MALTHUS AND HIS WORK.

Not the least striking feature in recent developments of political and social economy which Lord Beaconsfield jocosely used to term "the dismal science"— is the resurrection of Malthus after an interment of two generations. For a time there was a rage for renewed acquaintance with Smith's Wealth of Nations, after a long interval of dormancy, this revival being specially evoked by the exigencies of the free-trade movement in 1846, of which that author, although born eighty years previously, may fairly be accounted the father. The study of Adam Smith by the intellectual youth of forty years ago was pursued almost contemporaneously with the perusal of Senior and Ricardo. Soon afterwards, John Stuart Mill's two volumes on Political Economy were hailed as the clearest and most philosophical exposition of questions relating to rent, wages and land that English literature had produced. Lesser lights on the subject, like Cairnes, Jevons and Beesley, have since flickered on the horizon with more or less feebleness, but no new aspect of economic science has been evolved during the last dozen years, unless we except the views of Henry George in his popular work called Progress and Poverty, in which for the first time he resolves all wealth into labor. These writers of varied eminence are only alluded to here to emphasise the fact that hardly one of them is now read with any degree of enthusiasm, unless it be the one last mentioned, whose scheme of land nationalisation, however, appears as yet a long way from being included in the sphere of practical politics.
It is Malthus that under the existing conditions of society is once more in the ascendant. Nor is this incident difficult to account for. Adam Smith, being the earliest and most luminous exponent of the fiscal system, which for so many years has prevailed in England, has ceased to be a ruling prophet, for the simple reason that free-trade has proved to be a ruinous delusion, and his doctrines are under a cloud, not only with the bulk of English manufacturers and workmen, but with all the great states of Europe and America. The absorbing social problem of the hour is how a more equable distribution of human comfort is to be effected and a higher minimum of happiness attained among the masses of the population. The attempts to solve that question have divided social and economic reformers into two great classes. On the one hand there are the socialists, communists, nihilists and anarchists, the common fundamental postulate of whose theory is that individual property is the curse of mankind, the colossal foe of exalted sentiment and the arch-corrupting influence which converts its possessor into an incarnation of tyranny, caprice, pride and inhumanity. Karl Marx, Hyndman and Morris declare themselves ready to war against this Moloch by dynamite and sword ; their own lives being regarded by them as a trifling consideration in the reckoning. Their ideal of a just and generous distribution of this world's goods consists in a condition of society in which the many work for the welfare of all as members of a common family, according to their respective abilities. They are sanguine enough to believe that a community established on this basis would enjoy an eternal immunity from those periodically glutted markets through overproduction which, like a canker, gnaw at the root of modern civilisation. Nor do they see any risk of too many mouths being created for the food that is available to feed them. These doctrines, so Utopian and impracticable, combined with the reckless imprudence shown by the poor in bringing into the world larger families than they are able to provide for, have prompted the section of theorists who oppose them to search for suitable weapons for that purpose. The Socialists appeal to Owen and Godwin among the departed generation for support to their views, and the party who object to socialistic opinions as antagonistic to legitimate individual freedom invoke the guardian shade of Malthus, whose Essay on Population is now more extensively read than ever it was by thoughtful observers of the transitional stage of social and political life through which we are passing.
In view of the renewed attention now paid to Malthus, with special reference to the population question, Mr. Bonar has rendered able and useful service in his exhaustive and impartial analysis of the entire range of Malthus's principles. The minor writings of the sage are neither few nor unimportant ; but paramount interest at present centres in his magnum opus on population. It may be mentioned for the information of those unacquainted with the circumstances which produced that extraordinary book that we owe it entirely to the publication of the work of William Godwin; which immediately preceded it, entitled Political Justice. The latter author had been a parson, journalist, politician and novelist, and the book just named was the offspring of the French Revolution. The father of Malthus— himself a man of talent and Oxford culture— was favorably inclined to Godwin's opinions. The son, who was then about 30 years of age, in discussing the socialistic views of Godwin with Malthus senior, played devil's advocate, partly from conviction and partly for the sake of argument. But the attack of the son on the views of his father's favorite author, which was begun in a light and recreative spirit, quickly ripened in the mind of Malthus junior, to seriousness. The more he thought, read and talked on the subject he found the case against Godwin's socialism to be stronger than he had at first imagined. The ipsissima verba of Malthus in his preface to the first edition of the Essay, published in 1798, best express his feelings on the occasion:— "The discussion started the general question of the future improvement of society, and the author at first sat down with an intention of merely stating his thoughts to his friend upon paper in a clearer manner than he could do in conversation. But the subject grew into commanding proportions and he was impelled to publish." The result was that for a time he was what Lord Palmerston subsequently claimed to be— "the best abused man of his age." The arguments of Malthus against the apostle of optimism may be condensed in the following words, although they are not those of Malthus:— " If I am told that man will become a winged creature like the ostrich, I should not doubt that he would find wings very useful, but I could hardly believe your prophecy without some kind of proof beyond the mere praises of flying, I should ask what palpable signs there are in his body and habits that such a change was going on, that his neck has been lengthening, his lips hardening and his hair becoming feathery. In the same way, when I am told that man is becoming a finely intellectual being, content with plain living and high thinking, I think I see there might be advantage in the change, but I ask for proofs that it is in progress. I see none ; but, on the contrary, I see strong reasons for believing in its impossibility. Grant me two postulates, and I will disprove that a Millenium can be hoped for. The first is that food is necessary ; the second that the instinct for marriage in human beings is permanent. No one denies the first postulate, and Godwin's denial of the second is purely dogmatic. He speaks of a society where the members are all equally comfortable and at leisure. Suppose such a state of things to be established it could not last ; it would go to pieces through the principle of population alone. The seven years of plenty would be devoured by the seven years of want. The proof of this is short and decisive. Population when unchecked increases in a geometrical and subsistence in an arithmetical ratio." In old countries population is never allowed to multiply unchecked. It is retarded by want of room and food. Vice and misery also tend to keep the numbers and food of an entire community at a level. In a new and fertile country, on the other hand, therefore fewer hindrances to early marriage, since the scope for settlement is wider and food more plentiful. But men there may be killed off with hard work, and their families if they are left behind, must suffer in consequence. If the people of Europe double their numbers in a century and the people of America once in 25 years, the ideal paradise of Godwin, Malthus maintains, must soon disappear, for the old scramble for bread and property must sooner or later be enacted in the new territory as it was in the old, with all the inequalities of rank and property which inevitably accompany it.
In view of this tendency of population to grow out of proportion to the supply of food, Malthus left his readers to infer that instead of the production of large families being in all cases an act of pure virtue, it became morally wrong when it appeared improbable that the parents could adequately support the number of children, they brought into the world. This deduction was made by its author not merely to satisfy the logical requirements of a system, but as the outcome of his philanthropic feeling. It must be added, however, that in the first edition of his essay, not a few of his conclusions were both hasty and baldly expressed. By the majority who had not read it, or had failed to seize his dominant idea, he was deemed almost as great an enemy of his species as Bonaparte himself. Here is a man, cried the populace, under a gross misapprehension, who defends smallpox, slavery and child murder; who protests against soup kitchens, early marriages and parish allowances; and "who had the impudence to marry after preaching against the evils of a family." Nevertheless for thirty years Malthus was revered among the deepest thinkers as an economic seer in the land, although during the whole of that period attempted refutations of his theory rained upon him from all quarters. In his own life time, the Essay on Population passed through six editions. The interval between 1798, when the first edition was published, and 1803, when the second was called for, no less than a score of "replies" appeared. As the name of Darwin has become associated with Darwinism, the name of Malthus is embodied in Malthusianism, a system; which is at the present moment largely promoted by active organisations in Europe and the United States, It is still a popular error that a Malthusian forbids marriage. But in reality the modern follower of the great economist maintains that. However abundant food may be, marriage will soon make the people equally abundant. "It is a question of simple division that a fortune that is wealth for one, will not give comfort to ten or bare life to twenty."
There had been Cassandras before Malthus. Bruckner of Norwich and Dr. Robert Wallace had foreseen that a State based on community of goods, must impart so powerful a stimulus to population, that in the absence of prudent checks upon increase it must eventually come to grief owing to its numbers outrunning food supplies. But it was reserved for Malthus to show the utter hopelessness of Socialism in practice, and he left the theory without a leg to stand on. Similarly, the fallacy that the prosperity of a country is to he judged by its birth rate is silenced by the arguments of our reverend mentor. It cannot he doubted that the people of Great Britain and Germany have multiplied, from natural causes, in a ratio greater than that of other civilised nations. Yet had all the safety valves of emigration been closed both would have presented spectacles of distress for lack of the means of subsistence unsurpassed outside the famine stricken districts of India and China. The French evidently do not believe in the population test of collective happiness, the result being that they make a point of squaring the numbers of their families with their prospects of maintaining them, even at the risk of the rate of increase seriously diminishing. It would seem also that the birth rate of Great Britain since 1877 shows a downward tendency, and that the poor, as well as the rich in that country, are being inoculated with Malthusian tenets. In no part of the world is there a larger proportion of well-to-do spinsters without reasonable prospects of marriage than in Belgravia, inhabited by the London devotees of rank and fashion, and there exists unmistakable evidence that in the factory districts of Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire the poor also are acting more and more on Malthusian principles.
It is a curious feature in these days of dwindling trade and bread riots, that the population question does not appear to receive so much critical attention from statesmen, as from the people and their non-political economic guides. It was different in the times of Malthus. Pitt and Copleston openly declared themselves on his side, and his reasonings won over Brougham, Mackintosh, Franklin and Whitebread among politicians, Hallam among historians, and James Mill, Senior and Ricardo among economists, and Dr. Price among philosophers. His chief opponents were Hazlett, Coleridge and Southey, whose opinions were tinged with blind sentimentalism and not based on solid argument. Malthus presents a rare instance of a clergyman who never betrayed his profession in his treatment of economic subjects. So far as his writings are concerned, they are perfectly innocent of all allusion to theology, and many who have been interested in him as an economist hardly suspect that he was a clergyman.

*Malthus and His Work, by James Bonar, M.J. London: MacMillan and Co., 1885.