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-rr : . _ - triviality ; but it is far more important li n ^ Aatv ? i ? hg h authority aUows , and even the than that v ^ 7 V' « f j ^ c oight to have been more teC f sSzfng the ? o " ce of WUliam Edward 5 ^/ JS » SS in the Westminster Review . Ac-HlC to John Stuart Mill , Malthus meant that , C W is limited in space , the eatable production *? fcnd on ? yencrease * in an arithmetical rate , of lana omy M to ^ th , but even This is resemblance to trutn , out even
a nearer 3 hm stated it is not accurate . We are to consider the quest ion as starting from the primitive commerit- —a state of nature ; and then we find , ™ ToX that the natural products upon which man feVds encrease geometricall y as well as he does , but also that he is able to make the space originally filled go further , by substring special breeds of tegftabLs and animals for those which he finds m ve v « a +, irp « bv enriching the sou with ma-KTOSaJK by taking depth int o the acand otner devices
poiint as well as superficies : by which very greatly modify the original proposition . Supposing , h owever , that with extensive emendations and corrections , Malthus ' s proposition is substantially true : we have to consider whether his conclusions necessarily , or properly , follow from his premises . In brief , his whole doctrine amounts to this . Population has ' tendency to encrease faster than food is unchecked
can be produced ; when that encrease , the result is seen , on the occurrence of adverse seasons , in endemic starvation or famines ; but under ordinary circumstances the fatal check is felt , before it reaches that naked catastrophe , in the shape of wars , and the depopulating influences of the vice and misery attendant on a state of over population . His practical conclusion is , that the way to render the further progress of civilization at once safe and practicable , is to check the tendency
to over-population " by moral restraint —by abstinence from marriage until the middle age . Malthus ' s theory has been reprobated for its tendency to justify vice , war , and the causes of want ; reconciling men to discord , immorality , and the state of things which inflicts suffering on their fellow-creatures . I must not only insist , however , on Malthus ' s absolute right to expound what he unquestionably believed to be true , but also , on the only sound principle of investigation , that no appearance
of consequences in the vista should make us halt in pursuing enquiry , or weaken our faith in that truth which has never yet failed us , however changeful its aspect in a partial view , however formidable at first sight . There is , indeed , a strong prima facie case against any presumption that contradicts the natural instincts ; but , if Malthus ' s theory were true , further investigation would reconcile it to every other form of truth . Meanwhile , amply recognizing the fulness and distinctness with which he set forth
Ins proposition , it must be admitted that he did not reduce it to absolute proof . He was justly criticized for a sort of judicial blindness , which , if we were to speculate on motives , might be called dishonest . From the general disposition which he showed to sit down in an optimist mood of content with the actual state of the world . it was inferred by many that his " moral restraint" was a kind of respectable juggle , which implied connivance at the most demoralizing practices , especially prostitution . Or , if hia counsel was given bona fide , and he intended an actual postponement of the
impulses and solaces of life , for all born human beings , until the middle age—then critics possessing a better knowledge of human nature , were less astonished at the man who could recommend celibacy for all the young , and for all poor persons Without a certain provision in the savings bank , than at the " greenness " of the closet statesman who could suppose such an arrangement to be within the bounds of possibility . There were few who did not consider Malthus ' s notion as far more calamitous , absurd , and even immoral , than the barbarous checks of fire , famine , and slaughter .
Malthus left the question in this most unsatisfactory state : —his premises not established ; his presumption accepted by theorists , and rejected by the outraged instincts of human nature ; political economists and poor-law commissioners looking solemn at thoughtless people with large families and small incomes ; prudent patriarchs apologizing to in
society general , with a guilty bashfulness , for the growth of their olive branches ; and well' kill society conscious of an uneasy doubt whether some of its members had any right to bo there , to sit down at " the board of nature , " where the covers had been calculated on exclusive principles . It was almost wished that some person in authority would point out which of us it was that
laboured under the Malthusian ban , and ought to " be gone "—while none of us felt inclined to go , or to send away our children as " surplus population . " John Mill ' s Principles of Political Economy is not only the most recent book , but the best that has yet appeared , and may be considered to bring the science up to the highest mark that it has yet attained . In dealing with the sections , therefore , that bear upon the Malthusian point , we are dealing
with the proposition in its most improved form . It is greatly improved since its necessarily crude enunciation by Malthus : its premises are corrected , and its conclusions are elevated by a higher form of expression ; but I do not think the case is really strengthened : the principle is still the same , professedly without alteration ; in the process of amendment , however , so many qualifications and abatements are introduced , that the imposing effect of the oracle of doom is very much shattered . In the endeavour to surround Malthus ' s doctrine with
props , rather than to extract the kernel of truth which lay loosely inside , it seems to me that Mill has rendered it less practicably available than it was before ; and in giving a moral and intellectual elevation to the counsel which he implies , he does suggest something less odious and shocking than Malthus ' s moral restraint , but the reverse of being less extravagant . I cannot resist a conviction
which is gaining ground upon me , that the class of which Mill is so distinguished a type and ornament , are even more misled than other classes by their own condition , in taking the survey of actual life and in suggesting counsel , —I mean the literary or highly intellectualized class . One presumption to which they are prone is the general possibility and advantage of an excessive or even exclusive elevation of the intellectual over the "
animal" part of human nature . I do not know that there is , in truth , any such distinction—that you can thus split human nature into antagonistic halves , and set up one to be viceroy over the other . I do not observe that nature has taken less pains with the instincts than she has with the reason ; or , to speak more in accordance with my own comprehension , that there is any part of the creation which man can pronounce to be " inferior" another . I do not know which is " up" or " down " when my head at midnight is lower than my heels , according to the standard of noon ; I do not know which is " higher" " lower" while I have no
conception where to look for the top of the universe . My own belief is , that the very height of human wisdom consists in studying the laws of God as they are working around us in every part of the universe ; not to alter them , to improve upon them , or " elevate" them , but to understand them with a simple heart , equally for all faculties ; to obey them implicitly andto carry them out , straightforward . But , as the hand of the dyer is coloured to his trade , so the philosopher , dealing incessantly with intellectuals , acquires a kind of ignorance , a dimness as to the working wisdom of physicals , less concealed from the practical artist like yourself , or the man of active life like W . E . Forster .
It is , I think , through an acquired ignorance of this kind , that a philosopher like Mill can speak in disparagement respecting instinctive impulses , which are in their very nature a mystery to us who undergo them ; which are inextricably bound up with the continuance of the human race —its healthy existence—its sacred affections—its highest arts—and , probably , with all those social energies that accomplish what we call greatness . I say that it is not safe to disparage those instincts , or to slide into that acquired ignorance under which the best men have so frequently and so rashly undertaken to tamper with the very sources of vitality . Society is not quite so rash as the philosophers . Mill confesses that hitherto no other motives have
been found strong enough , in the generality of mankind , to counteract the tendency to encrease than a prudential regard to the future maintenance of offspring , and a desire to rise in the social ncale of comfort and consideration . As these have been the checks hitherto—let us flee their operation . The greatest encreaso of numbers , that which perceptibly affects the encrease of the population , takes place in the poorer classes , since they are immensely the largest numbers . Now Mill confesses
that" It has been the practice of a groat majority of the middle and poorer classes , whenever free from externul control , to marry as early , and , in most countries , to have as many children as was conniutent with maintain ing themselves in the condition of life which they were born to , or were accustomed to consider an theirs . Among the middle clauses , in many individual instances ,
there is an additional restraint exercised from the desire of doing more than maintaining their circumstances—of improving them ; but such a desire is rarely found , or raTely has that effect , in the labouring classes . If they can bring up a family as they were themselves brought up , even the prudent among them are usually satisfied . Too often they do not think even of that , but rely on fortune , or on the resources to be found in legal or voluntary charity . "
This last sentence is a true description of our agricultural labouring classes ; in Ireland there is no check , external or internal . " The influence of prudence , " says Mill , " in keeping down multiplication is seen by the diminished number of marriages in the manufacturing districts in years when trade is bad " : if Mill had lived in manufacturing districts , he would know that " prudence" has scarcely anything to do with it : in those districts , with vast numbers , marriage is a triviality ; it is lightly entered , more lightly left ; it is checked , not by " prudence , " but by sheer want of immediate means among the very
numerous classes who are thrown out of employment in bad years ; and where marriage is not formally observed , there is always " the substitute . " I use the expression of a most intelligent working man in Glasgow , who told me that ( in 1840 ) working men were more and more inclined to avoid marriage and resort to " the substitute "—by which I understood him to mean concubinage . The two checks , therefore , recognized by Mill , as practically existing down to this time , are practically of none effect with the great bulk of the population ; so that from the past , we are not to presume that they are very facile or available .
It is confessed that we do see them in operation among the middle class . Mill enumerates many circumstances which give " peculiar force to the accumulating propensity in England ; " and he tells us that it is " greatly aided by that extreme indifference of the people to personal enjoyment , which is a characteristic of all countries over which Puritanism has passed . " This is true ; but if we look at the state of the middle classes , in their personal relations , or relations with other classes—if we see the sacrifice of almost any consideration , to interest and money-getting—the sacrifice of the
enjoyment of life , of the end to the means—the habitual condemnation of a vast female class to celibacy , and of a numerous male youth to a correlative bachelorhood with a handmaid cohort of prostitution drawn from a humbler rank—if we see the domestic conduct of the middle class man to his servant—his parish treatment of the parish poor—his political gratitude for the Reform Billif we compare him with his fellow on the Continent in his eesthetical conditions—we shall not be very confident as to the moral influence of these checks in the only class where they do have a caU culable effect .
The two checks hitherto existing , therefore , as seen in this country have proved inoperative to prevent the encrease where any important encrease takes place , and where they have had a limited operation , their moral effect has not been very felicitous . We do not forget that a third check of a spontaneous kind is prophesied , not only in the extreme refinement of man , but also in the intellectual elevation of woman , to so wide an extent , that if the inferior furtctions of maternity are left to volunteers who prefer such " vocations , " the number will still be not inconveniently large . I do not quite understand what is meant by this prophetic vision ; I do not know how far those who rely upon it , fairly grapple in their own minds with the reserved
questions of prostitution and other incidents ol celibacy as a social custom ; if they do not do so , not a tithe of their work is done , and they are not honest in pretending that it is . At all events they are not explicit , and this is a subject which we cannot deal with in part . Nor do I know how far their prophetic vision involves the stipulation which is so general a custom in France , and which at once relieves celibacy of its privations , and matrimony of its burdens . I think very few who deal in this prophetic vision of women unsexed , escaping from the nursery to the library , really intend anything in the nature of a wedded monuchism : if they do , they should say so ; if they do not , they should say so .
The checks , then , hitherto prevailing , or preached , are inoperative , vitiating , and visionary—a description which might be translated into one wordthey are unnatural . We have yet to see whether checks are necessary ; and , if they are so , whether the true check have been discovered . I have already snid that Mill admitn very great aualifications on Malthus ' s data , but he insists that ie limit of food-producing must some day be
Untitled Article
Jan 4 , 1351 . ]
JM- ! i-JkOLfc ¥£ _ 13
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 4, 1851, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1864/page/13/
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