FOOTNOTES:

We shall, I think, appreciate his real position better byconsidering his approximation to the theory which, as we know, was suggested to Darwin by a perusal of Malthus.[237]There is a closer resemblance than appears at first. The first edition concludes by two chapters afterwards omitted, giving the philosophical application of his theory. He there says that the 'world is a mighty process of God not for the trial but for the creation and formation of the mind.'[238]It is not, as Butler thought, a place of 'probation,' but a scene in which the higher qualities are gradually developed. Godwin had quoted Franklin's view that 'mind' would become 'omnipotent over matter.' Malthus holds that, as he puts it, 'God is making matter into mind.' The difference is that Malthus regards evil in general not as a sort of accident of which we can get rid by reason; but as the essential stimulus which becomes the efficient cause of intellectual activity. The evils from which men suffer raise savage tribes from their indolence, and by degrees give rise to the growth of civilisation. The argument, though these chapters were dropped by Malthus, was taken up by J. B. Sumner, to whom he refers in later editions.[239]It is, in fact, animperfect way of stating a theory of evolution. This appears in his opening chapters upon the 'moral restraint.'[240]He explains that moral and physical evils are 'instruments employed by the Deity' to admonish us against such conduct as is destructive of happiness. Diseases are indications that we have broken a law of nature. The plague of London was properly interpreted by our ancestors as a hint to improve the sanitary conditions of the town. Similarly, we have to consider the consequences of obeying our instincts. The desire of food and necessaries is the most powerful of these instincts, and next to it the passion between the sexes. They are both good, for they are both natural; but they have to be properly correlated. To 'virtuous love' in particular we owe the 'sunny spots' in our lives, where the imagination loves to bask. Desire of necessaries gives us the stimulus of the comfortable fireside; and love adds the wife and children, without whom the fireside would lose half its charm. Now, as a rule, the sexual passion is apt to be in excess. The final cause of this excess is itself obvious. We cannot but conceive that it is an object of 'the Creator that the earth should be replenished.'[241]To secure that object, it is necessary that 'there should be a tendency in thepopulation to increase faster than food.' If the two instincts were differently balanced, men would be content though the population of a fertile region were limited to the most trifling numbers. Hence the instinct has mercifully been made so powerful as to stimulate population, and thus indirectly and eventually to produce a population at once larger and more comfortable. On the one hand, it is of the very utmost importance to the happiness of mankind that they should not increase too fast,[242]but, on the other hand, if the passion were weakened, the motives which make a man industrious and capable of progress would be diminished also. It would, of course, be simpler to omit the 'teleology'; to say that sanitary regulations are made necessary by the plague, not that the plague is divinely appointed to encourage sanitary regulations. Malthus is at the point of view of Paley which becomes Darwinism when inverted; but the conclusion is much the same. He reaches elsewhere, in fact, a more precise view of the value of the 'moral restraint.' In a chapter devoted for once to an ideal state of things,[243]he shows how a race thoroughly imbued with that doctrine would reconcile the demands of the two instincts. Population would in that case increase, but, instead of beginning by an increase, it would begin by providing the means of supporting. No man would become a father until he had seen his way to provide for a family. The instinct which leads to increasing the population would thus be intrinsically as powerful as it now is; but when regulated by prudence it would impel mankind to begin at the right end. Food would be ready before mouths to eat it.

IV. SOCIAL REMEDIES

This final solution appears in Malthus's proposed remedies for the evils of the time. Malthus[244]declares that 'an increase of population when it follows in its natural order is both a great positive good in itself, and absolutely necessary' to an increase of wealth. This natural order falls in, as he observes, with the view to which Mirabeau had been converted, that 'revenue was the source of population,' and not population of revenue.[245]Malthus holds specifically that, 'in the course of some centuries,' the population of England might be doubled or trebled, and yet every man be 'much better fed and clothed than he is at present.'[246]He parts company with Paley, who had considered the ideal state to be 'that of a laborious frugal people ministering to the demands of an opulent luxurious nation.'[247]That, says Malthus, is 'not an inviting prospect.' Nothing but a conviction of absolute necessity could reconcile us to the 'thought of ten millions of people condemned to incessant toil, and to the privation of everything but absolute necessaries, in order to minister to the excessive luxuries of the other million.' But he denies that any such necessity exists. He wishes precisely to see luxury spread among the poorer classes. A desire for such luxury is the best of all checks to population, and one of the best means of raising the standard. It would, in fact, contribute to his 'moral restraint.' So, too, he heartily condemns thehypocrisy of the rich, who professed a benevolent desire to better the poor, and yet complained of high wages.[248]If, he says elsewhere,[249]a country can 'only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say, Perish such riches!' No one, in fact, could see more distinctly than Malthus the demoralising influence of poverty, and the surpassing importance of raising the people from the terrible gulf of pauperism. He refers to Colquhoun's account of the twenty thousand people who rose every morning in London without knowing how they were to be supported; and observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it palsies every virtue.'[250]The temptations to which the poor man is exposed, and the sense of injustice due to an ignorance of the true cause of misery, tend to 'sour the disposition, to harden the heart, and deaden the moral sense.' Unfortunately, the means which have been adopted to lessen the evil have tended to increase it. In the first place, there was the master-evil of the poor-laws. Malthus points out the demoralising effects of these laws in chapters full of admirable common sense, which he was unfortunately able to enforce by fresh illustrations in successive editions. He attends simply to the stimulus to population. He thinks that if the laws had never existed, the poor would now have been much better off.[251]If the laws had been fully carried out, every labourer might have been certain that all his children would be supported, or, in other words, every check to population would have been removed.[252]Happily,the becoming pride of the English peasantry was not quite extinct; and the poor-law had to some extent counteracted itself, or taken away with one hand what it gave with the other, by placing the burthen upon the parishes.[253]Thus landlords have been more disposed to pull down than to build cottages, and marriage has been checked. On the whole, however, Malthus could see in the poor-laws nothing but a vast agency for demoralising the poor, tempered by a system of petty tyrannical interference. He proposes, therefore, that the poor-law should be abolished. Notice should be given that no children born after a certain day should be entitled to parish help; and, as he quaintly suggests, the clergyman might explain to every couple, after publishing the banns, the immorality of reckless marriage, and the reasons for abolishing a system which had been proved to frustrate the intentions of the founders.[254]Private charity, he thinks, would meet the distress which might afterwards arise, though humanity imperiously requires that it should be 'sparingly administered.' Upon this duty he writes a sensible chapter.[255]To his negative proposals Malthus adds a few of the positive kind. He is strongly in favour of a national system of education, and speaks with contempt of the 'illiberal and feeble' arguments opposed to it. The schools, he observes, might confer 'an almost incalculable benefit' upon society, if they taught 'a few of the simplest principles of political economy.'[256]He had been disheartened by the prejudices of the ignorant labourer, and felt the incompatibility of a free government with such ignorance. A real education,such as was given in Scotland, would make the poor not, as alarmists had suggested, more inflammable, but better able to detect the sophistry of demagogues.[257]He is, of course, in favour of savings banks,[258]and approves friendly societies, though he is strongly opposed to making them compulsory, as they would then be the poor-law in a new form.[259]The value of every improvement turns upon its effect in encouraging the 'moral restraint.' Malthus's ultimate criterion is always, Will the measure make people averse to premature marriage? He reaches the apparently inconsistent result that it might be desirable to make an allowance for every child beyond six.[260]But this is on the hypothesis that the 'moral restraint' has come to be so habitual that no man marries until he has a fair prospect of maintaining a family of six. If this were the practical code, the allowance in cases where the expectation was disappointed would not act as an encouragement to marriage, but as a relief under a burthen which could not have been anticipated. Thus all Malthus's teaching may be said to converge upon this practical point. Add to the Ten Commandments the new law, 'Thou shalt not marry until there is a fair prospect of supporting six children.' Then population will increase, but sufficient means for subsistence will always be provided beforehand. We shall make sure that there is a provision for additional numbers before, not after, we add to our numbers. Food first and population afterwards gives the rule; thus we achieve the good end without the incidental evils.

Malthus's views of the appropriate remedy for socialevils undoubtedly show an imperfect appreciation of the great problems involved. Reckless propagation is an evil; but Malthus regards it as an evil which can be isolated and suppressed by simply adding a new article to the moral code. He is dealing with a central problem of human nature and social order. Any modification of the sexual instincts or of the constitution of the family involves a profound modification of the whole social order and of the dominant religious and moral creeds. Malthus tacitly assumes that conduct is determined by the play of two instincts, unalterable in themselves, but capable of modification in their results by a more extensive view of consequences. To change men's ruling motives in regard to the most important part of their lives is to alter their whole aims and conceptions of the world, and of happiness in every other relation. It supposes, therefore, not a mere addition of knowledge, but a transformation of character and an altered view of all the theories which have been embodied in religious and ethical philosophy. He overlooks, too, considerations which would be essential to a complete statement. A population which is too prudent may suffer itself to be crowded out by more prolific races in the general struggle for existence; and cases may be suggested such as that of the American colonies, in which an increase of numbers might be actually an advantage by facilitating a more efficient organisation of labour.

The absence of a distinct appreciation of such difficulties gives to his speculation that one-sided character which alienated his more sentimental contemporaries. It was natural enough in a man who was constantly confronted by the terrible development of pauperism in England,and was too much tempted to assume that the tendency to reckless propagation was not only a very grave evil, but the ultimate source of every evil. The doctrine taken up in this unqualified fashion by some of his disciples, and preached by them with the utmost fervour as the one secret of prosperity, shocked both the conservative and orthodox whose prejudices were trampled upon, and such Radicals as inherited Godwin's or Condorcet's theory of perfectibility. Harsh and one-sided as it might be, however, we may still hold that it was of value, not only in regard to the most pressing difficulty of the day, but also as calling attention to a vitally important condition of social welfare. The question, however, recurs whether, when the doctrine is so qualified as to be admissible, it does not also become a mere truism.

An answer to this question should begin by recognising one specific resemblance between his speculations and Darwin's. Facts, which appear from an older point of view to be proofs of a miraculous interposition, become with Malthus, as with Darwin, the normal results of admitted conditions. Godwin had admitted that there was some 'principle which kept population on a level with subsistence.' 'The sole question is,' says Malthus,[261]'what is this principle? Is it some obscure and occult cause? a mysterious interference of heaven,' inflicting barrenness at certain periods? or 'a cause open to our researches and within our view?' Other writers had had recourse to the miraculous. One of Malthus's early authorities was Süssmilch, who had published hisGöttliche Ordnungin 1761, to show how Providence had taken care that the trees should not grow into the sky. The antediluvians had been made long-lived in order that they might have large families and people an empty earth, while life was divinely shortened as the world filled up. Süssmilch, however, regarded population as still in need of stimulus. Kings might help Providence. A new Trajan would deserve to be called the father of his people, if he increased the marriage-rate. Malthus replies that the statistics which the worthy man himself produced showed conclusively that the marriages depended upon the deaths. The births fill up the vacancies, and the prince who increased the population before vacancies arose would simply increase the rate of mortality.[262]If you want to increase your birth-rate without absolutely producing famine, as he remarks afterwards,[263]make your towns unhealthy, and encourage settlement by marshes. You might thus double the mortality, and we might all marry prematurely without being absolutely starved. His own aim is not to secure the greatest number of births, but to be sure that the greatest number of those born may be supported.[264]The ingenious M. Muret, again, had found a Swiss parish in which the mean life was the highest and the fecundity smallest known. He piously conjectures that it may be a law of God that 'the force of life in each country should be in the inverse ratio of its fecundity.' He needs not betake himself to a miracle, says Malthus.[265]The case is simply that in a small and healthy village, where people had become aware of the importance of the 'preventivecheck,' the young people put off marriage till there was room for them, and consequently both lowered the birth-rate and raised the average duration of life.

Nothing, says Malthus very forcibly, has caused more errors than the confusion between 'relative and positive, and between cause and effect.'[266]He is here answering the argument that because the poor who had cows were the most industrious, the way to make them industrious was to give them cows. Malthus thinks it more probable that industry got the cow than that the cow produced industry. This is a trifling instance of a very general truth. People had been content to notice the deaths caused by war and disease, and to infer at once that what caused death must diminish population. Malthus shows the necessity of observing other collateral results. The gap may be made so great as to diminish population; but it may be compensated by a more rapid reproduction; or, the rapidity of reproduction may itself be the cause of the disease; so that to remove one kind of mortality may be on some occasion to introduce others. The stream is dammed on one breach to flow more strongly through other outlets.[267]

This is, I conceive, to say simply that Malthus was introducing a really scientific method. The facts taken in the true order became at once intelligible instead of suggesting mysterious and irregular interferences. Earlier writers had been content to single out one particular set of phenomena without attending to its place in the more general and complex processes, of which they formed an integral part. Infanticide, as Hume had pointed out, might tend to increasepopulation.[268]In prospect, it might encourage people to have babies; and when babies came, natural affection might prevent the actual carrying out of the intention. To judge of the actual effect, we have to consider the whole of the concrete case. It may be carried out, as apparently in the South Sea Islands, so generally as to limit population; or it may be, as in China, an indication that the pressure is so great that a number of infants become superfluous. Its suppression might, in the one case, lead to an increase of the population; in the other, to the increase of other forms of mortality. Malthus's investigations illustrate the necessity of referring every particular process to its place in the whole system, of noting how any given change might set up a set of actions and reactions in virtue of the general elasticity of population, and thus of constantly referring at every step to the general conditions of human life. He succeeded in making many points clear, and of showing how hastily many inferences had been drawn. He explained, for example, why the revolutionary wars had not diminished the population of France, in spite of the great number of deaths,[269]and thus gave an example of a sound method of inquiry which has exercised a great influence upon later observers. Malthus was constantly misunderstood and misrepresented, and his opponents often allege as fatal objections to his doctrine the very facts by which it was really supported. But we may, I think, say, that since his writing no serious economical writer has adopted the old hasty guesses, or has ventured to propose a theory without regard to the principles of which he first brought out the full significance.

V. POLITICAL APPLICATION

This I take to indicate one real and permanent value of Malthus's writings. He introduced a new method of approaching the great social problems. The value of the method may remain, however inaccurate may be the assumptions of facts. The 'tendency,' if interpreted to mean that people are always multiplying too rapidly, may be a figment. If it is taken as calling attention to one essential factor in the case, it is a most important guide to investigation. This brings out another vital point. The bearing of the doctrine upon the political as well as upon the economical views of the Utilitarians is of conspicuous importance. Malthus's starting-point, as we have seen, was the opposition to the doctrine of 'perfectibility.' Hard facts, which Godwin and Condorcet had neglected, were fatal to their dreams. You have, urged Malthus, neglected certain undeniable truths as to the unalterable qualities of human nature, and, therefore, your theories will not work. The revolutionists had opposed an ideal 'state of nature' to the actual arrangements of society. They imagined that the 'state of nature' represented the desirable consummation, and that the constitution of the 'natural' order could be determined from certain abstract principles. The equality of man, and the absolute rights which could be inferred by a kind of mathematical process, supplied the necessary dogmatic basis. The antithesis to the state of nature was the artificial state, marked by inequality, and manifesting its spirit by luxury. Kings, priests, and nobles had somehow established this unnatural order; and to sweep them away summarily was the way of bringing thenatural order into full activity. The ideal system was already potentially in existence, and would become actual when men's minds were once cleared from superstition, and the political made to correspond to the natural rights of man. To this Malthus had replied, as we have seen, that social inequality was not a mere arbitrary product of fraud and force, but an expedient necessary to restrain the primitive instincts of mankind. He thus coincides with Bentham's preference of 'security' to 'equality,' and illustrates the real significance of that doctrine. Property and marriage, though they involve inequality, were institutions of essential importance. Godwin had pushed his theories to absolute anarchy; to the destruction of all law, for law in general represented coercion or an interference with the state of nature. Malthus virtually asserted that the metaphysical doctrine was inapplicable because, men being what they are, these conclusions were incompatible with even the first stages of social progress. This means, again, that for the metaphysical method Malthus is substituting a scientific method. Instead of regarding all government as a kind of mysterious intervention from without, which has somehow introduced a fatal discord into the natural order, he inquires what are the facts; how law has been evolved; and for what reason. His answer is, in brief, that law, order, and inequality have been absolutely necessary in order to limit tendencies which would otherwise keep men in a state of hopeless poverty and depression.

This gives the 'differentia' of the Utilitarian considered as one species of the genus 'Radical.' Malthus's criticism of Paine is significant.[270]He agrees with Painethat the cause of popular risings is 'want of happiness.' But Paine, he remarks, was 'in many important points totally ignorant of the structure of society'; and has fallen into the error of attributing all want of happiness to government. Consequently, Paine advocates a plan for distributing taxes among the poorest classes, which would aggravate the evils a hundredfold. He fully admits with Paine that man has rights. The true line of answer would be to show what those rights are. To give this answer is not Malthus's present business; but there is one right, at any rate, which a man does not and cannot possess: namely, the 'right to subsistence when his labour will not fairly purchase it.' He does not possess it because he cannot possess it; to try to secure it is to try to 'reverse the laws of nature,' and therefore to produce cruel suffering by practising an 'inhuman deceit.' The Abbé Raynal had said that a man had a right to subsist 'before all social laws.' Man had the same right, replied Malthus, as he had to live a hundred or a thousand years. He may live,if he canwithout interfering with others. Social laws have, in fact, enlarged the power of subsistence; but neither before nor after their institution could an unlimited number subsist. Briefly, the question of fact comes before the question of right, and the fault of the revolutionary theorists was to settle the right without reference to the possibility of making the right correspond to the fact.

Hence Malthus draws his most emphatic political moral. The admission that all evil is due to government is the way to tyranny. Make men believe that government is the one cause of misery, and they will inevitably throw the whole responsibility upon their rulers; seek forredress by cures which aggravate the disease; and strengthen the hands of those who prefer even despotism to anarchy. This, he intimates, is the explanation of the repressive measures in which the country-gentlemen had supported Pitt. The people had fancied that by destroying government they would make bread cheap; government was forced to be tyrannical in order to resist revolution; while its supporters were led to 'give up some of the most valuable privileges of Englishmen.'[271]It is then of vital importance to settle what is and what is not to be set down to government. Malthus, in fact, holds that the real evils are due to underlying causes which cannot be directly removed, though they may be diminished or increased, by legislators. Government can do something by giving security to property, and by making laws which will raise the self-respect of the lower classes. But the effect of such laws must be slow and gradual; and the error which has most contributed to that delay in the progress of freedom, which is 'so disheartening to every liberal mind,'[272]is the confusion as to the true causes of misery. Thus, as he has already urged, professed economists could still believe, so long after the publication of Adam Smith's work, that it was 'in the power of the justices of the peace or even of the omnipotence of parliament to alter by afiatthe whole circumstances of the country.'[273]Yet men who saw the absurdity of trying to fix the price of provisions were ready to propose to fix the rate of wages. They did not see that one term of the proportion implied the other. Malthus's whole criticism of the poor-law, already noticed, is a commentary uponthis text. It is connected with a general theory of human nature. The author of nature, he says, has wisely made 'the passion of self-love beyond expression stronger than the passion of benevolence.'[274]He means, as he explains, that every man has to pursue his own welfare and that of his family as his primary object. Benevolence, of course, is the 'source of our purest and most refined pleasures,' and so forth; but it should come in as a supplement to self-love. Therefore we must never admit that men have a strict right to relief. That is to injure the very essential social force. 'Hard as it may seem in individual instances, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.'[275]The spirit of independence or self-help is the one thing necessary. 'The desire of bettering our condition and the fear of making it worse, like thevis medicatrixin physics, is thevis medicatrix naturaein politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from narrow human institutions.'[276]It is only because the poor-laws have not quite destroyed it, that they have not quite ruined the country. The pith of Malthus's teaching is fairly expressed in his last letter to Senior.[277]He holds that the improvement in the condition of the great mass of the labouring classes should be considered as the main interest of society. To improve their condition, it is essential to impress them with the conviction that they can do much more for themselves than others can do for them, and that theonlysource of permanent improvement is the improvement of their moral and religious habits. What government can do, therefore, is to maintain such institutions as maystrengthen thevis medicatrix, or 'desire to better our condition,' which poor-laws had directly tended to weaken. He maintains in his letter to Senior, that this desire is 'perfectly feeble' compared with the tendency of the population to increase, and operates in a very slight degree upon the great mass of the labouring class.[278]Still, he holds that on the whole the 'preventive checks' have become stronger relatively to the positive,[279]and, at any rate, all proposals must be judged by their tendency to strengthen the preventive.

Malthus was not a thoroughgoing supporter of the 'do-nothing' doctrine. He approved of a national system of education, and of the early factory acts, though only as applied to infant labour. So, as we shall see, did all the Utilitarians. The 'individualism,' however, is not less decided; and leads him to speak as though the elasticity of population were not merely an essential factor in the social problem, but the sole principle from which all solutions must be deduced. He is thus led, as I have tried to show, to a narrow interpretation of his 'moral check.' He is apt to take 'vice' simply as a product of excessive pressure, and, in his general phrases at least, to overlook its reciprocal tendency to cause pressure. The 'moral check' is only preventive or negative, not a positive cause of superior vigour. A similar defect appears in his theory of thevis medicatrix. He was, I hold, perfectly right in emphasising the importance of individual responsibility. No reform can be permanent which does not raise the morality of the individual. His insistence upon this truth was of the highest importance, and it is to be wished that itsimportance might be more fully recognised to-day. The one-sidedness appears in his proposal to abolish the poor-law simply. That became the most conspicuous and widely accepted doctrine. All men of 'sense,' said Sydney Smith—certainly a qualified representative of the class—in 1820, agree, first, that the poor-law must be abolished; and secondly, that it must be abolished very gradually.[280]That is really to assume that by refusing to help people at all, you will force them to help themselves. There is another alternative, namely, that they may, as Malthus himself often recognises, become demoralised by excessive poverty. To do simply nothing may lead to degeneration instead of increased energy. The possibility of an improved law, which might act as a moral discipline instead of a simply corrupting agency, is simply left out of account; and the tendency to stimulate reckless population is regarded not only as one probable consequence, but as the very essence of all poor-laws. Upon Malthus's assumptions, the statement that sound political and social theories must be based upon systematic inquiry into facts, meant that the individual was the ultimate unalterable unit, whose interest in his own welfare gave the one fulcrum for all possible changes. The ideal 'state of nature' was a fiction. The true basis of our inquiries is the actual man known to us by observation. The main fault of this being was the excess of the instinct of multiplication, and the way to improve him was to show how it might conflict with the instinct of self-preservation. In this shape the doctrine expressed the most characteristic tendency of the Utilitarians, and divided them from the Socialists or believers in abstract rights of man.

VI. RENT

Here, then, we are at a central point of the Utilitarian creed. The expansive force of population is, in a sense, the great motive power which moulds the whole social structure; or, rather, it forces together the independent units, and welds them into an aggregate. The influence of this doctrine upon other economical speculations is of the highest importance. One critical stage in the process is marked by the enunciation of the theory of rent, which was to become another essential article of the true faith. The introduction of this doctrine is characteristic, and marks the point at which Ricardo superseded Malthus as chief expositor of the doctrine.

Malthus's views were first fully given in hisInquiry into Rent, the second of three pamphlets which he published during the corn-law controversy of 1814-15.[281]The opinions now stated had, he says, been formed in the course of his lecturing at Haileybury; and he made them public on account of their bearing upon the most absorbing questions of the time. The connection of the theory with Malthus's speculations and with the contemporary difficulties is indeed obvious. The landlord had clearly one of the reserved seats at the banquet of nature. He was the most obvious embodiment of 'security' as opposed to equality. Malthus, again, had been influenced by the French economists and their theory of the 'surplus fund,' provided by agriculture. According to them, ashe says,[282]this fund or rent constitutes the whole national wealth. In his first edition he had defended the economists against some of Adam Smith's criticisms; and though he altered his views and thought that they had been led into preposterous errors, he retained a certain sympathy for them. Agriculture has still a certain 'pre-eminence.' God has bestowed upon the soil the 'inestimable quality of being able to maintain more persons than are necessary to work it.'[283]It has the special virtue that the supply of necessaries generates the demand. Make more luxuries and the price may fall; but grow more food and there will be more people to eat it. This, however, seems to be only another way of stating an unpleasant fact. The blessing of 'fertility' counteracts itself. As he argues in the essay,[284]an equal division of land might produce such an increase of population as would exhaust any conceivable increase of food. These views—not, I think, very clear or consistently worked out—lead apparently to the conclusion that the fertility is indeed a blessing, but on condition of being confined to a few. The result, in any case, is the orthodox theory of rent. The labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed. Both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent, and that this actually happens, he says, with unusual positiveness, is an 'incontrovertible truth.'[285]The fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated, and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile. 'This excess is rent.'[286]He proceeds to expound his doctrine by comparing land to a set of machines for making corn.[287]If, in manufacture, a new machine is introduced every one adopts it. In agriculture the worst machines have still to be used; and those who have the best and sell at the same price, can appropriate the surplus advantage. This, he declares, is a law 'as invariable as the action of the principle of gravity.'[288]Yet Smith and others have overlooked a 'principle of the highest importance'[289]and have failed to see that the price of corn, as of other things, must conform to the cost of production. The same doctrine was expounded in the same year by Sir Edward West;[290]and, as it seems to me, more clearly and simply. West, like Malthus, says that he has to announce a principle overlooked by Adam Smith. This is briefly that 'each equal additional quantity of work bestowed on agriculture yields an actually diminished return.' He holds that profits fall as wealth increases, but he denies Adam Smith's view that this is a simple result of increased competition.[291]Competition would equalise, but would not lower profits, for 'the productive powers of manufactures are constantly increasing.' In agriculture the law is the opposite one of diminishing returns. Hence the admitted fall of profits shows that the necessity of taking inferior soils into cultivation is the true cause of the fall.

Such coincidences as that between Malthus and West are common enough, for very obvious reasons. In this case, I think, there is less room for surprise than usual. The writer generally credited with the discovery of the rent doctrine is James Anderson, who had stated it asearly as 1777.[292]The statement, however, did not attract attention until at the time of West and Malthus it was forced upon observers by the most conspicuous facts of the day. Adam Smith and other economists had, as Malthus notices, observed what is obvious enough, that rent in some way represented a 'net produce'—a something which remained after paying the costs of production. So much was obvious to any common-sense observer. In a curious paper of December 1804,[293]Cobbett points out that the landlords will always keep the profits of farmers down to the average rate of equally agreeable businesses. This granted, it is a short though important step to the theory of rent. The English system had, in fact, spontaneously analysed the problem. The landlord, farmer, and labourer represented the three interests which might elsewhere be combined. Prices raised by war and famine had led to the enclosure of wastes and the breaking up of pastures. The 'margin of cultivation' was thus illustrated by facts. Farmers were complaining that they could not make a profit if prices were lowered. The landed classes were profiting by a rise of price raised, according to a familiar law, in greater proportion than the deficiency of the harvest. Facts of this kind were, one must suppose, familiar to every land-agent; and to discover the law of rent, it was only necessary forMalthus and West to put them in their natural order. The egg had only to be put on its end, though that, as we know, is often a difficult task. When the feat was accomplished consequences followed which were fully developed by Ricardo.

FOOTNOTES:[203]Mr. James Bonar'sMalthus and his Work(1885) gives an admirable account of Malthus. The chief original authorities are a life by Bishop Otter, prefixed to a second edition of thePolitical Economy(1831), and an article by Empson, Malthus's colleague, in theEdinburgh Reviewfor January 1837.[204]Political Justice(3rd edition, 1798), ii. bk. viii. chap. ix., p. 514.[205]Wallace wrote in answer to Hume,A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times(1753), andVarious Prospects of Mankind, andNature and Providence(1761). Godwin refers to the last.[206]Political Justice, ii. 520.[207]Ibid.ii. 528.[208]First published in 1795, after the first edition, as Godwin remarks, of thePolitical Justice.[209]Ami des hommes(reprint of 1883), p. 15.[210]Ami des hommes, p. 26.[211]See the curious debate inParl. Hist.xiv. 1318-1365.[212]The seventh edition of Price'sObservations on Reversionary Payments, etc. (1812), contains a correspondence with Pitt (i. 216, etc.). The editor, W. Morgan, accuses Pitt of adopting Price's plans without due acknowledgment and afterwards spoiling them.[213]Essay on Population, p. 18. InObservations, ii. 141, he estimates the diminution at a million and a half. Other books referring to the same controversy are Howlett'sExamination of Dr. Price's Essay(1781);Letter to Lord Carlisle, by William Eden (1744-1814), first Lord Auckland; William Wales'sEnquiry into Present State of Population, etc. (1781); and Geo. Chalmers'sEstimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain(1782 and several later editions).[214]Essay(first edition), p. 339.[215]Memoirs, etc. (1819), ii. 10.[216]So Sir James Stewart, whose light was extinguished by Adam Smith, begins hisEnquiry into the Principles of Political Economy(1767) by discussing the question of population, and compares the 'generative faculty' to a spring loaded with a weight, and exerting itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance (Works, 1805, i. 22). He compares population to 'rabbits in a warren.' Joseph Townsend, in hisJourney Through Spain(1792), to whom Malthus refers, had discussed the supposed decay of the Spanish population, and illustrates his principles by a geometric progression: see ii. 213-56, 386-91. Eden, in his book on the poor (i. 214), quotes a tract attributed to Sir Matthew Hale for the statement that the poor increase on 'geometrical progression.'[217]Malthus and his Work, p. 85.[218]Voltaire says in theDictionnaire Philosophique(art. 'Population'): 'On ne propage point en Progression Géométrique. Tous les calculs qu'on a faits sur cette prétendue multiplication sont des chimères absurdes.' They had been used to reconcile the story of the deluge with the admitted population of the world soon afterwards.[219]Essay(1826), ii 453n.I cite from this, the last edition published in Malthus's lifetime, unless otherwise stated.[220]Essay, ii. 251 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).[221]Ibid.(1798), p. 141.[222]Essay, ii. 449 (Appendix).[223]Essay, ii. 473 (Appendix).[224]Ibid.(Second Edition), p. 400. The passage is given in full inMalthus and his Work, p. 307.[225]Essay, i. 469 (bk. ii. ch. x.). Eden had made the same remark.[226]Ibid.ii. 229 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).[227]Correspondence in Senior'sThree Essays on Population(1829).[228]Essay, i. 234 (bk. i. ch. ii.).[229]Mr. Bonar thinks (Malthus and his Work, p. 324) that Malthus followed Paley's predecessor, Abraham Tucker, rather than Paley. The difference is not for my purpose important. In any case, Malthus's references are to Paley.[230]Essay, ii. 266 (bk. iv. ch. i.).[231]Essay(first edition), p. 212.[232]Ibid.i. 16n.(bk. i. ch. ii.).[233]Seee.g.his remarks upon Condorcet inEssay, ii. 8 (bk. iii. ch. i.); and Owen inIbid.ii. 48 (bk. iii ch. ii.).[234]Essay, i. 15n.(bk. i. ch. ii.); and seeIbid.(edit. of 1807) ii. 128.[235]Ibid.(1807) ii. 128.[236]Ibid.(1807) ii. 3 (bk. ii. ch. ii.). (Omitted in later editions.)[237]Mr. A. R. Wallace, Darwin's fellow-discoverer of the doctrine, also learned it from Malthus. See Clodd'sPioneers of Evolution. Malthus uses the phrase 'struggle for existence' in relation to a fight between two savage tribes in the first edition of hisEssay, p. 48. In replying to Condorcet, Malthus speaks (Essay, ii. 12, bk. iii. ch. i.) of the possible improvement of living organisms. He argues that, though a plant may be improved, it cannot be indefinitely improved by cultivation. A carnation could not be made as large as a tulip. It has been said that this implies a condemnation by anticipation of theories of the development of species. This is hardly correct. Malthus simply urges against Condorcet that our inability to fix limits precisely does not imply that there are no limits. This, it would seem, must be admitted on all hands. Evolution implies definite though not precisely definable limits. Life may be lengthened, but not made immortal.[238]Essay(first edition), 353.[239]Ibid.42n.(bk. iii. ch. iii.)[240]Essay, ii. 301-36 (bk. iv. ch. i. and ii.). Sumner'sTreatise on the Records of the Creation, and on the Moral Attributes of the Creator: with Particular Reference to the Jewish History and the Consistency of the Principle of Population with the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator(1815), had gained the second Burnett prize. It went through many editions; and shows how Cuvier confirms Genesis, and Malthus proves that the world was intended to involve a competition favourable to the industrious and sober. Sumner's view of Malthus is given in Part ii., chaps, v. and vi. In previous chapters he has supported Malthus's attack on Godwin and Condorcet.[241]Essay, ii. 266 (bk. iv. ch. i.).[242]Essay, ii 268 (bk. iv. ch. i.).[243]Ibid.(bk. iv. ch. ii.).[244]Essay, 241 (bk. iii. ch. iv.).[245]Ibid.ii. 241 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).[246]Ibid.ii. 293 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).[247]Ibid.ii. 425 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). Malthus expresses a hope that Paley had modified his views upon population, and refers to a passage in theNatural Theology.[248]Essay, ii. 292 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).[249]Political Economy(1836), p. 214.[250]Essay, ii. 298 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).[251]Ibid.ii. 86 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).[252]Ibid.ii. 87 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).[253]Essay, ii. 90 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).[254]Ibid.ii. 338 (bk. iv. ch. viii.).[255]Ibid.ii. (bk. iv. ch. x.).[256]Ibid.ii. 353 (bk. iv. ch. ix.).[257]Essay, ii. 356 (bk. iv. ch. ix.).[258]Ibid.ii. 407 (bk. iv. ch. xii.).[259]Ibid.ii. 375 (bk. iv. ch. xi.).[260]Ibid.ii. 429 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).[261]Essay of 1807(bk. iii. ch. ii., and vol. ii. p. 111). The phrases quoted are toned down in later editions.[262]Essay, i. 330 (bk. ii. ch. iv.).[263]Ibid.ii. 300 (bk. iv. ch. v.).[264]Ibid.ii. 405 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).[265]Ibid.i. 343 (bk. ii. ch. v.).[266]Essay, ii. 424 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).[267]Ibid.ii. 304 (bk. iv. ch. v.).[268]Essay, i. 75 (bk. i. ch. v.).[269]Ibid.(bk. ii. ch. vi.).[270]Essay, ii. 318 (bk. iv. ch. vi.).[271]Essay, ii. 315 (bk. iv. ch. v.).[272]Ibid.ii. 326 (bk. iv. ch. vi.).[273]Ibid.ii. 78 (bk. iii. ch. v.).[274]Essay, ii. 454 (Appendix).[275]Ibid.ii. 82 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).[276]Ibid.ii. 90 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).[277]Senior'sThree Lectures, p. 86.[278]Senior'sThree Lectures, p. 60.[279]Essay, i. 534 (bk. ii. ch. xiii.).[280]Smith'sWorks(1859), i. 295.[281]Observations on the Effects of the Corn-laws, 1814; Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, 1815; andThe Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn, intended as an appendix to theObservations on the Corn-laws, 1815.[282]Inquiry into Rent, p. 1.[283]Ibid.p. 16.[284]Essay, ii. 35 (bk. iii. ch. ii.).[285]Inquiry into Rent, p. 20.[286]Ibid.p. 18.[287]Ibid.p. 38.[288]Inquiry into Rent, p. 20.[289]Ibid.p. 37.[290]Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, by a Fellow of University College, Oxford, 1815.[291]Essay, p. 19.[292]In An Inquiry into the Nature of the Corn-laws, and again (1801) inObservations on Agriculture, etc., vol. v. 401-51.[293]Political Works, i. 485, etc. In this paper, I may add, Cobbett, not yet a Radical, accepts Malthus's view of the tendency of the human species to multiply more quickly than its support. He does not mention Malthus, but speaks of the belief as universally admitted, and afterwards illustrates it amusingly by saying that, in his ploughboy days, he used to wonder that there was always just enough hay for the horses and enough horses for the hay.

[203]Mr. James Bonar'sMalthus and his Work(1885) gives an admirable account of Malthus. The chief original authorities are a life by Bishop Otter, prefixed to a second edition of thePolitical Economy(1831), and an article by Empson, Malthus's colleague, in theEdinburgh Reviewfor January 1837.

[204]Political Justice(3rd edition, 1798), ii. bk. viii. chap. ix., p. 514.

[205]Wallace wrote in answer to Hume,A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times(1753), andVarious Prospects of Mankind, andNature and Providence(1761). Godwin refers to the last.

[206]Political Justice, ii. 520.

[207]Ibid.ii. 528.

[208]First published in 1795, after the first edition, as Godwin remarks, of thePolitical Justice.

[209]Ami des hommes(reprint of 1883), p. 15.

[210]Ami des hommes, p. 26.

[211]See the curious debate inParl. Hist.xiv. 1318-1365.

[212]The seventh edition of Price'sObservations on Reversionary Payments, etc. (1812), contains a correspondence with Pitt (i. 216, etc.). The editor, W. Morgan, accuses Pitt of adopting Price's plans without due acknowledgment and afterwards spoiling them.

[213]Essay on Population, p. 18. InObservations, ii. 141, he estimates the diminution at a million and a half. Other books referring to the same controversy are Howlett'sExamination of Dr. Price's Essay(1781);Letter to Lord Carlisle, by William Eden (1744-1814), first Lord Auckland; William Wales'sEnquiry into Present State of Population, etc. (1781); and Geo. Chalmers'sEstimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain(1782 and several later editions).

[214]Essay(first edition), p. 339.

[215]Memoirs, etc. (1819), ii. 10.

[216]So Sir James Stewart, whose light was extinguished by Adam Smith, begins hisEnquiry into the Principles of Political Economy(1767) by discussing the question of population, and compares the 'generative faculty' to a spring loaded with a weight, and exerting itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance (Works, 1805, i. 22). He compares population to 'rabbits in a warren.' Joseph Townsend, in hisJourney Through Spain(1792), to whom Malthus refers, had discussed the supposed decay of the Spanish population, and illustrates his principles by a geometric progression: see ii. 213-56, 386-91. Eden, in his book on the poor (i. 214), quotes a tract attributed to Sir Matthew Hale for the statement that the poor increase on 'geometrical progression.'

[217]Malthus and his Work, p. 85.

[218]Voltaire says in theDictionnaire Philosophique(art. 'Population'): 'On ne propage point en Progression Géométrique. Tous les calculs qu'on a faits sur cette prétendue multiplication sont des chimères absurdes.' They had been used to reconcile the story of the deluge with the admitted population of the world soon afterwards.

[219]Essay(1826), ii 453n.I cite from this, the last edition published in Malthus's lifetime, unless otherwise stated.

[220]Essay, ii. 251 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).

[221]Ibid.(1798), p. 141.

[222]Essay, ii. 449 (Appendix).

[223]Essay, ii. 473 (Appendix).

[224]Ibid.(Second Edition), p. 400. The passage is given in full inMalthus and his Work, p. 307.

[225]Essay, i. 469 (bk. ii. ch. x.). Eden had made the same remark.

[226]Ibid.ii. 229 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).

[227]Correspondence in Senior'sThree Essays on Population(1829).

[228]Essay, i. 234 (bk. i. ch. ii.).

[229]Mr. Bonar thinks (Malthus and his Work, p. 324) that Malthus followed Paley's predecessor, Abraham Tucker, rather than Paley. The difference is not for my purpose important. In any case, Malthus's references are to Paley.

[230]Essay, ii. 266 (bk. iv. ch. i.).

[231]Essay(first edition), p. 212.

[232]Ibid.i. 16n.(bk. i. ch. ii.).

[233]Seee.g.his remarks upon Condorcet inEssay, ii. 8 (bk. iii. ch. i.); and Owen inIbid.ii. 48 (bk. iii ch. ii.).

[234]Essay, i. 15n.(bk. i. ch. ii.); and seeIbid.(edit. of 1807) ii. 128.

[235]Ibid.(1807) ii. 128.

[236]Ibid.(1807) ii. 3 (bk. ii. ch. ii.). (Omitted in later editions.)

[237]Mr. A. R. Wallace, Darwin's fellow-discoverer of the doctrine, also learned it from Malthus. See Clodd'sPioneers of Evolution. Malthus uses the phrase 'struggle for existence' in relation to a fight between two savage tribes in the first edition of hisEssay, p. 48. In replying to Condorcet, Malthus speaks (Essay, ii. 12, bk. iii. ch. i.) of the possible improvement of living organisms. He argues that, though a plant may be improved, it cannot be indefinitely improved by cultivation. A carnation could not be made as large as a tulip. It has been said that this implies a condemnation by anticipation of theories of the development of species. This is hardly correct. Malthus simply urges against Condorcet that our inability to fix limits precisely does not imply that there are no limits. This, it would seem, must be admitted on all hands. Evolution implies definite though not precisely definable limits. Life may be lengthened, but not made immortal.

[238]Essay(first edition), 353.

[239]Ibid.42n.(bk. iii. ch. iii.)

[240]Essay, ii. 301-36 (bk. iv. ch. i. and ii.). Sumner'sTreatise on the Records of the Creation, and on the Moral Attributes of the Creator: with Particular Reference to the Jewish History and the Consistency of the Principle of Population with the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator(1815), had gained the second Burnett prize. It went through many editions; and shows how Cuvier confirms Genesis, and Malthus proves that the world was intended to involve a competition favourable to the industrious and sober. Sumner's view of Malthus is given in Part ii., chaps, v. and vi. In previous chapters he has supported Malthus's attack on Godwin and Condorcet.

[241]Essay, ii. 266 (bk. iv. ch. i.).

[242]Essay, ii 268 (bk. iv. ch. i.).

[243]Ibid.(bk. iv. ch. ii.).

[244]Essay, 241 (bk. iii. ch. iv.).

[245]Ibid.ii. 241 (bk. iii. ch. xiv.).

[246]Ibid.ii. 293 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).

[247]Ibid.ii. 425 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.). Malthus expresses a hope that Paley had modified his views upon population, and refers to a passage in theNatural Theology.

[248]Essay, ii. 292 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).

[249]Political Economy(1836), p. 214.

[250]Essay, ii. 298 (bk. iv. ch. iv.).

[251]Ibid.ii. 86 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).

[252]Ibid.ii. 87 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).

[253]Essay, ii. 90 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).

[254]Ibid.ii. 338 (bk. iv. ch. viii.).

[255]Ibid.ii. (bk. iv. ch. x.).

[256]Ibid.ii. 353 (bk. iv. ch. ix.).

[257]Essay, ii. 356 (bk. iv. ch. ix.).

[258]Ibid.ii. 407 (bk. iv. ch. xii.).

[259]Ibid.ii. 375 (bk. iv. ch. xi.).

[260]Ibid.ii. 429 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).

[261]Essay of 1807(bk. iii. ch. ii., and vol. ii. p. 111). The phrases quoted are toned down in later editions.

[262]Essay, i. 330 (bk. ii. ch. iv.).

[263]Ibid.ii. 300 (bk. iv. ch. v.).

[264]Ibid.ii. 405 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).

[265]Ibid.i. 343 (bk. ii. ch. v.).

[266]Essay, ii. 424 (bk. iv. ch. xiii.).

[267]Ibid.ii. 304 (bk. iv. ch. v.).

[268]Essay, i. 75 (bk. i. ch. v.).

[269]Ibid.(bk. ii. ch. vi.).

[270]Essay, ii. 318 (bk. iv. ch. vi.).

[271]Essay, ii. 315 (bk. iv. ch. v.).

[272]Ibid.ii. 326 (bk. iv. ch. vi.).

[273]Ibid.ii. 78 (bk. iii. ch. v.).

[274]Essay, ii. 454 (Appendix).

[275]Ibid.ii. 82 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).

[276]Ibid.ii. 90 (bk. iii. ch. vi.).

[277]Senior'sThree Lectures, p. 86.

[278]Senior'sThree Lectures, p. 60.

[279]Essay, i. 534 (bk. ii. ch. xiii.).

[280]Smith'sWorks(1859), i. 295.

[281]Observations on the Effects of the Corn-laws, 1814; Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, 1815; andThe Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn, intended as an appendix to theObservations on the Corn-laws, 1815.

[282]Inquiry into Rent, p. 1.

[283]Ibid.p. 16.

[284]Essay, ii. 35 (bk. iii. ch. ii.).

[285]Inquiry into Rent, p. 20.

[286]Ibid.p. 18.

[287]Ibid.p. 38.

[288]Inquiry into Rent, p. 20.

[289]Ibid.p. 37.

[290]Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, by a Fellow of University College, Oxford, 1815.

[291]Essay, p. 19.

[292]In An Inquiry into the Nature of the Corn-laws, and again (1801) inObservations on Agriculture, etc., vol. v. 401-51.

[293]Political Works, i. 485, etc. In this paper, I may add, Cobbett, not yet a Radical, accepts Malthus's view of the tendency of the human species to multiply more quickly than its support. He does not mention Malthus, but speaks of the belief as universally admitted, and afterwards illustrates it amusingly by saying that, in his ploughboy days, he used to wonder that there was always just enough hay for the horses and enough horses for the hay.

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