THE MALTHUSIAN PRINCIPLE.
Or= upon a time, a Mr. Malthus wrote a very ingenious book on Population, the ostensible object of which was to show that people ought not to enter into matrimony, or into any other rela- tion having a tendency to augment the figures in the decennial census, until they should have arrived at the prudent period of middle age ; but, in default of so much perfectibility, the book went to show that wars, vices, miseries, and such calamities, per- form the useful office of preserving elbow-room for the survivors. Pure philosophers, political economists, parish managers of the new school, strongminded women, and other shining lights, pro- nounced the book to be the key to the prosperity of the future ; country gentlemen, poets, pietists, family men and men about town, pronounced the book to be shocking, or ridiculous. And so the controversy has been going on ever since : the Anti-Malthu- sians continue to cry out against the doctrine, without condescend- ing to confute it ; the Malthusians continue to repeat the asser- tions in Mr. Malthus's book, with the gloomy confidence of fatal- ity. It is to be doubted whether there has been a marriage the less for the work—or a marriage the more for any reaction against it. Men and women arrange such matters, since Lycurgus went out of fashion, without much regard to the good of the country or the state of the labour-market ; few young brides, we imagine, are won to a final consent by any statistical importunities ; tables out of the population-returns have not yet taken the place of son- nets called original. But although the world goes on, to the scandal of theoretical gentry, much as it was wont, the contro- versy revives every now and then, and just at present there is a Malthusian paroxysm among political writers. Now, economy is an excellent thing, so is foresight, so is prudence ; but, depend upon it, precept which goes dead against the natural instincts must be based upon the most substantial grounds and be recom- mended by the clearest reason. If it is thus fortified, it usually makes some way in general acceptation, first as an opinion, and then as a rule of practice. When a precept is asserted for half a century without making any progress,—being, indeed, rather less acceptable at the end of the time than at the beginning,— there is likely to be some flaw in it. In such case it is worth while to look into it, in order to see what makes a precept so respectably recommended so popularly suspected. Especially when we are all threatened with such tremendous consequences for neglecting the precept. A writer in the 211orn- ing Chronicle puts these inevitable consequences in the most ap- palling form- " Malthus says, ' it may safely be pronounced that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ra- tio.' Food, on the contrary, only increases in an arithmetical ratio. The human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; and sub- sistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries, as 4,096 to 13; and at no very remote period, men, women, and children, would hardly find standing-room to eat up each other."
It is very plain, according to these terrific figures, that we are at this moment in a state of starvation, bordering on that pecu- liar cannibal feast of Nature at which, it seems, there is to be a " cover" for every guest, but not standing-room ; only the day is postponed by favour of " checks." And if it were so in only three centuries, what must it have been in the three hundred cen- turies to which some chronologists carry back human records ; especially when we consider that it is only within the last two periods of twenty-five years that we have had a Malthus to pro- pound the appropriate defence. But the very excess of the danger suggests a doubt of its reality. In the first place, we are not uni- versally starving, but on the contrary, it is pretty certain that food is more abundant with respect to the ratio of population than it ever has been, although a greater proportion of industry is turned to products not esculent. It is not the absolute amount of food that fails with us, so much as the distribution of labour. But, it will be said, population has been kept down by " checks ": what checks? Where are the records of the immense slaughter or frus- trated life which should be represented by the difference between the actual population and that which ought to have existed ac- cording to the stated ratio of increase ? No battle-fields, no fa- mines, no depravities so vast and murderous, are upon record. The numbers slaughtered in the most desolated of lands, the dead bodies that poison the air in the widest of famines, would be but as.a drop in the ocean of this inundation of death. Doubtless, the figures are very fairly worked upon the as- sumed principle; but they constitute a reductio ad absurdum : such preposterous conclusions indicate some radical flaw in the data ; and if we are to have this controversy on the popula- tion principle all over again, it is time to revise that principle, too long suffered to pass current without revision. Is there not some fallacy in the very core of it? The statement is, that while population increases in a geometric ratio, the means of subsistence only increase in an arithmetical ratio. Now, is it so ? We do not see how it can be made out. Man increases in the ratio of the number of children born to each pair according to the mean duration of life. Taking the two kinds of food, animal and vegeta- ble, we find the principle of increase to be the same with them as with man, and the ratio of increase is higher. Most animals will multiply as fast as man; most vegetable articles of food, espe- cially the cereals, multiply in a ratio beyond all comparison with the rate of human increase. It is true that there is a limit to the increase of grasses, in the superficial breadth of land; but that same limit it is which sets bound to extension of animal and human multiplication. Malthus saw that the fixed amount of land set bounds to human increase ; but he did not see that the limit was identical for the increase of all organized beings, whether men, rabbits, or grasses. Locomotion only disguises this circumscription of animal life, but does not supersede it. If there were too many men, they would starve : so would the grasses ; but there are not too many, although the respectable cereals do not trouble their heads about Malthusian doctrine.
Economists have already contended that we need not care about any prospect so distant as the overpeopling of the world ; others have pointed to our colonies as removing all selfish fears for the present : but if that expedient be all, to trust to it would only be to band over a terrible national debt to posterity at the expense of selfish dishonesty. If Malthus is right, we cannot too soon set about arranging the amount of the population which will be convenient to itself in succeeding generations. If his principle is erroneous, then it is time that, instead of seeking a remedy for obvious evils in doctrines based on his principle, we should look elsewhere, eliciting a surer guide from a review of the facts.
And more than one class of facts invites a scientific scrutiny. The effect of civilization, physiologically as well as morally, re- mains to be accurately observed, apart from mere economical stringencies. The productivity of labour is an increasing quan- tity, as well as the number of the human race. The labour of every civilized country produces in a ratio greatly exceeding the increase of the people; and if an undue proportion of that labour is turned to occupations not essential to the support of life, that distribution is a question to be examined. The space of land is a fixed amount, the extension of cultivated land is merely an arithmetical progression : the science of agriculture, however, as yet in its infancy, already shows that the fertility of soil is not a fixed quantity, but that it bears some unascertamed ratio to the increase of organized creatures.
The " redundancy" of population as compared with realized subsistence is, in some countries, a melancholy and obvious fact; but the vicious ratio may prove to be a defect of social and artifi- cial arrangements, not a curse inherent in nature. If so, the re- medy for the consequent evils, still demanding the greatest fore- sight and economy while those evils endure, would lie in a dif- ferent direction from that indicated by the Malthusian dogma. This, we say, is worth reconsideration.
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