the human race is such that population,if unchecked,would double itself in twenty-five years;and Malthus assumes that this rate is constant in every race and at all times.His second premiss is the law of diminishing returns,i.e.that after a certain stage of cultivation a given piece of land will,despite any agricultural improvements,yield a less proportionate return to human labour;and this law is true.Malthus did not deny that food might,for a time,increase faster than population;but land could not be increased,and if the area which supplied a people were restricted,the total quantity of food which it produced per head must be at length diminished,though this result might be long deferred.Malthus himself regarded both his conclusions as equally self-evident.'The first of these propositions,'he says,'i considered as proved the moment the American increase was related;and the second proposition as soon as it was enunciated.'Why then did he write so long a book?'The chief object of my work,'he goes on to say,'was to inquire what effects these laws,which I considered as established in the first six pages,had produced,and were likely to produce,on society;-a subject not very readily exhausted.'The greater part of his essay is an historical examination of the growth of population and the checks on it which have obtained in different ages and countries;and he applies his conclusion to the administration of the Poor Laws in England.
Now there are grave doubts as to the universal truth of his first premiss.Some of his earlier opponents,as Doubleday,laid down the proposition that fecundity varies inversely to nutriment.Thus baldly stated their assertion is not true;but it is au observed fact,as Adam Smith noticed long ago,that the luxurious classes have few children,while a 'half-starved Highland woman'may have a family of twenty.Mr Herbert Spencer again has asserted that fecundity varies inversely to nervous organisation,and this statement has been accepted by Carey and Bagehot.But it is not so much the increase of brain power as the worry and exhaustion of modern life which tends to bring about this result.Some statistics quoted by Mr Amasa Walker tend to prove this.He has shown that in Massachusetts,while there are about 980,000 persons of native birth as against only 260,000 immigrants,the number of births in the two classes is almost exactly the same,the number of marriages double as many in the latter,as in the former,and longevity less and mortality greater among the Americans.Mr Cliffe-Leslie attributes this fact to a decline in fecundity on the part of American citizens.
The whole question,however,is veiled in great obscurity,and is rather for physiologists and biologists to decide;but there do seem to be causes at work which preclude us from assuming with Malthus that the rate of increase is invariable.
