CHAPTER IV.

THE QUESTION IN ITS CONNEXION WITH POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The population question, as it is called, has of late years occupied much attention, especially in Great Britain. It was first prominently brought forward and discussed, through two large volumes, by Malthus, an English clergyman. Godwin, Ricardo, Thompson, Place, Mill, and other celebrated cotemporary writers, have all discussed it, with more or less reserve, and at greater or less length.

Malthus’ work has become the text book of a large politico-economist party in England. His doctrine is, that “_population unrestrained, will advance beyond the means of subsistence_.” He asserts, that in most countries population at this moment presses against the means of subsistence; and that in all countries, it has a tendency so to do. He recommends, as a preventive of the growing evil, celibacy till a late age, say thirty years; and he asserts, that unless this “moral restraint” is exerted, vice, poverty and misery, will and must become the checks to population. His book, in my opinion, has done infinite mischief. I have heard his disciples openly declare, that they considered the crimes and wretchedness of society to be _necessary_—to be the express ordainings of Providence, intended to prevent the earth from being over-peopled. I have heard it argued by men of rank, wealth and influence, that the distinctions of rich and poor, and even of morality and immorality, of luxury and want, will and must exist to the end of the world; that he who attempts to remove them fights against God and nature; and, if he partially succeed, will but afford the human race an opportunity to increase, until the earth shall no longer suffice to contain them, and they shall be compelled to prey on each other. It must be confessed, that this is a comfortable doctrine for the rich idler: it is a healing salve to the luxurious conscience; an opiate to drown the still small voice of truth and humanity, which calls to every man to be up and do his part towards the alleviation of the human suffering that every where stares him in the face.

It is vain to argue with these defenders of the evils that be, that the day of overstocking is afar off. They tell you, it must come at last; and that the more you do to remove vice and misery—those destroyers of population—the sooner it will come. And what reply can one make to the argument in the abstract? I believe it to be proved, that population, unrestrained,[9] will double itself on an average every twenty-five to fifty years. If so, it is evident to a demonstration, that, if population be not restrained, morally or immorally, the earth will _at last_ furnish no foothold for the human beings that will cover it.

Take a medium calculation as to the natural rate of increase, and say, that population, unrestrained, will double itself every _thirty-three and a third_ years. That it has done so, (without reckoning the increase from emigration,) in many parts of this continent, is certain.

Then, if we suppose the present numerous checks to population, viz. want, war, vice, and misery, removed by national reform, and if we assume the present population of the world at one thousand millions, we shall find the rate of increase as follows:

At the end of 100 years, there will be 8,000 millions. ------------- 200 ------------------- 64,000 --------- ------------- 300 ------------------ 512,000 --------- ------------- 400 ---------------- 4,096,000 --------- ------------- 500 --------------- 32,768,000 ---------

And so on, multiplying by 8 for every additional hundred years. So that, in 500 years, there would be more than _thirty thousand_ times as many as at present: and in 1000 years, upwards of _a thousand million_ times as many human beings as at this moment: consequently, _one single pair_, if suffered to increase without check, _would, in 1000 years, increase to more than double the present population of the globe_.

It appears evident, then, to a demonstration, that population CANNOT be suffered to increase unrestrained for more than a very few hundred years. We are thus compelled to admit to Malthus, that, _sooner_ or _later_, some restraint or other to population _must_ be employed; and compelled to admit to his aristocratic disciples, that if no other better restraint than vice and misery can be found, then _vice and misery must be_; they are the lot of man, from generation to generation.

Let me repeat it: it is no question—never can be a question—whether there shall be a restraint to population or not. There MUST be; unless indeed we find the means of visiting other planets, so as to people them. In the nature of things, there must be a check, of some kind, at some time. The _only_ question is, what that check shall be—whether, as heretofore, the check of war, want, profligacy, misery; or a “moral restraint,” sanctioned by reason and suggested by experience.

Let those, then, who cry out against this little treatise, be told, that though they may postpone the question, no human power can evade it. It must come up. Had the friends of reform been left to choose their own time, it might, perhaps with advantage, have been postponed. And it is an imaginable case, that prejudice might delay it until a general famine or a universal civil war became the frightful checks. But will any man of common sense argue the propriety of suffering such a crisis to approach?

Malthus saw this. He saw that some check must exist; and, whatever some of his disciples might permit themselves to say, he did not choose to be considered the apologist of vice and misery. His theory, indeed, supplied specious arguments to those who asserted, with the ingenious author of the Fable of the Bees,[10] that “private vices are public benefits;” and in consequence, its tendency appears to be essentially aristocratic and _demoralizing_, as tending to produce supine contentment with a vicious and degrading order of things. But Malthus himself declares the only proper check to be, the general practice of celibacy to a late age. He employs all his eloquence to persuade men and women that they ought not to marry till they are twenty-eight or thirty; and that if they do, they are contributing to the misery of the world.[11]

Now, Mr. Malthus may preach for ever on this subject. Individuals may indeed be found, who will look to distant consequences, and sacrifice present enjoyment; even as individuals are found to become and remain Shaking Quakers: but to believe that the mass of mankind will abjure, through the ten fairest years of life, the nearest and dearest of social relations; and during the very holiday of existence, will live the life of monks and nuns—all to avert a catastrophe which is confessedly some hundreds of years distant—to believe this, requires a faith which no accurate observer of mankind possesses.

This weak point the aristocratic expounders of Malthus’ doctrines were not slow to discover. They broadly asserted, that such “moral restraint” would never be generally practiced. They asked, whether a young woman, to whom a comfortable home and a pleasant companion were offered, would refuse to accept them, on this theory of population; whether a young man who had a fair (or even but a very indifferent) prospect of maintaining a family, would doom himself to celibacy lest the world should be over-peopled. And they put it to the advocates of late marriages, whether, in one sex at least, the recommendation, if even nominally followed, would not almost certainly lead to vicious excess and degrading associations; thus resolving the check into vice and misery at last. If experience answered these questions in the negative, was it not clear, (they would exultingly ask,) that vice and misery are the natural lot of man; and that it is quixotic, if not impious, to plague ourselves about them, or to attempt, by their suppression, to controvert the decrees of God?

It was very easy for generous feelings to reply to so heartless an argument. It was easy to ask, whether even the apparent hopelessness of the case formed any legitimate apology for supine indifference; or whether, where we cannot cure, we are absolved from the duty of alleviating. But it was not very easy fully and fairly to meet the question. It was idle to deny that preaching would not put off marriage for ten years: and if no other species of moral restraint than ten years Shakerism could be proposed, it did appear evident enough, that moral restraint would be by the mass neglected, and that the physical checks of vice and misery must come into play at last.

I pray my readers, then, distinctly, to observe how the matter stands. Population, unrestrained, _must_ increase beyond the possibility of the earth and its produce to support. At present it is restrained by vice and misery. The only remedy which the orthodoxy of the English clergyman permits him to propose, is, late marriages. The most enlightened observers of mankind are agreed, that nothing contributes so positively and immediately to demoralize a nation, as when its youth refrain, until a late period, from forming disinterested connections with those of the other sex. The frightful increase of prostitutes, the destruction of health, the rapid spread of intemperance, the ruin of moral feelings, are to the mass, the _certain_ consequences. Individuals there are who escape the contagion; individuals whose better feelings revolt, under _any_ temptation, from the mercenary embrace, or the Circean cup of intoxication; but these are exceptions only. The mass must have their pleasures; the pleasures of intellectual intercourse, of unbought affection, and of good taste and good feeling, if they can; but if they cannot, then such pleasure (alas! that language should be perverted to entitle them to the name!) as the sacrifice of money and the ruin of body and mind can purchase.[12]

But this is not all. Not only is Malthus’ proposition fraught with immorality, in that it discountenances to a late age those disinterested sexual connexions which can alone save youth from vice; but it is _impracticable_. Men and women will scarcely pause to calculate the chances they have of affording support to their children ere they become parents: how, then, should they stop to calculate the chances of the world’s being over-peopled? Malthus may say what he pleases, they never will make any such calculation; and it is folly to expect they should.

Let us observe, then: _unless some less ascetic and more practicable species of “moral restraint” be introduced_, vice and misery will _ultimately_ become the inevitable lot of man upon earth. He can no more escape them, than he can the light of the sun, or the stroke of death.

What an incitement, this, to the prosecution of our enquiry! Here is a principle set up, which is all but an apology for the apathy that prevails among the rich and the powerful—among governors and legislators—in regard to human improvement. How important, how essential for the interests of virtue, that it should be refuted! How beneficent that knowledge, which discloses to us some moral, practicable check to population, and relieves us from the despairing conclusion, that the irrevocable doom of man is misery, without remedy and without end! In the absence of such knowledge, truly the prospects of the world were dark and cheerless. The modern doctrine of population has weighed like a spell on the exertions of benevolence, and chilled, almost to inaction, even the warm heart of charity. Philanthropy herself pauses, when she begins to fear that all her exertions are to result in hopeless disappointment. And yet—such is this world—even the ablest opponents of Malthus stop short when they come to the question, and leave an argument unanswered, which a dozen pages might suffice for ever to set at rest.

Let one of the most intelligent of these opponents, a man of splendid and sterling talent—let MILL, the celebrated political economist and talented author of “British India,” speak for himself.

I extract from the article “Colony,” in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and which is from the pen of Mill, the following paragraph:

“What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it cannot go on unrestrained without producing one or other of two most undesirable effects, either drawing an undue portion of the population to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it is not now the time to enquire. _It is, indeed, the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and the moralist can be applied._ It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by those who were called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet, _if the superstitions of the nursery were disregarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view_, a solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil—a source which _if all other sources were taken away, might alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery_, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.”

Let my readers bear in mind, that this is from the pen of one of the most justly admired writers of the present day; a man celebrated throughout all Europe, for his works on political economy, and whose writings are not unknown even on this side the Atlantic. He considers the question now under discussion to involve “the most important problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied.” This question, he admits, has ever been “miserably evaded.” Yet even a man so influential and enlightened as Mill, must himself yield to the weakness he reprobates; must speak in parables, as the Nazarene reformer did before him; and, even while commenting on the “miserable evasion” of a subject so engrossingly important, must imitate the very evasion he despises.

I will not imitate it. I am more independently situated than the English economist; and I see, as clearly as he does, the extreme importance of the subject. What he saw and declared _ought_ to be said, I will say.

Before concluding this chapter, let me state distinctly, that I by no means agree with Malthus and other political economists in believing, that, at this moment, there is an actual excess of population in any country (China perhaps excepted) in the known world. I believe that there is more than enough land in every country of Europe to support, in perfect comfort, all its present inhabitants. That they _are_ not supported in comfort, is, in my opinion, attributable, not to overpopulation, but to mal-government. Monopolies favour the rich, taxes oppress the poor, commercial rivalry grinds its victims to the dust. To such causes as these, and not to overpopulation, _at the time being_, is the mass of distress (felt more or less over the civilized world) to be attributed. Thus, if the enemies of reform would but let us alone, we might long postpone to other and more important discussions, this population question. But they will not. They _force_ it upon us. And though it might have evinced want of judgment to obtrude it unnecessarily or prematurely on the public, it would betray cowardice to evade it now, when thrust upon us.

Besides, though it be undeniable that iniquitous laws and a vicious order of things often produce the result that is falsely attributed to overpopulation, it is yet equally undeniable, that the most perfect system of laws in the world could not _ultimately_ prevent the evils of a superabundant population. And it is no less certain, that, in the meantime, the pressure of a large family on the labouring man greatly augments the evil, and often deprives him of that very leisure which he might employ in devising constitutional means to better his condition, instead of leaving public business in the hands of political gamblers. Thus an answer to the population question is offered as an _alleviation_ of existing evils, not as a _cure_ for them. Population might be but half what it is, and unjust legislation and vicious customs would still give birth, as they now do, to luxury and want. The laws and customs ought to be, _must_ be changed; but while the grass is growing, let us prevent the horse from starving, if we can.

Enough has been said, probably, in this chapter, to determine the question, whether it is, or is not, _desirable_, in a political point of view, that some check to population be sought and disclosed—some “moral restraint” that shall not, like vice and misery, be demoralizing, nor, like late marriages, be ascetic and impracticable.