III.MORAL RESTRAINT
The change in the theory of 'checks'raises another important question.Malthus now introduced a modification upon which his supporters laid great stress.In the new version the 'checks'which proportion population to means of subsistence are not simply 'vice and misery,'but 'moral restraint,vice,and misery.'26How,precisely,does this modify the theory?How are the different 'checks'related?What especially is meant by 'moral'in this connection?Malthus takes his ethical philosophy pretty much for granted,but is clearly a Utilitarian according to the version of Paley.27He agrees with Paley that 'virtue evidently consists in educing from the materials which the Creator has placed under our guidance the greatest sum of human happiness.'28He adds to this that our 'natural impulses are,abstractedly considered,good,and only to be distinguished by their consequences.'Hunger,he says,as Bentham had said,is the same in itself,whether it leads to stealing a loaf or to eating your own loaf.He agrees with Godwin that morality means the,calculation of consequences,'29or,as he says with Paley,implies the discovery of the will of God by observing the effect of actions upon happiness.Reason then regulates certain innate and practically unalterable instincts by enabling us to foretell their consequences.The reasonable man is influenced not simply by the immediate gratification,but by a forecast of all the results which it will entail.In these matters Malthus was entirely at one with the Utilitarians proper,and seems to regard their doctrine as self-evident.
He notices briefly one logical difficulty thus introduced.The 'checks'are vice,misery,and moral restraint.
But why distinguish vice from misery?Is not conduct vicious which causes misery,30and precisely because it causes misery?He replies that to omit 'vice'would confuse our language.Vicious conduct may cause happiness in particular cases;though its general tendency would be pernicious.
The answer is not very clear;and Malthus,I think,would have been more logical if he had stuck to his first theory,and regarded vice as simply one form of imprudence.Misery,that is,or the fear of misery,and the indulgence in conduct which produces misery are the 'checks'which limit population;and the whole problem is to make the ultimate sanction more operative upon the immediate conduct.Man becomes more virtuous simply as he becomes more prudent,and is therefore governed in his conduct by recognising the wider and more remote series of consequences.There is,indeed,the essential difference that the virtuous man acts (on whatever motives)from a regard to the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,'and not simply from self-regard.Still the ultimate and decisive criterion is the tendency of conduct to produce misery;and if Malthus had carried this through as rigorously as Bentham,he would have been more consistent.
The 'moral check'would then have been simply a department of the prudential;including prudence for others as well as for ourselves.One reason for the change is obvious.His assumption enables him to avoid coming into conflict with the accepted morality of the time.On his exposition 'vice'occasionally seems not to be productive of misery but an alternative to misery;and yet something bad in itself.Is this consistent with his Utilitarianism?
The vices of the South Sea islanders,according to him,made famine less necessary;and,if they gave pleasure at the moment,were they not on the whole beneficial?Malthus again reckons among vices practices which limit the population without causing 'misery'directly.31Could he logically call them vicious?He wishes to avoid the imputation of sanctioning such practices,and therefore condemns them by his moral check;but it would be hard to prove that he was consistent in condemning them.Or,again,there is another familiar difficulty.The Catholic church encourages marriage as a remedy for vice;and thereby stimulates both population and poverty.
How would Malthus solve the problem:is it better to encourage chastity and a superabundance of people,or to restrict marriage at the cost of increasing temptation to vice?He seems to evade the point by saying that he recommends both chastity and abstinence from marriage,By 'moral restraint,'as he explains,he means 'restraint from marriage from prudential motives,with a conduct strictly moral during the period of this restraint.''Ihave never,'he adds,'intentionally deviated from this sense.'32A man,that is,should postpone taking a wife,and should not console himself by taking a mistress.He is to refrain from increasing the illegitimate as well as from increasing the legitimate population.It is not surprising that Malthus admits that this check has 'in past ages operated with inconsiderable force.'33In fact Malthus,as a thoroughly respectable and decent clergyman,manages by talking about the 'moral restraint'rather to evade than to answer some awkward problems of conduct;but at the cost of some inconsequence.
But another result of this mode of patching up his argument is more important.The 'vices of mankind,'he says in an unusually rhetorical summary of his historical inquiry,34'are active and able ministers of depopulation.They are the precursors in the great army of destruction,and often finish the dreadful work themselves.