¹ For an account of some of these arguments, see my French Predecessors of Malthus; Johnson, E. A. J., Predecessors of Adam Smith (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; Baudrillart, H., Histoire du luxe (Paris, 1878–1880)Google Scholar; Kaye, F. B., introduction and notes to The Fable of the Bees … Bernard Mandeville (Oxford, 1924).Google Scholar

² Young, E., The Centaur, not Fabulous (1755) (Philadelphia, 1795), p. 47.Google Scholar

³ Thus Paley, , Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 444 Google Scholar, having noted that “habitual superfluities become actual wants: opinion and fashion convert articles of ornament and luxury into necessaries,” added that, “in the present relaxed state of morals and discipline,” men will not “enter into marriages which degrade their condition, reduce their mode of living, deprive them of the accommodations to which they have been accustomed, or even of those ornaments or appendages of rank and station, which they have been taught to regard as belonging to their birth, or class, or profession, or place in society.” See also Wallace, , Dissertation, pp. 19, 26 ff., 160.Google Scholar

⁴ E.g., see Essay, pp. 429-31, on the causes of depopulation; and p. 11, where he says that, given access to the means of subsistence, population tends to increase “even in the most vicious societies.” Cf. the views of Grimm, Baron (French Predecessors, pp. 236 Google Scholar ff.) and Paley, (Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 445–6).Google Scholar

⁵ Essay, pp. 9-10, 134-7, 171; 1st ed., p. 100; 2d ed., p. 467 n. “The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation” (1st ed., p. 139).

⁶ Essay, III, iii, p. 318 Google Scholar; not in early editions.

⁷ Essay, 2d ed., pp. 467-9 n., 592-4 n. See also sec. II and sec. III (ii) of this article. Steuart, (Works, vol. I, p. 117)Google Scholar had said: “That number of husbandmen, therefore, is the best, which can provide food for all the state; and that number of inhabitants is the best, which is compatible with the full employment of every one of them.”

⁸ “The more Horses there are in a state the less food will remain for the People.” On Cantillon's theory see my French Predecessors, chap, iv, and A. Landry's historical and analytical essay, “Une théorie, négligée. De l'influence de la direction de la demande sur la productivité du travail, les salaires et la population” (Revue d'économie politique, vol. XXIV, 1910, pp. 314, 364, 747, 773)Google Scholar; also Douglas, , Theory of Wages, pp. 266–7.Google Scholar Cantillon glimpsed but did not develop the point that since non-proprietors also are consumers, the number of non-proprietors depends in part upon the tastes of non-proprietors and the extent to which they prefer goods and services consisting predominantly of labour; or the corollary that the level of wages, if not fixed by a constant scale of living, depends in part upon the tastes of non-proprietors. Eubulus, said Pareto, V. (Cours d'économie politique, Lausanne, 1896–1897, vol. I, p. 139)Google Scholar, criticized those who nourished beasts for pleasure rather than children.

⁹ “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” (Essays, vol. I, pp. 395-6, 397-8, 430).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dissertation, pp. 17, 20-30. He admitted, however, that where the “lands are very unequally divided … that country must be thinly peopled, unless elegance is studied, and proper encouragement given to the arts which conduce to it.” Ibid., pp. 17-18. Wallace did not assert, however, that the production of ornaments should be delayed until the earth was fully cultivated (ibid., p. 21).

¹¹ At this time (1756) Mirabeau had not yet joined the Physiocrats who reasoned that, in France at that time, luxury which eventuated in a demand for subsistence was more favourable to agriculture and population growth than was decorative luxury. See my French Predecessors, pp. 131, 182, 185 ff. Malthus referred to Mirabeau's observation that revenue was the source of population (Essay, p. 433; 2d ed., p. 477).

¹² Works, vol, I, pp. 156-7, 189–99.Google Scholar

¹³ Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 446, 449-50, 455-9. Those branches of “manufactory … are, in their nature, the most beneficial, in which the price of the wrought article exceeds in the highest proportion that of the raw material: for this excess measures the quantity of employment” (ibid., p. 459). See also sec. III (ii) of this article. Paley did not consider “mechanical contrivances, which abridge labour,” to be detrimental to population, inasmuch as they did not diminish “the quantity of employment” (ibid., pp. 470-2).

¹⁴ Essay, 1st ed., pp. 76, 308-10, 314-21, 329. The new system of grazing, made profitable by the increased price of meat, he traced to “the present great demand for butchers meat of the best quality.” Ibid., pp. 316-19.

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 289-92, 298-9. Because the rich were few in number, their assistance would be “comparatively trifling”; and because of the principle of population, want would still exceed supply even if the creators of luxuries turned to the production of necessaries. Here Malthus is replying to Godwin, (Enquirer, pp. 139–40).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Essay, III, xiv, p. 435 Google Scholar; 2d ed., p. 477. Wretchedness, Malthus pointed out elsewhere, was the lot of a large proportion of the population in China where “no arable land lies fallow” and where relatively little labour and few vegetable and animal products were diverted to non-food uses. Essay, I, xii, pp. 116–17Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 148-9.

¹⁷ Essay, III, xiv, p. 435 Google Scholar; 2d ed., p. 478.

¹⁸ Essay, I, xii, p. 126 Google Scholar; 2d ed., p. 161. Pro-slavery writers in America defended the loose slave economy and the associated wasteful consumption on the ground that it permitted retrenchment when times were hard. See references in note 83 in sec. II of this article.

¹⁹ Essay, IV, xi, p. 514 Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 577-8.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 131.

²¹ Essay, IV, xi, pp. 514–16Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 577-80. See also his discussion of the population-increasing effect of the introduction of the cheap potato diet into Ireland (Essay, pp. 259-60, 365-7; 2d ed., pp. 334-5, 579-81; Principles, pp. 211, 345 ff.; Edinburgh Review, 1808, pp. 339-40, 344).Google Scholar Smith, Adam (Wealth of Nations, pp. 160–1)Google Scholar was more enthusiastic than Malthus about the potato.

²² Essay, III, ii, p. 311 Google Scholar, also pp. 435-8; 2d ed., pp. 371, 466-9; 1st ed., p. 187. Malthus here is emphasizing the difficulties in the way of increasing the supply of subsistence and the impossibility, in a country like England, of living by vegetable cultivation alone.

²³ Principles, I, iv, 3, pp. 237-8; 1st ed., p. 263.

²⁴ Essay, III, xiv, pp. 435–8Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 466-9, 478-82. Malthus pointed to the “barren heaths” of China and to the error of the French in cultivating too much poor land.

²⁵ Essay, III, vi, p. 346, x, pp. 382-4Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 414-15. Chap, x, in its final form, first appeared in the fifth edition (1817). In chap, vi, on the poor laws, Malthus's object is to show that the abolition of private property would greatly worsen the material lot of most men. See sec. III (iii) of this article.

²⁶ It is their “passions” that cause men to labour, Hume had said; it is the “spirit of avarice and industry, art and luxury” that actuates men to work effectively; it is their “desires and wants” that determine how many hands the “proprietors and labourers” of land will employ. It is foreign commerce, which presents the more opulent with undreamed-of objects of luxury, that “rouses men from their indolence” and raises in the better-to-do “a desire of a more splendid way of life than what their ancestors enjoyed.” See “Of Commerce” (Essays, vol. I, pp. 289-90, 293, 296).Google Scholar Mandeville and others, before Hume, had emphasized the role of the passions ( Kaye, , The Fable of the Bees … by Bernard Mandeville, vol. I, Introduction, parts IV-V).Google Scholar Malthus would not have approved Mandeville's view that national wealth consists in “a Multitude of laborious Poor” (ibid., vol. I, p. 287); and he did not approve Mandeville's “system of morals” (Essay, p. 553 n.); but he made use of the notion of “passions” (see note 65 below, and text).

²⁷ “The condition most favourable to population is that of a laborious, frugal people, ministering to the demands of an opulent, luxurious nation; because this situation, whilst it leaves them every advantage of luxury, exempts them from the evils which naturally accompany its admission into any country.” Under these circumstances much employment is provided by luxury manufacture; yet, since the vast majority are without a taste for these luxuries, they are not under pressure to support this taste by refraining from the “formation of families.” See Paley, , Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 446–8.Google Scholar

²⁸ Essay, IV, xiii, pp. 534–5Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 592-3; Principles, pp. 373 ff., where this view is developed more fully; also sec. I-II of this article. Hume had said that everyone should enjoy “all the necessaries and many of the conveniences of life.” See “Of Commerce” (Essays, vol. I, pp. 296–7).Google Scholar

²⁹ Essay, IV, ix, p. 498, xiii, pp. 534 n., 535Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 557, 593-4. See also Essay, pp. 471, 491; 2d ed., pp. 524, 545; Principles, I, iv, 2 Google Scholar; Senior, , Two Lectures on Population, pp. 85–6.Google Scholar Malthus may have got his “standard of wretchedness” (Essay, p. 498) from Paley who said (see Malthus, ibid., p. 534 n.) that mankind will “breed up to a certain point of distress.” See 2d ed., pp. 557, 592 n.

³⁰ Essay, III, xiv, pp. 431–2, IV, xiii, pp. 535-6Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 475, 594-5, and notes, pp. 592,593.

³¹ Viner, , Studies in the Theory of International Trade, pp. 51 ff.Google Scholar; Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith, chap. xv.

³² Works, vol. I, p. 191.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid, vol. II, p. 2 (italics in text). Young, Arthur (Political essays, 1772, p. 538 Google Scholar; cited by Viner, , Studies in the Theory of International Trade, p. 54 Google Scholar) stated that a favourable balance of trade suggested that foreigners “employ more of our poor than we do of theirs.” Cantillon, by whom Steuart was influenced, had indicated that a country could increase its population by exchanging products embodying labour for agricultural products, but he did not recommend a state's becoming dependent upon foreign-produced foodstuffs (French Predecessors, pp. 118 ff., 124 ff.)

³⁴ Works, vol. I, pp. 117, 158-9, 212–14Google Scholar; vol. II, pp. 6-8.

³⁵ Dissertation, pp. 18, 21-3, 148.

³⁶ Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 458-9, 469-70.

³⁷ Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, vol. IV, ix, p. 642.Google Scholar

³⁸ It was worse for a country like England to become slightly dependent upon foreign sources than for small countries like Holland and Hamburg to become largely dependent. England “is in a much more precarious situation with regard to the constancy of its supplies, than such states as draw almost the whole of their provisions from other countries.” Essay, 2d ed., p. 425. For reply to Adam Smith, not included in 1817 revision, see ibid., pp. 448-51, and for general view, pp. 426, 429, 437-8, 467-9 n. See for his similar but less developed position, 1st ed., pp. 311-13, 322-6, 336-7.

³⁹ No policy, of course, could obviate the need to exercise moral restraint (e.g., Essay, 2d ed., pp. 467-9). On the differences between Malthus and Ricardo regarding criteria of national well-being and effects of trade, see Hollander, , Notes, pp. xxxix ff.Google Scholar, xliii, xcix ff.

⁴⁰ Essay, III, ix, xii, p. 409 Google Scholar; also Observations, pp. 22-4, 28-9. Malthus did not expect “perfect freedom of trade” ever to be realized (Essay, p. 415; cf. 2d ed., p. 466). He did not dwell upon the possible ill effects of naval or other forms of blockade except to suggest that a commanding navy gives an importing country surer access to foreign supplies (Essay, 2d ed., pp. 425, 468 n.; 1st ed., p. 311).

⁴¹ Essay, III, x-xii; 2d ed., III, vii-x; Principles, p. 427; Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 217-29, 245–52.Google Scholar In his Observations, etc. (1814) Malthus, having considered the supposed advantages and disadvantages of export bounties and import restrictions, expressed himself in favour of a constant protective import duty on corn, and of continuation of the “old bounty” with a view to relieving a “glut” (ibid., p. 34). British agriculture could not, in the face of foreign competition, grow enough corn to support the increasing population, Malthus noted, but he did not stress so much as later the risk of making a considerable part of the population dependent upon foreign supplies (ibid., pp. 16-24, 28-9).

⁴² Essay, pp. 403-4; 2d ed., pp. 446-7.

⁴³ Essay, III, xii, p. 409 Google Scholar; also III, ix, pp. 376 ff. on the decline of Venice and other places. Malthus was not familiar with the population and economic theories of G. Ortes which re-fleeted the situation of which Malthus wrote.

⁴⁴ He wrote approvingly of bounties in the second edition of the Essay (pp. 451, 465-6), in view of the then state of English agriculture.

⁴⁵ Essay, III, xi–xii, especially pp. 400-4, 412–15.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ “The Age of Reason ended in the French Revolution. The Age of Stupidity began with Malthus.” See Commons, J. R., Institutional Economics (New York, 1934), p. 244.Google Scholar “Malthus's book was anti-jacobin, expressly written to refute the equalitarian Utopia.” Halévy, Élie, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, translated by Morris, Mary (London, 1928), p. 205.Google Scholar “Malthus was steeped in an inveterate Toryism as to social and economic organization.” Hollander, , Notes, p. xxiv, also p. xcvii.Google Scholar On replies to Malthus, see Bonar, Malthus, bk. IV.

⁴⁷ Capital (Chicago, 1906), vol. I, p. 676 n.Google Scholar See also Levin, S. M., “Marx versus Malthus” (Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, vol. XXII, 1936, pp. 243 ff.).Google Scholar Pareto, (Cours d'économie politique, pp. 118–19)Google Scholar had contended that Malthus's philosophy weakened the argument against revolutionary change.

⁴⁸ See my “French Population Theory since 1800” (Journal of Political Economy, vol. XLIV, 1936, pp. 585 ff., 743 ff.).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ See my “Population Doctrines in the United States” (Journal of Political Economy, vol. XLI, 1933, pp. 433 ff., 639 ff.).Google Scholar Cursory examination of English materials supports the above opinion.

⁵⁰ E.g., see Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress (London, 1924)Google Scholar; Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism; my French Predecessors. On differences between views of Godwin and Condorcet, see note 57 and text.

⁵¹ On these precipitating circumstances see Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 230 ffGoogle Scholar; Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 27–31.Google Scholar

⁵² Leviathan, vol. I, xiii.Google Scholar

⁵³ Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence (London, 1761), pp. 113–25.Google Scholar Earlier he had said that “had it not been for the errors and vices of mankind, and the defects of government and education, the earth … perhaps might have been overstocked, many ages ago”; but he added that, with conditions as they were, there was no reason to fear that the earth would be fully cultivated, or that every country would be “plentifully stored with inhabitants.” See Dissertation, pp. 13, 149.

⁵⁴ A Dissertation on the Poor Laws (London, 1786).Google Scholar See Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 228–30.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ On Hobbes and Locke, see Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), pp. 87–106 Google Scholar; Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. Locke's competitive solution was adopted by Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others.

⁵⁶ Political Justice, vol. I, pp. 125-8, 330–42Google Scholar, vol. II, pp. 152-4, 170-1, 350 ff., 361 ff., 367-75. There is, Godwin believed, a natural tendency in men toward justice which, if allowed to develop, fuses the interests of men. On this point see Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 193 ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Political Justice, vol. II, bk. VIII, chap, IX, Godwin, referring to Condorcet's work on progress, said that Condorcet .rested his hopes upon the “growing perfectibility of art” instead of “upon the immediate and unavoidable operation of an improved intellect,” as did Godwin, Ibid., p. 377 n. See note 67 below.

⁵⁸ On Condorcet's views, see my French Predecessors, pp. 259-63.

⁵⁹ Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, p. 244.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Essay, pp. 10 n., 440-1, 446, 448-9, 455, 543-4, 567-8; 2d ed., pp. 484-5, 490-1, 494-5, 502-3; 1st ed., chaps, XVIII-XIX; Summary View, pp. 76-7; Zinke, , “Six Letters from Malthus to Pierre Prevost,” p. 183 Google Scholar; Bonar, Malthus, bk. III.

⁶¹ Essay, pp. 567–8 (1807).Google Scholar In this respect, and in his philosophy generally, Malthus reflected in some measure the philosophical “optimism” of the eighteenth century, with its emphasis upon the reality and the necessity of evils. See Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, 1936), chap. VII.Google Scholar Against this gloomy necessitarianism the philosophers of progress revolted; and in this revolt Malthus, despite his strictures upon the philosophy of indefinite progress, played no small part, being in some measure (see Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 376 ff.Google Scholar) under the influence of the same ideas as affected Godwin and Condorcet.

⁶² Essay, pp. 543-4.

⁶³ This is evident in his emphasis upon the two ratios (e.g., ibid., I, i and p. 551); in his estimate (1817) that England might support two or three times as many people at a somewhat improved scale of living; and in his supposition that in America, which might support fifty times its then (1817) population, the rate of growth would fall appreciably and labourers would “in time be much less liberally rewarded” (ibid., pp. 292-4, 360, 461, 551). Only in newly settled areas (ibid., pp. 285 ff., 329-31, 439), and for a limited time, could food and numbers increase rapidly (cf. Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, pp. 532 ff.).Google Scholar In the 1803 Essay (pp. 7, 473 and note), Malthus, who had merely implied a law of diminishing returns in agriculture in the 1798 edition, expressed such a law, and declared contrary to fact James Anderson's position that a law of increasing returns prevailed in intensive cultivation. See J. H. Hollander's introduction to Malthus's, Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent (1815) (Baltimore, 1903).Google Scholar In the Encyclopedia article (Summary View, pp. 4-6, 26-7, 31, 34), Malthus emphasized the “diminishing and limited power of increasing the produce of the soil,” observing that the forces of improvement (“division of labour,” “invention of machinery,” “accumulation of capital”) are less efficient in increasing food than in augmenting conveniences and luxuries.

⁶⁴ Summary View, p. 5; Principles, pp. 208-9. See also Ricardo's comment upon Malthus's observation that the Creator did not ordain “unlimited facility of producing food” inasmuch as space was limited (ibid., p. 209; Hollander, , Notes, pp. 108–10).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Essay, pp. 444-8, 452-5 (also in 2d ed.); also Bonar, Malthus, pp. 324-35. Here Malthus follows Paley, (Natural Theology [1802], Albany, 1803, chap, xxvi, pp. 344–35)Google Scholar, who referred (ibid., p. 340) to Malthus's first essay; and who looked upon vice and misery as consequences, in part, of the excessive pursuit and the misdirected use of the passions, and who emphasized the need for their subjection to reason and self-government aided by religion. On the doctrine of passions see Kaye, The Fable of the Bees … by Bernard Mandeville, Introduction; Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, vol. I, i Google Scholar; Laird, J., Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature (London, 1932), chap. VII.Google Scholar See note 26 above.

⁶⁶ Essay, IV, i Google Scholar; also pp. 10 n., 551-2.

⁶⁷ Essay, 1st ed., chap, XIII; also Edinburgh Review (1810), pp. 472, 475.Google Scholar Of Godwin's remark that the passion between the sexes might be extinguished, Malthus said: “Men in the decline of life have, in all ages, declaimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel” (Essay, 1st ed., pp. 210-11). On the Malthusian versus the anti-Malthusian view of progress, see Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 242-4, 275-6, 363 ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ On the important role of education in the later utilitarian scheme, see Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 20 ff., 282 ff.Google Scholar Malthus's faith in education, while not so marked as that of Helvetius, was great. See Essay, pp. 439-43, 531-40 (in 2d ed.). In 1807, having indicated that he had not intended by his opinions to alarm the prejudices of the poor, he said: “We have only to proceed in improving our civil polity, conferring the benefits of education upon all, and removing every obstacle to the general extension of all those privileges and advantages which may be enjoyed in common” (ibid., p. 565).

⁶⁹ Principles, p. 208.

⁷⁰ “The principle of population, therefore, appears as the essential motive force behind social progress.” See Penrose, E. F., Population Theories and their Application (Stanford, 1934), p. 24.Google Scholar Here (Essay, pp. 446-7) Malthus is thinking in terms of man's supposed psychological nature. Elsewhere (see secs. I and II of this article) Malthus noticed other determinants of progress when he observed that extreme misery checks progress, and that bad government and watertight institutional structures bring the growth of wealth and population to a premature stop. Marshall, T. H. (Economic History Review, 1935, p. 76)Google Scholar, having noted that population “must be regarded as a cause and not merely as an effect,” concluded that in England “the rapid growth of the population may have been on the whole a stimulus to economic progress, but it was at times a cause of friction and distress.”

⁷¹ Slavery as an Industrial System (The Hague, 1910), p. 414.Google Scholar While Paley looked upon the principle of population as good, he nonetheless described the vis inertiae as making for tranquility and order (Natural Theology, pp. 340-1, 344-5).

⁷² Essay, pp. 445-52, 545-7, 572; 1st ed., pp. 354, 358-66, 370-1; Principles, pp. 208-9; also sec. III (iv) and (v) of this article.

⁷³ This distinction is not important, for his interpretation of the role of the principle of population had a theological basis.

⁷⁴ Essay, IV, i-ii, pp. 9, 301, 559-61, 572 Google Scholar; 1st ed., p. 340; Penrose, , Population Theories and their Application, pp. 21–30 Google Scholar; Levin, S. M. “Malthus' Conception of the Checks to Population” (Human Biology, vol. X, 1938, pp. 214–34).Google Scholar Malthus referred to prolongation of lactation, considered by Petty to be a hindrance to speedy propagation, (cited by Kuczynski, R. R., in Hogben, L., Political Arithmetic [New York, 1938], p. 293 Google Scholar) but did not suggest it, as did certain nineteenth-century writers, as an effective preventive check, either because he considered it per se ineffective (Essay, pp. 23, 81), or because he considered it too powerful and otherwise unsanctionable.

⁷⁵ Essay, pp. 431-2, 434-5, 471-3, 498; also in 2d ed. “Even poverty itself, … the great spur to industry, when it has once passed certain limits, almost ceases to operate”; and hopeless indigence “destroys all vigorous exertion.” Essay, p. 432.

⁷⁶ Essay, III, i-iii, also pp. 21, 24, 571–3Google Scholar; Summary View, pp. 35-6, 41-2, 72. Although men tend to blame their troubles upon institutions, the effects of institutions are “superficial” in comparison with the effects of “those deeper-seated causes of evil which result from the laws of nature and the passions of mankind.” Essay, pp. 307-8, 457-8; also in 2d ed. On the checks, the conception of which Malthus got (Essay, 1st ed., pp. 339 ff.) from a consideration of Price's untenable conclusion, see Levin, cited in note 74 above.

⁷⁷ Essay, III, ii, p. 317 Google Scholar, also p. 573; 2d ed., pp. 378-9. In the Encylopedia article, Malthus states that the alternatives are Godwin's system of common property and that of private property, of which the latter is by far the more productive and the more conducive to the generation of desirable habits and moral qualities; and that popular education cannot fit men for a system of common property. See Summary View, pp. 35-7, 72-4; Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 76–7.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Essay, III, ii-iii, p. 543 Google Scholar; 2d ed., pp. 366 ff., 604; 1st ed., pp. 286 ff.; Principles, pp. 208-9. The passion of self-love, however, if “pushed to excess” becomes the vice of selfishness (Essay, p. 554 n.). That egoism is the predominating, if not the exclusive, inclination of human nature, was commonly accepted in the eighteenth century ( Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, p. 14).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ He attributed the improved condition of the lower classes in France after the revolution to the diminished proportion of births which he traced to the fact that everyone now depended “more upon himself and less upon others.” Essay, p. 361; this was written in 1817. See note 62 in sec. 1 of this article.

⁸⁰ Essay, pp. 347, 529, 535, 539, 543; in 2d ed. “The desire of bettering our condition, and the fear of making it worse, … is the vis medicatrix reipublicae in politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from narrow institutions” (ibid., p. 347). Cf. also Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 120–2.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Parsons, , The Structure of Social Action, p. 106.Google Scholar

⁸² Essay, III, iii, pp. 320, 323, also, pp. 49 n., 479.Google Scholar Although chap. III in bk. III was not added until 1817, the substance of the above argument appears in both the first and second editions.

⁸³ Essay, III, i-iii, iv, vi, pp. 475–7Google Scholar; Malthus expressed substantially the same opinion in the first and second editions.

⁸⁴ Essay, III, ii–iii.Google Scholar Hume, noting that property was inconsistent with both “profuse abundance” and extreme scarcity, associated its origin with relative scarcity. See Commons, , Institutional Economics, pp. 140 ff.Google Scholar; Laird, , Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature, pp. 227 ff.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Essay, pp. 352-3; Principles, II, i, 10, pp. 429–30.Google Scholar These views were first published in the 1817 Essay and the 1820 Principles. Malthus is dealing here with the problem of postwar unemployment—an extreme instance of the oscillatory nature of population growth; of the tendency of numbers, in response to the stimulus of increased employment, to grow temporarily beyond the capacity of the labour market to absorb them. See Essay, pp. 11-14, 141, 411, 481-2; Principles, pp. 279-80, 416-17, 435-6. In the First Essay (pp. 30-5), Malthus, already alert to the time factor, commented upon the oscillatory character of population growth, saying that this vibration had escaped notice because the histories of mankind “are histories only of the upper classes.” Steuart, (Works, vol. I, p. 193)Google Scholar remarked that agricultural production and therefore population growth oscillate; he proposed that, when the demand for labour falls short of the supply, balance be restored by diminishing hands through their employment as soldiers, in colonies, and on public works (ibid., p. 310). Condorcet was somewhat aware of this oscillation, Malthus, (Essay, 1st ed., p. 152) noted.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Principles, pp. 429-30. Malthus opposed proposals to supply the deficiency in demand for labour through an issue of paper money (ibid., pp. 431-2), or through a reduction in taxes (Essay, pp. 354-5); he supposed, rather, that a public works programme would divert purchasing power to those employed thereon and so spread unemployment “over a larger surface” (ibid., pp. 353-4).

⁸⁷ Essay, III, iv, pp. 331-2 (1817), 573–4Google Scholar; also Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 195–9Google Scholar, for Malthus's evidence before the Emigration Committee in 1827. “A certain degree of emigration is … favourable to the population of the mother country,” he remarked (Essay, p. 287; 2d ed., p. 340), as had Franklin and others (see notes 7-8 and text in sec. I of this article).

⁸⁸ Summary View, pp. 71-4; Essay, pp. 552-8; also pp. 475-7, for criticism of views of Paine and Raynal on rights, pp. 541-2, where he denies right of the poor to demand employment and maintenance; also 2d ed., pp. 531, for the famous feast passage expunged from later editions. Malthus looked upon man's rights as not unconditional ( Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 242 ff.).Google Scholar On Malthus's idea of utility, which he may have gotten from Paley, see Essay, pp. 500-1, and Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 39, 213, 331-3, 346–8.Google Scholar The principle of utility, which Bentham and others apparently took from Hume ( Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 11 ff.)Google Scholar, was employed by Burke to attack the theory of the Rights of Man (ibid., pp. 156-7). From Burke Malthus may have learned the suitability of this principle to the defence of necessary institutions.

⁸⁹ Essay, pp. 541-2, 580, 582-3; also sec. III (v) of this article. “No desire, however great, of increasing our subsistence can keep us out of the reach of the most miserable poverty, if we do not, at the same time, exercise the more efficient power we possess of restraining the progress of population by prudential habits.” Senior, , Two Lectures on Population, p. 70, also p. 84.Google Scholar The poor alone are “the arbiters of their own destiny” (Principles, p. 279).

⁹⁰ Essay, IV, x, especially pp. 503–4Google Scholar; also chaps, XI-XIII. Most of the cited material appeared in the second edition. In his unpublished The Crisis he had advocated outdoor relief and commended Pitt's proposal to accord special relief to fathers of more than three children ( Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, p. 235).Google Scholar Malthus opposed public housing, the use of cash reserve subsidies to encourage deferment of marriage, more than limited application of the cow system, and assured assistance for the aged and for widows and orphans. See Essay, III, i Google Scholar; IV, xi; pp. 556-64; Zinke, , “Six Letters from Malthus to Pierre Prevost,” p. 184.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Essay, III, i, pp. 299 ff.Google Scholar; 1st ed., pp. 149 ff. Here Malthus is criticizing Condorcet.

⁹² Principles, pp. 72-3; Essay, III, v-vii, pp. 342 ff.Google Scholar; IV, ix, p. 493; most of this material is also in the second edition. Elsewhere he expressed “doubt of the effect of our poor laws in encouraging an increase of population. Their direct effects are certainly to do this”; but their indirect effects upon housing may counterbalance their direct effects ( Zinke, , “Six Letters from Malthus to Pierre Prevost,” p. 184).Google Scholar Young, (Political Arithmetic, pp. 93 ff.)Google Scholar had said that the poor law, by causing the supply of cottages to be restricted, checked marriage and population (cf. Malthus, , Essay, p. 532).Google Scholar Griffith, (Population Problems of the Age of Malthus, chap, VI, pp. 165, 169)Google Scholar concludes that the effect of the poor laws upon marriage and natural increase was slight, but Marshall, (“The Population Problem during the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History, pp. 431 ff.)Google Scholar believes that only by a comparative study of local figures may the Malthusian view, if invalid, be disproved.

⁹³ Essay, III, v, pp. 339–40, also pp. 172, 506 (also in 2d ed.)Google Scholar; Principles, pp. 72-3.

⁹⁴ Essay, IV, iii, vi-ix, xii Google Scholar; most of this material is already in the second edition; see also 1st ed., chap. v. Hume, (Essays, vol. I, p. 439)Google Scholar had said that the parish-rates tended to produce “idleness, debauchery, and a continual decay” even as had the ancient Roman sportula. Charity, wrote Steuart, (Works, vol. I, pp. 118-23, 210–11)Google Scholar with especial reference to Spain, because it gives food, stimulates multiplication that is not of advantage to society; it does not cure misery. Smith, Adam (Wealth of Nations, pp. 135 ff.)Google Scholar declared that the poor laws obstructed “the circulation of labour,” Townsend, looking upon the poor laws as the beginning of communism, condemned them on the same ground he condemned communism (see note 54 and text above). Although Malthus did not at first know Townsend's work, he was criticizing, in his discussion of Condorcet, what appears to be the latter's reply to Townsend ( Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 228–30Google Scholar; also Malthus's comments on Townsend, , Essay, pp. 502, 506–8Google Scholar). Already in the late seventeenth century, at which time a large population was considered desirable because it meant a large labour supply, the poor law was condemned on the ground that it reduced the available supply of labour. See Gregory, T. E., “The Economics of Employment in England, 1660-1713” (Economica, vol. I, 1921, pp. 37, 40, 41).Google Scholar

⁹⁵ See O'Leary, J. J., “Malthus and Keynes” (Journal of Political Economy, vol. L, 1942, pp. 901–19).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Malthus was not a reactionary, concludes Bonar (Malthus, pp. 298-9, 336), and “would have been much amazed to hear that his doctrines were … a vindication of things as they are.”

⁹⁶ E.g., see Stangeland, Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population; E. A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith; Small, A., The Cameralists (Chicago, 1909)Google Scholar; my French Predecessors.

⁹⁷ Wallace had said that ancient nations were more populous in his A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Modern Times (1753); Hume had said the modern nations were more populous (“Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, vol. I, pp. 381–442).Google Scholar See Malthus, , Essay, pp. 59 ff., pp. 136 ff., 158 Google Scholar; 1st ed., pp. 55-9. This controversy engaged the attention of many eighteenth-century writers.

⁹⁸ Price had said that England's population had decreased since 1688; and Brown, John in An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1757), pp. 186 ff.Google Scholar had found “great Reason to believe … the Nation is less populous than it was fifty years ago,” inasmuch as “Vanity and Effeminacy” had lessened the “Desire of Marriage,” and “Intemperance and Disease” had increased mortality and occasioned, “among the lower Ranks … in some Degree an Impotence of Propagation.” That Price was mistaken and that England's population had increased had been asserted by Young, (Political Arithmetic, pp. 64 ff., 96 ff., 322 ff.)Google Scholar, by Wales (1781), and by Howlett (Examination of Dr. Price's Essays on the Population of England and Wales, etc.) who supposed a one-third increase since 1688. In the first Essay (pp. 314-15) Malthus supposed that the truth “lies between” the estimates of Price and Howlett. On Malthus's later views see Essay, II, viii-ix, and p. 428 Google Scholar; Principles, I, iv, 5.Google Scholar Concerning population growth in eighteenth-century England, see Griffith, Population Problems of the Age of Malthus, chap. I; Marshall, “The Population Problem during the Industrial Revolution”; Buer, Health, Wealth and Population; Gonner, E. C. K. “The Population of England in the Eighteenth Century” (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. LXXVI, 1913, pp. 261–303).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the views of Price, Howlett, and others see ibid.; also Bonar, , Theories, chap, VII, and Malthus, pp. 108-9, 171–9.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ See sec. III (v) of this article, on optimum population. He did not generally evaluate the theses of populationist writers; but he criticized Montesquieu and Süssmilch for advocating encouragement to marriage (Essay, pp. 181-2), and Young for supporting the cow system and a potato diet (ibid., IV, xi); and he approved the views of Townsend and the French Committee of Mendicity (see my French Predecessors, pp. 307 ff.) on the poor laws (Essay, pp. 485, 506 ff., in 2d ed.). Of earlier populationist doctrine he wrote: “In the earlier ages of the world, when war was the great business of mankind, … legislators and statesmen … encouraged an increase of people in every possible way.” Popular religions had supported this view. The consequent rapid procreation had conduced to incessant war and so to the perpetuation of these pronatalist moral sentiments. The Christian religion, however, had subordinated marriage to higher duties and had imposed on man the obligation not to marry until he could support his children; it thus operated to prevent a redundancy of population and resultant offensive war, and to bring about widely diffused well-being which made for effective defence against aggression. Essay, pp. 453-5 (in 2d ed.); also 5th edition (preface), where he comments on the demand, now (1817) at an end, for men, occasioned by the Napoleonic wars.

¹⁰⁰ Essay, pp. 156, 227, 339-40, 363, 377-8, 433-4, 547-8, 578-9; Senior, , Two Lectures on Population, pp. 61–4Google Scholar; Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 114-16, 329.Google Scholar Prudence would never win “too great a mastery over the natural passions and affections.” See Edinburgh Review, 1810, pp. 472, 475.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Essay, II, xiii, also pp. 429–30Google Scholar; also in 2d ed.

¹⁰² Ibid., pp. 324, 438-9 (in 2d ed.). Malthus was not disposed, as were some of the per-fectibilians, to look upon the source of provision as an almost inexhaustible widow's cruse (2 Kings 4.4).

¹⁰³ Ibid., pp. 181, 432-5, 547-51; also bks. I-II; also Bonar, , Malthus, pp. 139–42.Google Scholar A similar argument appears in Steuart, , Works, vol. I, pp. 104-7, 207–9Google Scholar; cf. Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, p. 79.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Essay, pp. 431-5.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., pp. 360-1, 546-7.

¹⁰⁶ “There never has been, nor probably ever will be, any other cause than want of food, which makes the population of a country permanently decline,” Ibid., p. 429.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., e.g., pp. 136, 138-9, 428-30.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., pp. 453-5, 536-7; also IV, xi. Malthus criticized Pitt's poor bill on the ground that it might tend to increase population (ibid., 1st ed., pp. 94-5, 134-5).

¹⁰⁹ Even Paley, a populationist, emphasized only indirect stimulants such as encouragement of agriculture and employment (Moral Philosophy, pp. 472-4).

¹¹⁰ Essay, p. 575 (1817)Google Scholar; Summary View, pp. 58-62. Had he pursued his line of thought regarding the effect of European contact upon natives (Essay, pp. 36-7; cf. also p. 46), or the desire-weakening effect of overindulgence, and licentiousness (e.g., Essay, pp. 56, 103, 139 n., 171-2), he might have hit upon John Rae's theory of the decline in the “effective desire of offspring.” Because he was intent upon demonstrating the existence of the principle of population, he overlooked this possibility. See also Levin's, discussion, “Malthus' Conception of the Checks to Population” (Human Biology, vol. X, pp. 230 ff.).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Essay, 3rd ed., vol. I, I, ii, p. 28.Google Scholar In the fifth and sixth editions he wrote “some instances” and described them as “extreme cases.” Slaves in the West Indies would be able “by procreation fully to supply the effective demand for labour,” were their condition raised to that of the masses in the “worst governed countries of the world” ( Essay, p. 569 [1807], also p. 137Google Scholar). He supposed that “depravity of morals” checked marriage “at least among the upper classes” in ancient Rome, but he attributed the lack of population growth in the other classes to slavery and other institutions unfavourable to industry (ibid., 1, xiv).

¹¹² Essay, p. 569. The word “almost” was not included in this passage when it first appeared in 1807.

¹¹³ See Wolfe, A. B., “The Optimum Size of Population,” in Dublin, L. I., Population Problems (New York, 1926)Google Scholar; Robbins, L., “The Optimum Theory of Population,” in London Essays in Economics in Honour of E. Cannan (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Cohn, S. S., Die Theorie des Bevolk-erungsoptimums (Marburg, 1934)Google Scholar; my “Pareto on Population, II” (Section VII, Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1944).

¹¹⁴ Essay, pp. 546–50 (1817)Google Scholar; also p. 460.

¹¹⁵ Essay, 1st ed., p. 108, also p. 137.

¹¹⁶ The checks in operation, he implied, reflect in some measure the prevailing division of labour (Essay, p. 176).

¹¹⁷ Essay, pp. 546, 547.

¹¹⁸ Essay, pp. 453-4, 461-2, 546, 549, 565, 582-3. The same view appears in the second edition. On military aspects of population growth, see also Edinburgh Review, 1808, pp. 350-1, 1810, pp. 474–5.Google Scholar He declared himself “an enemy to large standing armies” (Essay, p. 473; 2d ed., p. 526).

¹¹⁹ Essay, p. 516 (in 2d ed.); Zinke, , “Six Letters from Malthus to Pierre Prevost,” p. 183.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ Essay, p. 295; 1st ed., p. 136. In Principles (pp. 33-4) he said that “the people will be rich or poor, according to the abundance or scarcity with which they are supplied,” in comparison with their population, with “wealth” (i.e., “material objects, necessary, useful, or agreeable to man”).

¹²¹ Essay, pp. 459, 535 (in 2d ed.). This was his object ( Edinburgh Review, 1821, p. 374 Google Scholar)

¹²² See sec. III (i) (2) of this article.

¹²³ Essay, pp. 181, 533-4, 537, 566 and note.

¹²⁴ Essay, p. 549; first published in 1807.

¹²⁵ Ibid., pp. 559-61, 572. On this point see also Norman Himes, Appendix A in the reprint of Francis Place's Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population (London, 1930)Google Scholar; and Penrose, , Population Theories and their Application, pp. 28–30.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Essay, p. 460; in 2d ed.

¹²⁷ “I have always considered the principle of population as a law peculiarly suited to a state of discipline and trial” and as confirming the scriptural view of man's state on earth (Essay, p. 585; published in 1817). Toynbee, A. J. (A Study of History, London, 1939, vol. IV, pp. 207 ff.Google Scholar), in his discussion of the Solonian solution of the Hellenic population problem, provides us with a kind of illustration of what might be called the demographic “challenge and response” theory implicit in Malthus's writings. Malthus did not note this outcome, commenting only upon Solon's sanctioning of child exposure (Essay, pp. 128-9).

¹²⁸ Essay, pp. 451-2, 493-5; 2d ed., pp. 497-9, 549, 552-3; Penrose, , Population Theories and their Application, pp. 27–8.Google Scholar Malthus condemned as unjust and immoral positive laws limiting the age of marriage; it was up to the individual to decide whether he was in a position to marry or not (Essay, p. 357; published in 1817). Malthus's view regarding moral restraint and deferment of marriage was substantially the same as the medieval view that a man should not marry until he had a living. Malthus observed that in America the rigours of existence tended to eliminate the physically unfit (ibid., p. 24), but he ignored questions relating to selection and eugenic values, adverting, in his treatment of the views of Plato and Aristotle (ibid., I, xiii), only to the quantitative problem. He did not anticipate the argument Galton was later to direct, on grounds of selection, against the mischievous results of “prudential” postponement of marriage ( Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, Everyman, ed., pp. 207 ff.).Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Essay, pp. 3-4, 285-8, 439; in 2d ed. He noted that the age at marriage cannot be so low in old and settled as in new countries.

¹³⁰ Ibid., pp. 461-4; sec. in (iv) in this article.

¹³¹ Malthus, p. 319.

¹³² This view, which is so evident in Malthus's works, is well expressed by Paley in both his Moral Philosophy and his Natural Theology.

¹³³ It is not our intention to deny the existence of striking parallelisms between the doctrine of Lord Keynes, for example, which embodies elements found also in Malthus's theories, and the doctrine of Quesnay: viz., emphasis upon consumption, treatment of circuit flow, widespread popularity and appeal, etc. It is our intention rather to indicate that Malthus's analysis of the role of demand and consumption originated largely in his study of the operation of the principle of population.

¹³⁴ It must be kept in mind that Malthus did not sanction contraception or anticipate the vital revolution it has brought about.