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Malthus on Colonization and Economic Development: A Comparison with Adam Smith*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

J. M. Pullen
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Extract

Malthus did not leave us with a systematic treatment of colonization, but from remarks scattered throughout his publications and correspondence it is possible to assemble a fairly coherent account of his views on the advantages and disadvantages of colonies, and on the reasons why some have failed and others succeeded. Included in these scattered remarks are some comparisons between his own views on colonies and those of Adam Smith. The question of the relationship between Malthus and Adam Smith is a rather complex and subtle one, and cannot be given the full consideration it deserves in one short paper. But, as a general summary, it can be said that Malthus had a high regard for Smith and considered himself a follower and disciple of Smith, by contrast with Ricardo, James Mill, and McCulloch etc., whom he considered as exponents of a ‘New System of Political Economy”. His own Principles of Political Economy was conceived as a collection of ‘tracts or essays”, not as a new systematic treatise replacing the Wealth of Nations, Joseph Gamier in his article ‘Malthus” in the Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, 1852, saw that the title of the Principles was in fact a misnomer: ‘Malgré son titre, le livre sur les Principes n'est point un traité complet, mais seulement une collection de dissertations.” In what was probably intended as a criticism of Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, Malthus stated that the ‘present period … seems to be unpropitious to the publication of a new systematic treatise on political economy”, and, referring to Smith's work, stated that ‘the treatise which we already possess is still of the very highest value”. Nevertheless, despite professing his affiliation, Malthus did not hesitate to criticize Smith when he disagreed with him. He recognized that the Wealth of Nations contained ‘controverted points” and that it would require some ‘additions … which the more advanced stage of the science has rendered necessary”.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , November 1994 , pp. 243 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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Footnotes

*

A version of this paper was read at the International Colloquium on ‘Adam Smith and the Colonial Economy”, Palais de Luxembourg, Paris, 11–12 May, 1992. The present version has been revised with the help of comments by Professor Donald Winch and referees.

References

1 See Malthus, T. R., Principles of Political Economy, Variorum Edition, ed. Pullen, J. M., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1989, i. p. xxxvi.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., i. 5.

3 Ibid.

4 For further details of the Inverarity Manuscript, see Pullen, J. M., ‘Notes from Malthus: the Inverarity Manuscript”, History of Political Economy, xiii (1981), 794–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 However, Smith recognized that the restrictions imposed by Britain on manufacturing in the American colonies had benefited the colonies in their early years, by encouraging the investment of their capital in agriculture. He regarded agriculture as the proper business of the colonies and as more productive than manufacturing.

6 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S., 2 vols., Oxford, 1976, IV. vii. c. 47–8Google Scholar. (The reference system for quotations from the Wealth of Nations is that recommended by the editors.)

7 Malthus, , Principles, ii. 133–4.Google Scholar

8 Malthus, , Principles, ii. 33Google Scholar. This emphasis on colonies as a source of profitable investment opportunities, as a cure for a glut of capital, and as a stimulus to economic progress, was repeated by E. G. Wakefield and the Colonial Reform movement of the 1830s. Wakefield was influenced by the underconsumptionist views of Malthus's disciple, Thomas Chalmers.

9 Myint, H., ‘The “Classical Theory” of International Trade and the Underdeveloped Countries”, Economic Journal, lxviii (1958), 325Google Scholar; cited in Winch, D. N., ‘Classical Economics and the Case for Colonization”, Economica, xxx (1963), 392–3.Google Scholar

10 Malthus, T. R., An Essay on the Principle of Population, Variorum Edition, ed. James, P., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1989, ii. 47.Google Scholar

11 See Ghosh, R. N., ‘Malthus on Emigration and Colonization: Letters to Wilmot-Horton”, Economica, xxx (1963), 58.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 50.

13 Malthus, , Essay, i. 340–1Google Scholar; ‘highly” was omitted from the third (1806) and later editions of the Essay.

14 Malthus, , Essay, i. 341.Google Scholar

15 For further details of Malthus's views on emigration see Ghosh, R. N., ‘The Colonization Controversy: R. J. Wilmot-Horton and the Classical Economists”, Economica, xxxi (1964), 385–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winch, D., Classical Political Economy and Colonies, London, 1965Google Scholar. Generally speaking, Malthus regarded emigration as only a temporary palliative to the problem of over-population. But although the two questions of emigration and colonization are obviously related, they are not identical. Large-scale emigration can occur without colonization, and colonization without large-scale emigration.

16 See Smith, , IV. vii. c. 47, 48Google Scholar. However, Smith also argued that colonies should contribute sufficient revenue by way of taxation to meet the whole expense of their ‘peace establishment” and a proper proportion of the expenses of the general government of the empire; and that if they were not able or willing to contribute their share they would not be beneficial and should be abandoned. Ibid., 67. See also Hollander, S., The Economics of Adam Smith, Toronto, 1973, p. 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stevens, D., ‘Adam Smith and the Colonial Disturbances”, in Skinner, A. S. and Wilson, T., Essays on Adam Smith, Oxford, 1975, p. 208.Google Scholar

17 The MS reads ‘exclusive colonies”, presumably an error by Inverarity.

18 Smith, , IV. vii. c. 103Google Scholar. Smith added: ‘Such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in every respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established, and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government” (ibid., IV. vii. c. 108). However, it should be remembered that Smith distinguished between the ‘real interest” of the proprietors of an exclusive company such as the East India Company, and their actual perceived interests. He said that their real interest ‘if they were capable of understanding it, is the same as that of the country, and it is from ignorance chiefly, and the meanness of mercantile prejudice, that they ever oppress it” (ibid., IV. vii. c. 106).

19 Ibid.

20 Malthus, T. R., Statements Respecting the East-India College, London, 1817, p. 31.Google Scholar

21 Malthus, , Essay, i. 294.Google Scholar

22 Malthus, , Statements, p. 31Google Scholar; quoted in Barber, W. J., British Economic Thought and India 1600–1858, Oxford, 1975, p. 146.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 254.

24 Smith, , IV. vii. c. 13.Google Scholar

25 E.g. Breton, Y., ‘Malthus and Underdevelopment”, Malthus Past and Present, ed. Dupâquier, J. et al. , London, 1983, pp. 247–53.Google Scholar

26 By ‘unappropriated”, Malthus presumably meant ‘unappropriated by Europeans”.

27 This list is not meant to be comprehensive, and no attempt has been made to arrange the items in the order of importance given to them by Malthus. Malthus's multiple-causation approach to the problem of economic development is a typical feature of his methodology. He warned of the tendency to mono-causal solutions: ‘In political economy the desire to simplify has occasioned an unwillingness to acknowledge the operation of more causes than one in the production of particular effects” (Principles, i. 60).Google Scholar

28 Malthus, , Principles, i. 392–3Google Scholar; de Humboldt, Alexander, Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, 5 vols., Paris, 1811.Google Scholar

29 Malthus, , Principles, i. 393.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., i. 399.

31 Ibid., ii. 260.

32 Ibid., i. 400.

33 Ibid., ii. 260, 444.

34 Ibid., i. lxii.

35 Ibid., i. 413; ii. 263, 477.

36 Myint, H., ‘Adam Smith's Theory of International Trade in the Perspective of Economic Development”, Economica, xliv (1977), 232Google Scholar. Malthus agreed with Smith on the importance of saving and the accumulation of capital—as noted above, this was listed in Chapter VII of the Principles as one of the four immediate causes of the progress of wealth on the production side. But he appears to have given less importance than Smith to the division of labour. He did not, of course, deny altogether the importance of the division of labour. He referred to ‘all the wonders described by Adam Smith, as resulting from the division of labour” (Principles, i. 432Google Scholar). He also said that ‘any change which is unfavourable to accumulation, enterprize, and the division of labour, will be unfavourable to the progress of wealth” (ibid., i. 440); and he noted the ‘great waste of time and exertion” resulting from the ‘very incomplete division of labour” in Sweden (Essay, i. 164Google Scholar). But in his evidence to the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, 1824, he said ‘there are limits to the advantages derived from the division of labour, they would not continue to increase just in proportion to the extent of capital, or to the extent of demand for the particular goods” (Principles, i. liGoogle Scholar). And an entry in the Inverarity Manuscript reads: ‘Adam Smith seems to attribute too much to the division of labour, and at the same time to depreciate machinery or stock. Lord Lauderdale underrates the division of labour when he says that compared with machinery it produces little or no effect”. This provides yet another application of Malthus's ‘doctrine of proportions” and another example of his desire to articulate a balanced, middle-ground position.

37 Malthus, , Principles, i. 413.Google Scholar

38 This before-and-after approach to the problem of distribution is a good example of the concept of interactive or reciprocal causation—an important feature of Malthus's methodology.

39 In the second edition of the Principles, ii. 275Google Scholar, ‘unproductive consumers” was altered to ‘personal services and unproductive consumers”.

40 Meek, R. L., ed., Marx and Engels on Malthus, London, 1953, pp. 117, 121, 122, 123, 157, 168.Google Scholar

41 Quoted by Black, R. D. C., Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817–1870, Cambridge, 1960, p. 21.Google Scholar

42 Gráda, C. Ó, ‘Malthus and the Pre-Famine Economy”, Hermathena, lxxxv (1983), 95.Google Scholar

43 Malthus, , Principles, i. 139Google Scholar; in the second edition, ‘earth” was changed to ‘soil”, and ‘portion” to ‘quantity”.

44 Ibid., i. 239, 140.

45 Ibid., i. 148; in the second edition ‘and of the external demand” was added after ‘monopoly”.

46 Ibid., i. 149.

47 Ibid., i. 149–50; there are slight changes to this passage in the second edition.

48 Ibid., i. 237.

49 Ibid., i. 437.

50 Ibid. I am grateful to Professor Winch for drawing my attention to a significant difference between Smith and Malthus on primogeniture and entails. Smith criticized these practices because of their harmful effects on agricultural efficiency and their inter-generational commutative injustice; he was particularly critical of Scottish landlords in this regard. As Professor Winch has also noted, Malthus's writings on justice differed from Smith's in two further respects: he did not articulate a theory of justice; and his concern was more with distributive than with commutative justice.

51 Ibid., i. 388.

52 Ibid., i. 389–90.

53 Ibid., i. 391.

54 Humboldt, , Essai Politique, ii. 342Google Scholar; quoted in Malthus, , Principles, i. 390.Google Scholar

55 Malthus, , Principles, i. 390, 391.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., i. 156–7.

57 Ibid., i. 157.

58 Barber, , pp. 152–3.Google Scholar

59 Malthus, , Principles, i. 156Google Scholar; in the second edition, ‘eastern countries” was altered to ‘southern and eastern countries”.

60 Ibid., i. 159.

61 Ibid., i. 429.

62 Ibid., i. 9.

63 Ibid., i. 429.

64 Ibid., i. 430.

65 Ibid., i. 431.

66 Ibid., i. 440.

67 Ibid., i. 439.

68 Ibid., i. 238.

69 Ibid., i. 429.

70 Ibid., i. 465.

71 Keynes, J. M., ‘Robert Malthus: the First of the Cambridge Economists”, Essays in Biography, London, 1933, pp. 95–149.Google Scholar

72 Robbins, Lord, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, 2nd edn., London, 1978, pp. 61–7.Google Scholar

73 Ibid., p. 61.

74 Penrose, E. F., ‘Malthus and the Underdeveloped Areas”, Economic Journal, lxvii (1957), 219–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75 Malthus, , Essay, ii. 201.Google Scholar

76 Malthus, , Principles, i. 431–2.Google Scholar

77 Ibid., i. 439.

78 Malthus, , Essay, i. 372.Google Scholar

79 Malthus, , Principles, i. 432–3.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., i. 434.

81 Ibid., ii. 167, 377.

82 Ricardo, like Malthus, praised English landlords but, unlike Malthus, severely castigated Irish landlords: ‘An English landlord knows that it is not his interest to make his tenant a beggar by exacting the very hardest terms from him … not so the Irish landlords … they will for the sake of a little present rent, divide and subdivide their farms till they receive from each tenant the merest trifle of rent, altho' the aggregate is considerable … Ireland is an oppressed country—not oppressed by England, but by the aristocracy which rules with a rod of Iron within it.” (The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Sraffa, P., Cambridge, 1973, ix. 314Google Scholar, Letter to Trower, , 24 07 1823Google Scholar; quoted by Black, , p. 22.)Google Scholar

83 [Malthus, T. R.], ‘Newenham and Others on the State of Ireland”, Edinburgh Review, xii (1808), 346–7.Google Scholar

84 Malthus, , Principles, i. 394–5.Google Scholar

85 Quoted in Winch, D., Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision, Cambridge, 1978, p. 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 Ibid., p. 80.

87 Smith, , V. i. b. 2.Google Scholar

88 Lowe, A., ‘Adam Smith's System of Equilibrium Growth”Google Scholar, in Skinner, and Wilson, , p. 417.Google Scholar