He refers to Colquhoun's account of the twenty thousand people who rose every morning in London without knowing how they were to be supported;and observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice,it palsies every virtue.'48The temptations to which the poor man is exposed,and the sense of injustice due to an ignorance of the true cause of misery,tend to 'sour the disposition,to harden the heart,and deaden the moral sense.'Unfortunately,the means which have been adopted to lessen the evil have tended to increase it.In the first place,there was the master-evil of the poor-laws.Malthus points out the demoralising effects of these laws in chapters full of admirable common sense,which he was unfortunately able to enforce by fresh illustrations in successive editions.He attends simply to the stimulus to population.He thinks that if the laws had never existed,the poor would now have been much better off.49If the laws had been fully carried out,every labourer might have been certain that all his children would be supported,or,in other words,every check to population would have been removed.50Happily,the becoming pride of the English peasantry was not quite extinct;and the poor-law had to some extent counteracted itself,or taken away with one hand what it gave with the other,by placing the burthen upon the parishes.51Thus landlords have been more disposed to pull down than to build cottages,and marriage has been checked.On the whole,however,Malthus could see in the poor-laws nothing but a vast agency for demoralising the poor,tempered by a system of petty tyrannical interference.
He proposes,therefore,that the poor-law should be abolished.Notice should be given that no children born after a certain day should be entitled to parish help;and,as he quaintly suggests,the clergyman might explain to every couple,after publishing the banns,the immorality of reckless marriage,and the reasons for abolishing a system which had been proved to frustrate the intentions of the founders.52Private charity,he thinks,would meet the distress which might afterwards arise,though humanity imperiously requires that it should be 'sparingly administered.'
Upon this duty he writes a sensible chapter.53To his negative proposals Malthus adds a few of the positive kind.He is strongly in favour of a national system of education,and speaks with contempt of the 'illiberal and feeble'arguments opposed to it.The schools,he observes,might confer 'an almost incalculable benefit'upon society,if they taught 'a few of the simplest principles of political economy.'54He had been disheartened by the prejudices of the ignorant labourer,and felt the incompatibility of a free government with such ignorance.A real education,such as was given in Scotland,would make the poor not,as alarmists had suggested,more inflammable,but better able to detect the sophistry of demagogues.55He is,of course,in favour of savings banks,56and approves friendly societies,though he is strongly opposed to making them compulsory,as they would then be the poor-law in a new form.57The value of every improvement turns upon its effect in encouraging the 'moral restraint.'
Malthus's ultimate criterion is always,will the measure make people averse to premature marriage?He reaches the apparently inconsistent result that it might be desirable to make an allowance for every child beyond six.58But this is on the hypothesis that the 'moral restraint'has come to be so habitual that no man marries until he has a fair prospect of maintaining a family of six.If this were the practical code,the allowance in cases where the expectation was disappointed would not act as an encouragement to marriage,but as a relief under a burthen which could not have been anticipated.Thus all Malthus's teaching may be said to converge upon this practical point.Add to the ten commandments the new law,'thou shalt not marry until there is a fair prospect of supporting six children.'Then population will increase,but sufficient means for subsistence will always be provided beforehand.We shall make sure that there is a provision for additional numbers before,not after,we add to our numbers.Food first and population afterwards gives the rule;thus we achieve the good end without the incidental evils.
Malthus's views of the appropriate remedy for social evils undoubtedly show an imperfect appreciation of the great problems involved.Reckless propagation is an evil;but Malthus regards it as an evil which can be isolated and suppressed by simply adding a new article to the moral code.He is dealing with a central problem of human nature and social order.Any modification of the sexual instincts or of the constitution of the family involves a profound modification of the whole social order and of the dominant religious and moral creeds.Malthus tacitly assumes that conduct is determined by the play of two instincts,unalterable in themselves,but capable of modification in their results by a more extensive view of consequences.To change men's ruling motives in regard to the most important part of their lives is to alter their whole aims and conceptions of the world,and of happiness in every other relation.
It supposes,therefore,not a mere addition of knowledge,but a transformation of character and an altered view of all the theories which have been embodied in religious and ethical philosophy.He overlooks,too,considerations which would be essential to a complete statement.A population which is too prudent may suffer itself to be crowded out by more prolific races in the general struggle for existence;and cases may be suggested such as that of the American colonies,in which an increase of numbers might be actually an advantage by facilitating a more efficient organisation of labour.