Malthus unceremoniously rejected the methods advocated by those who to-day bear his name, and expressly condemned all who favoured the free exercise of sexual connection, whether within or without the marriage bond, through the practice of voluntary sterilization. All these preventive methods are grouped together as vices and their evil effects contrasted with the practice of moral restraint. Malthus is equally explicit on this point. “Indeed, I should always particularly reprobate any artificial and unnatural modes of checking population. The restraints which I have recommended are quite of a different character. They are not only pointed out by reason and sanctioned by religion, but tend in the most marked manner to stimulate industry.” (P. 572.) And he adds these significant words, so strangely prophetic so far as France is concerned: “It might be easy to fall into the opposite mistake and to check the growth of population altogether.”
It is quite needless to add that if Malthus thus made short work of conjugal frauds he all the more strongly condemned that other preventive method, namely, the institution of a special class of professional prostitutes.[298] He would similarly have condemned the practice of abortion, of which scarcely anything was heard in his day, but which now appears like a scourge, taking the place of infanticide and the other barbarous practices of antiquity. Criminal law seems powerless to suppress it, and it has already received the sanction of a new morality.
But apart from the question of immoral practices, did Malthus really believe that moral restraint as he conceived of it would constitute an effective check upon population?
He doubtless was anxious that it should be so, and he tried to rouse men to a holy crusade against this worst of all social evils. “To the Christian I would say that the Scriptures most clearly and precisely point it out to us as our duty to restrain our passions within the bounds of reason. … The Christian cannot consider the difficulty of moral restraint as any argument against its being his duty.” (P. 452.) And to those who wish to follow the dictates of reason rather than the observances of religion he remarks: “This virtue [chastity] appears to be absolutely necessary in order to avoid certain evils which would otherwise result from the general laws of nature.” (P. 452.)[299]
At bottom he was never quite certain as to the efficacy of moral restraint. The threatening hydra always peered over the fragile shield of pure crystal with which he had hoped to do battle.[300] He also felt that celibacy might not merely be ineffective, but would actually prove dangerous by provoking the vices it was intended to check. Its prolongation, or worse still its perpetuation, could never be favourable to good morals.
Malthus was faced with a terrible dilemma, and the uncompromising ascetic is forced to declare himself a utilitarian philosopher of the Benthamite persuasion. He has now to condone those practices which satisfy the sexual instinct without involving maternity, although at an earlier stage he characterised them as vices. It seemed to him to be the lesser of two evils, for over-population[301] is itself the cause of much immorality, with its misery, its promiscuous living and licence. All of which is very true.[302] At the same time the rule of conduct now prescribed is no longer that of “perfect purity.” It is, as he himself says, the grand rule of utility. “It is clearly our duty gradually to acquire a habit of gratifying our passion, only in that way which is unattended with evil.” (P. 500.) These concessions only served to prepare the way for the Neo-Malthusians.
Malthus gives us a picture of man at the cross-roads. Straight in front of him lies the road to misery, on the right the path of virtue, while on the left is the way of vice. Towards the first man is impelled by a blind instinct. Malthus warns him to rein in his desires and seek escape along either by-road, preferably by the path on his right. But he fears that the number of those who will accept his advice and choose “the strait road of salvation” will be very small. On the other hand, he is unwilling to admit, even in the secrecy of his own soul, that most men will probably follow the road that leads on to vice, and that masses will rush down the easy slope towards perdition. In any case the prospect is anything but inviting.
No doctrine ever was so much reviled. Imprecations have been showered upon it ever since Godwin’s memorable description of it as “that black and terrible demon that is always ready to stifle the hopes of humanity.”
Critics have declared that all Malthus’s economic predictions have been falsified by the facts, that morally his doctrines have given rise to the most repugnant practices, and not a few French writers are prepared to hold him responsible for the decline in the French birth-rate. What are we to make of these criticisms?
History certainly has not confirmed his fears. No single country has shown that it is suffering from over-population. In some cases—that of France, for example—population has increased only very slightly. In others the increase has been very considerable, but nowhere has it outstripped the increase in wealth.
The following table, based upon the decennial censuses, gives the per capita wealth of the population of the United States, the country from which Malthus obtained many of his data:
| Year | Dollars |
|---|---|
| 1850 | 308 |
| 1860 | 514 |
| 1870 | 780 |
| 1880 | 870 |
| 1890 | 1036 |
| 1900 | 1227 |
| 1905 | 1370 |
In fifty years the wealth of every inhabitant has more than quadrupled, although the population in the same interval also shows a fourfold increase (23 millions to 92 millions).[303]
Great Britain, i.e. England and Scotland, at the time Malthus wrote (1800–5), had a population of 10½ millions. To-day it has a population of 40 millions. Such a figure, had he been able to foresee it, would have terrified Malthus. But the wealth and prosperity of Great Britain have in the meantime probably quadrupled also.
Does this prove the claim that is constantly being made, that Malthus’s laws are not borne out by the facts? We think that it is correct to say that the laws still remain intact, but that the conclusions which he drew from them were unwarranted. No one can deny that living beings of every kind, including the human species, multiply in geometrical progression. Left to itself, with no check, such increase would exceed all limits. The increase of industrial products, on the other hand, must of necessity be limited by the numerous conditions which regulate all production—that is, by the amount of space available, the quantity of raw material, of capital and labour, etc. If the growth of population has not outstripped the increase in wealth, but, as appears from the figures we have given, has actually lagged behind it, it is because population has been voluntarily limited, not only in France, where the preventive check is in full swing, but also in almost every other country. This voluntary limitation which gave Malthus such trouble is one of the commonest phenomena of the present time.
Malthus’s apprehensions appear to involve some biological confusion. The sexual and the reproductive instincts are by no means one and the same;[304] they are governed by entirely different motives. Only to the first can be attributed that character of irresistibility which he wrongly attributes to the second. The first is a mere animal instinct which rouses the most impetuous of passions and is common to all men. The second is frequently social and religious in its origins, assuming different forms according to the exigencies of time and place.
To the religious peoples who adopted the laws of Moses, of Manu, or of Confucius to beget issue was to ensure salvation and to realise true immortality.[305] For the Brahmin, the Chinese, or the Jew not to have children meant not merely a misfortune, but a life branded with failure. Among the Greeks and Romans the rearing