Chapter V: Letter IV: On the General Tendency of Population to Excess (1)

SIR,—Mr. Malthus’s argument against a state of _unlimited_ improvement, of perfect wisdom, virtue and happiness, from the vice, misery, and madness inseparable from such a state would, if admitted, be an effectual bar to all limited improvement whatever. It is for this reason, that I have dwelt so long on the subject. If out of timidity, or complaisance, or prejudice against an unpopular system, we suffer ourselves to be wheedled into a silly persuasion, that the worst thing that could happen for the human race would be their being able to realise not in words only, but in deed all the fine things, that have been said of them, we then fairly throw ourselves upon the mercy of our adversaries. For what is there in this case, to hinder Mr. Malthus, or any one else, from representing every degree of practical improvement as an approximation to this deplorable crisis, from binding up the slips and scyons of human happiness with this great trunk of evil, and root of all our woe, from marking with his slider and graduated scale all our advances towards this ideal perfection, however partial or necessary, as so many deviations from the strict line of our duty, and only sphere of our permanent happiness? It is evident, that the only danger of all imaginary schemes of improvement arises from their being _exaggerations_ of the real capacities of our nature, from supposing that we can pick out all the dross, and leave nothing but the gold; that is, from their being carried to excess, and aiming at more than is practicable. But if we allow that improvement is an evil in the abstract, and that the greater the improvement, the greater the mischief, that the actual and complete success of all such schemes would be infinitely worse even than their failure, for that the most complete and extensive improvement would only prepare the way for the most deplorable wretchedness, and that the very next step after reaching the summit of human glory would plunge us into the lowest abyss of vice and misery,—why truly there will be little encouragement to set out on a journey that promises so very disagreeable a conclusion; such a representation of the matter will not add wings to our zeal for practical reform, but will rather make us stop short in our career, and refuse to advance one step farther in a road, that is beset with danger and destruction. People will begin to look with a jaundiced eye at the most obvious advantages, to resist every useful regulation, and dread every change for the better. Our feelings are governed very much by common-place associations, and are most influenced by that sort of logic which is the shortest. Thus, ‘that the parts are contained in the whole,’ is a general rule which is found to hold good in most of the concerns of life; and it is not therefore easy to drive it out of people’s heads. For this reason, it will always be difficult to persuade the generality of mankind that a less degree of improvement is a good thing, though a greater would be a bad thing, or that the subordinate parts of a system, that would in reality embody all the ills of life, can be very desirable in themselves. Mr. Malthus has however by no means left this conclusion to the mere mechanical operation of our feelings. He endeavours formally to establish it. The following passage seems the connecting link in the chain, which unites the two worlds of theory and practice together; it cements the argument, gives solidity and roundness to it, and renders it complete against all improvement, real or imaginary, present or future, against all absolute perfection or imperfect attempts at it, and gradual approaches to it. It fairly blocks up the road.

‘It cannot but be a matter of astonishment that all writers on the perfectibility of man, and of society, who have noticed the argument of an overcharged population, treat it always very slightly, and invariably represent the difficulties arising from it, as at a great, and almost immeasurable distance. Even Mr. Wallace, who thought the argument itself of so much weight as to destroy his whole system of equality, did not seem to be aware that any difficulty would occur from this cause, till the whole earth had been cultivated like a garden, and was incapable of any further increase of produce. Were this really the case, and were a beautiful system of equality in other respects practicable, I cannot think that our ardour in the pursuit of such a scheme ought to be damped by the contemplation of so remote a difficulty. An event at such a distance might fairly be left to providence; but the truth is, that if the view of the argument given in this Essay be just, the difficulty so far from being remote, would be imminent and immediate. _At every period during the progress of cultivation_, from the present moment to the time when the whole earth was become like a garden, _the distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind_, if they were equal. Though the produce of the earth _might be increasing every year_, population _would be increasing much faster_; and the redundancy must _necessarily_ be repressed by the periodical or constant action of vice and misery.’[6]

In answer to this statement (allowing however that it is a fair inference from Wallace’s reasoning, and from our author’s own principle) I would simply ask, whether _during this progress of cultivation, the distress for want of food would be constantly pressing on all mankind_ more than it does at present. Let us suppose that men remain just as vicious, as imprudent, as regardless of their own interests and those of others as they are at present, let us suppose them to continue just what they are, through all the stages of improved cultivation to the time when the whole earth was become like a garden, would this in the smallest degree detract from the benefit? Would nothing indeed be gained by the earth’s being cultivated like a garden, that is, by its producing ten times the quantity of food that it does at present, and being able to maintain ten times the quantity of inhabitants in the same degree of comfort and happiness that it does at present, because forsooth they would not at the same time be ten times better off than they are now? Is it an argument against adding to the happiness of mankind tenfold, by increasing their number, their condition remaining the same, that we cannot add to it a hundred-fold, by increasing their number and improving their condition proportionably? Or is it any objection to increasing the means of subsistence by the improved cultivation of the earth, that the population would keep pace with it? It appears to me that there must be a particular perversity, some egregious bias in the mind of any person who can either deny the inference to be drawn from these questions, or evade it as a matter of indifference, by equivocation and subterfuge. We might as well assert that because it is most likely that the inhabitants of the rest of Europe are not better, nor indeed quite so well off as the people of England, that it would therefore be no matter if the whole continent of Europe were sunk in the sea, as if human life was merely to be considered as a sample of what the thing is, and as if when we have a sample of a certain quality, all the rest might be very well spared, as of no value. As however I conceive that Mr. Malthus is not a man to be moved either by common feelings or familiar illustrations, I shall venture to lay down one dry maxim on the subject, which he will get over as well as he can, namely, that an improved cultivation of the earth, and a consequent increase of food must necessarily lead to one or other of these two consequences, either that a greater number of people will be maintained in the same degree of comfort and happiness, other things being the same, or that means will be afforded for maintaining an equal number in greater ease, plenty, and affluence. It is plain either that existence is upon the whole a blessing and that the means of existence are on that account desirable; that consequently an increased population is doubly a blessing, and an increase in the means of existence doubly desirable; or else life is an evil, and whatever tends to promote it is an evil, and in this case it would be well if all the inhabitants of the earth were to die of some easy death to-morrow!

For my own part, ‘who am no great clerk,’ I cannot by any efforts, of which I am capable, separate these two propositions, that it is desirable either that population should have stood still at first, or that it should go on increasing till the earth is absolutely full; or in other words, I see no rational alternative between the principle of extermination (as far as it is in our power) and the principle of the utmost possible degree of populousness. It is, I conceive, an incontrovertible axiom, that the proportion between the population and food being given (and Mr. Malthus tells us that it holds nearly the same in all the stages of society) the actual increase of population is to be considered as so much clear gain, as so much got into the purse, as so much addition to the sum of human happiness. Mr. Malthus says in another place (second edition, p. 357), ‘The only point in which I differ from M. Condorcet in this description’ [of the evils arising from increased population,] ‘is with regard to the period, when it may be applied to the human race. M. Condorcet thinks that it cannot possibly be applicable, but at an era extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of population and food, which was stated in the beginning of this essay, and which has received considerable confirmation _from the poverty that has been found to prevail in every stage and department of human society_, be in any degree near the truth, it will appear on the contrary, that the period, when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence, has long since arrived, &c.’ Mr. Malthus in different parts of his work makes a great _rout_ about the distinction between _actual_ and _relative_ population, and lays it down that an actual increase of population is an advantage, except when it exceeds the means of subsistence; yet he here seems to treat the proportion between the increase of population, and food, which he says has always continued pretty much the same, as the only thing to be attended to, and to represent the progressive increase of the actual population, unless we could at the same time banish poverty entirely from the world, as a matter of the most perfect indifference, or rather as the most dangerous experiment, that could be tried. Is not this being wilfully blind to the consequences of his own reasoning? Oh! but, says Mr. Malthus, you do not state the case fairly. If men were to continue what they are at present; if there were the same proportionable quantity of vice, and misery in the world, what you say would be true. Every thing would then go on as well, or indeed better than before. But this is impossible, because this increased cultivation, and a more equal distribution of the produce of the earth could only take place, in consequence of the increased civilization, virtue, good sense, and happiness of mankind: and this would necessarily spoil all. For remove the present quantity of vice and misery existing in the world, and you remove the only checks, that can keep population down. ‘Though the produce of the earth might be increasing every year, the population would be increasing much faster; and the redundancy must be repressed by the old restraints of vice and misery.’ That is to say, though (according to the second edition) vice, misery, and moral restraint, operate mutually as checks to population, and though the diminution of vice and misery could only be the consequence of the increased strength in the principle of moral restraint, yet this latter principle would in reality have no effect at all, and in proportion as the other checks to population, viz. vice and misery, were superseded, they would become more and more necessary. If there could be a gradual, and indefinite improvement in the cultivation of the soil, and every facility could be afforded for the supply of an increasing population, without supposing some change in the institutions of society, which would render men better and wiser, than they now are, Mr. Malthus will perhaps with some reluctance, and uncertainty hanging over his mind, allow that this would be a considerable advantage; the population might in this case be kept within some bounds, and not increase faster than the means of subsistence: but as this is a change that cannot be looked for without supposing a correspondent improvement in the morals and characters of men, we must set off one thing against another, and give up the chance of improvement, to prevent the shocking alternative connected with it. With our present modicum of wit and command over our passions, we do contrive in some measure to make both ends meet, or to cut our coat according to our cloth, or look before we leap, and are not carried away, neck or nothing, by this high-mettled courser, Population, over all the fences and barriers of common sense. But if we were to make any considerable improvements in horsemanship, or in our _knack_ at calculation, we should instantly, belying all reasonable expectation, throw the bridle on the horse’s neck, rush blindly forward in spite of all obstacles, and freed from the shackles of necessity without having acquired the discipline of reason, though the one always instantly resumes its sway, the moment the other ceases, plunge into all the miseries of famine, without remorse, or apprehension.

This I conceive is an express contradiction in terms. Yet I grant that it is a logical inference from Mr. Malthus’s original statement, that vice and misery are the only adequate checks to population. If this were indeed the case, all the consequences that Mr. Malthus describes, the utmost degree of vice and misery, would necessarily be the lot of man in all stages and departments of society, whether in his improved or unimproved state, because in all cases and at all times his reason would be of no use to him. However great or however small our attainments in arts or science, or in all other virtues might be, in this respect we should still be the same; that is, we should be exactly in the condition of the brutes, entirely governed by an impulse, over which we should have neither check nor control. Mr. Malthus, however, finding that this account is inconsistent with the state of human life, and with those checks which certainly do keep population back from going its natural lengths, now adds moral restraint as a convenient supplement to his theory, and as our chief security against vice and misery, though he still insists that where its effect must be greatest, it would have no effect at all. He gives up his principle, but retains his conclusion, to which he has no right. He is like a bad poet who to get rid of a false concord alters the ending of his first line, and forgets that he has spoiled his rhyme in the second. On the whole, then, it appears, that at no one period during the progress of cultivation from the present moment to the time when it should have reached its utmost limits, would the distress for want of food be greater than it is at present. In the mean time, the number of mankind, and consequently their happiness would go on increasing with the means of their happiness, or subsistence, till the whole earth had been cultivated like a garden, and was incapable of any further increase, and we should then be exactly where we are now with respect to the checks on population. That is, the earth would maintain ten times its present number of inhabitants in the same comfort as at present, without our having involved ourselves in any of those straits and difficulties, those pits and snares, against which we are so kindly warned by Mr. Malthus. The population, and the means of subsistence would indeed be stationary, but so they may be said to be at present. The only difference is that they are at present unnecessarily stationary from artificial causes, from moral and political circumstances; in that case the line would be drawn by nature herself, in other words, by the limited extent of the earth, and by its limited fertility. _This being the case and were a beautiful system of equality in other respects practicable_, (for observe, reader, I leave the question as _to those other respects_ exactly where I found it) _I cannot think that our ardour in pursuit of such a scheme can in any wise be damped by the contemplation of the difficulties attendant upon it from the principle of population._ All that could be gained, would be pure gain without any loss whatever. In short, the principle of population does not, as I conceive, affect the future improvement of society in any way whatever, whether on a larger or a smaller scale, theoretically or practically, generally, or particularly. I have thus, Sir, endeavoured to answer Mr. Malthus’s argument against the improved cultivation of the earth, and an increase of population, from the increased difficulties (as he falsely represents them), that would all the way press upon society during its progress. He has rendered his paradox in some measure palatable to the reader, by introducing it as one branch of his answer to Condorcet, and others of the same school, herein imitating the policy of the house of commons, who sometimes prevail on the house of lords to pass a bill which they do not much like, by tacking a money-bill to it. However as the two subjects are entirely distinct, I beg that they may not be confounded. The question is simply, whether we are to look upon the progress of agriculture, civilization, and the populousness which would follow, (no matter to what extent, nor by whom it is brought about, whether it is projected by a junto of philosophers, or decided upon in a committee of the house of commons, enlightened by the genius of Mr. Malthus and guided by Mr. Whitbread’s wisdom), whether I say, as a general principle we are to look upon an addition to the inhabitants of a state, if there is enough to support them, as a good or an evil. Mr. Malthus has chosen to answer this question under the head, _modern philosophy_, so that he is secure of the protection of the court. I have been willing not to deprive him of this advantage, and have answered it under the same head. If however any of my readers should dislike the argument in this connection, they may easily take it out of the mould in which it is cast, without doing it the least hurt. To shew how lightly all schemes of improvement sit on Mr. Malthus’s mind, how easily he thinks they may be puffed aside with the least breath of sophistry, it will be sufficient to quote the following passage. After allowing in general that even the best cultivated countries in Europe might be made to produce double what they do at present, he says, ‘We should not be too ready to make inferences against the internal economy of a country from the appearance of uncultivated heaths without other evidence.’ [It is wonderful with what slowness and circumspection Mr. Malthus always proceeds in his disapprobation of any thing, that comes in the prepossessing garb of an evil. He is only confident and severe in his decisions against those hidden mischiefs, which lie concealed under a delusive appearance of good. There is something in the prospect of dearth and barrenness which is perfectly congenial to the disposition of Mr. Malthus. He is unwilling to give up a subject which promises so much scope for his singular talents of bringing good out of evil.] ‘But the fact is, that as no country has ever reached, or probably will ever reach its highest possible acme of produce, it _appears always_, as if the want of industry, or the ill-direction of that industry was the actual limit to a further increase of produce and population, and not the absolute refusal of nature to yield any more; but a man who is locked up in a room, may be fairly said to be confined by the walls of it, _though he may never touch_ them; and with regard to the principle of population, it is never the question whether a country will produce _any more_, but whether it may be made to produce a sufficiency to keep pace with an unchecked increase of people.’ This I confess is a singular passage for a practical philosopher to write. Mr. Malthus here lays it down that the question is not whether we should do all the good we can, but whether we should do what we cannot. As to his illustration of a man locked up in a room, though it is smart and clever, it is not much to the purpose. The case is really that of a man who has the range of a suite of rooms and who in a fit of the spleen, or from indolence, or stupidity, or from any other cause you please, confines himself to one of them, or of a man who having hired a large commodious apartment, says, I never make use of the whole of this apartment, I never go within a foot of the walls, I might as well have it partitioned off, it would be snugger and warmer, and so still finding that he does not run against his partition any more than against the wall, should continue, being determined to have no unnecessary spare-room, to hemm himself in closer and closer till at last he would be able to stir neither hand nor foot. That any one, allowing as Mr. Malthus does, that with proper management and industry this country might be made to maintain _double_ its present number of inhabitants, or twenty millions instead of ten, should at the same time affect to represent this as a mere trifling addition, that practically speaking cannot be taken into the account, can I think only be explained by supposing in that person either an extreme callousness of feeling, or which amounts to pretty much the same thing, a habit of making his opinions entirely subservient to his convenience, or to any narrow purpose he may have in view at the moment.—Perhaps if the truth were known, I am as little sanguine in my expectations of any great improvement to be made in the condition of human life either by the visions of philosophy, or by downright, practical, parliamentary projects, as Mr. Malthus himself can be. But the matter appears to me thus. It requires some exertion and some freedom of will to keep even where we are. If we tie up our hands, shut our eyes to the partial advantages we possess, and cease to exert ourselves in that direction in which we can do it with the most effect, we shall very soon ‘go deep in the negative series.’ Take away the hope and the tendency to improvement, and there is nothing left to counteract the opposite never-failing tendency of human things ‘from bad to worse.’ There is therefore a serious practical reason against losing sight of the object, even when we cannot attain it. However, I am ‘free to confess’ (to borrow the language of my betters) that there is as much selfishness as public spirit in my resistance to Mr. Malthus’s contradictions. It is a remote question whether the world will ever be much wiser than it is: but what I am certainly interested in, is not to submit to have all my ideas confounded by barren sophistry, nor to give up the little understanding which I may actually possess. Nor for my own part, were I confined to my room, should I think myself obliged to any one for blocking up my view of a pleasant prospect, because I could not move from the place, where I was.

The fundamental principle of Mr. Malthus’s essay is that population has a constant tendency to become excessive, because it has a tendency to increase not only in a progressive, but in a geometrical ratio, whereas the means of subsistence are either positively limited, or at most can only be made to increase in an arithmetical ratio. But to be sure of avoiding any thing like misrepresentation in this part of the argument, where the least error or omission might be fatal to our author’s whole scheme, let us take his own words.

‘It may be safely affirmed that population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio.

‘That we may be the better able to compare the increase of population and food, let us make a supposition, which without pretending to accuracy, is clearly more favourable to the power of production in the earth, than any experience that we have had of its qualities will warrant.

‘Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly would do, were to remain the same; and that the produce of this island might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces; the most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would make every acre of land in the island like a garden.

‘If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be allowed that the subsistence for man which the earth affords, might be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present produces; this will be supposing a rate of increase much greater than we can imagine that any possible exertions of mankind could make it.

‘It may be fairly pronounced therefore that considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.

‘The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be twenty-two millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years, the population would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. In the next period, the population would be eighty-eight millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half that number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the population would be a hundred and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of fifty-five millions; leaving a population of a hundred and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for.

‘Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration would of course be excluded: and supposing the present population equal to a thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9; in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years, the difference would be almost incalculable.

‘In this supposition no limits whatever are placed to the produce of the earth. It may increase for ever, and be greater than any assignable quantity; yet still _the power of population being in every period_ so much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the _constant operation of the strong law of necessity_ acting as a check upon the greater power;’ or as he elsewhere expresses it ‘_by misery or the fear of misery_.’

Oh! my good Sir, spare your calculations. We do not wish to be informed what would be the exact proportion of the _imaginary_ means of subsistence to the _imaginary_ population at a period, and at a rate of increase, at which, if it had been possible for it to have gone on only half so long as you suppose, the whole race would have been long ago _actually_ extinct. Mr. Malthus here treats us as the fantastical landlord treated _Sancho Panza_, by giving him a magnificent list of a great variety of delicacies, which it appeared on examination were not to be had, but made no mention of an excellent dish of cow-heel, which was the only thing he had in the house, and which exactly suited the stomach of the squire. I am, like Sancho, disposed to be satisfied with what I can get; and therefore I must fairly tell Mr. Malthus that if he will only spare me that first ratio of his, of a doubled population with respect to this island, or to the whole earth (though there, begging his pardon, if all other things went right, his arithmetical and geometrical distinction would not as I have shewn come into play for some time), I say if he will allow, as far as the principle of population is concerned, that it is possible to double the number of inhabitants of this country or of the world without any injury, I shall be perfectly content with this concession: this first ratio shall be to me the golden number of Pythagoras, and he may do as he pleases with all the remaining links of an impossible series, which he has started only, I imagine, as we throw out a tub to a whale by way of diversion. As to any serious argument, it is perfectly immaterial, perfectly irrelevant to the question, _whether we should double our population_, that we cannot forsooth go on doubling it for ever; unless indeed it could be shewn that by thus doubling it once, when we can do it without any inconvenience, we should be irresistibly impelled to go on doubling it afterwards when it would have become exceedingly inconvenient, and in fact till the consequence would be general famine and the most extensive misery. Without this addition to his argument, either expressed or implied, Mr. Malthus’s double series is of no use or avail whatever: it looks very pretty upon paper, and reads very neat, but is of no practical importance. The evils which it describes so accurately as arising from the increased disproportion between the ratios at every step are mere imaginary things, existing no where but in the morbid enthusiasm of Mr. Malthus’s mind, unless we suppose that every increase of the existing population, either with or without a proportionable increase in the means of subsistence, is a vicious habit, a species of phrensy, where one step only leads to another, till we are plunged into irretrievable ruin. But I would ask, supposing the inhabitants of a country to have increased gradually in consequence of an increase in the means of subsistence, from two millions to four, how that population of four millions would have a greater tendency to excess, than the present population of two millions? Would not the same sense of inconvenience, the same dread of poverty, the same regard to the comforts of life, operate in the same way and just as much upon every individual of the four millions, as upon every individual of the two millions? What then becomes of the increased tendency to excessive population in consequence of its actual increase? Yet without this, an increased population is not in itself an evil, or a good necessarily leading to evil, but a pure and unmixed good unconnected with any greater evil.

Even our author’s own account will give us a new country and a new earth; it will double all the happiness and all the enjoyment that there is at present in the world. If he had been a man of sanguine or poetical feelings, methinks this single consideration would have been enough to have made his heart leap up with a lively joy—to see ‘fast by hanging in a golden chain this pendant world,’ &c. but he is a man whom you may call rather of a saturnine than of a sanguine disposition. He therefore had no leisure to behold this cheering object, but passes on ‘to nature’s farthest verge,’ till he enters once more into ‘the confines of Chaos, and the bosom of dim night.’ Mr. Malthus somewhere speaks familiarly of the association of ideas, as if he were acquainted with that doctrine. He has here at any rate very skilfully availed himself of that kind of reasoning, which owes all its weight to that mechanical principle. In all the stages of an unchecked population, except the first, it having appeared that there is a great disproportion between this principle and the progress of agriculture, our author concludes that his readers will forget that that, which is so often represented as an evil, can ever be a good, and therefore peremptorily adds, in defiance of his own statement, that in _every period_ of the increase, the power of population is much superior to the other. Though it appears to me then that Mr. Malthus by his ratios has gained nothing in point of argument over his readers, he has gained much upon their imagination. By representing population so often as an evil, and by magnifying its increase in certain cases as so enormous an evil, he raises a general prejudice against it. Whenever you talk of any improvement or any increase of population consequent upon it, he immediately plays off his infinite series against you. He makes the transition from a practicable to an impracticable increase of population, from that degree of it, which is desirable to that which is excessive, by the assistance of his mathematical scale, as easily as you pass from the low notes of a harpsichord to the high ones. There seems no division between them. It is true that so long as we confine ourselves to the real question before us and distinguish between what is practicable, and what can never possibly happen, the evil consequences of the system we contend for are merely chimerical. But as Hercules in order to strangle the earth-born Antæus was obliged to lift him from the ground, Mr. Malthus, in order to complete his triumph over common sense, is obliged to call to his aid certain airy speculations and fanciful theories of dangers, that, by his own confession, can never possibly exist. Whenever you are for setting out on the road of reform, Mr. Malthus stops you on the threshold, and says, Do you consider where you are going? Don’t you know where this road will lead you? and then, with a ‘come on, sir, here’s the place: look how fearful and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eye so low’; he hurries you forward to his imaginary precipice, and shews you the danger you have so narrowly escaped. However, it is not Mr. Malthus’s rhetoric, but our own wilful blindness, that must persuade us that we have escaped being dashed to pieces down any precipices, when he himself tells us that the road is nothing more than a long winding declivity.

I conceive there were two very capital errors in Mr. Malthus’s first essay, which though he has abandoned or in a great measure softened them down in his subsequent edition, still adhere to all his reasonings, and give them a wrong bias. The first of these was, that vice and misery are the only checks to population: secondly, that if population were for any time freed from these restraints, it would in that case go on increasing with a force and rapidity, which nothing would be able to withstand, and which would bear down the feeble mounds that had before opposed its progress till the whole would end in one wide scene of universal uproar and confusion. As if, in the first place, mere misery of itself, without a sense of greater misery, and a desire to avoid it, would do any thing to prevent population; and in the second place, as if though the tax of vice and misery were taken off for a time, yet the recurrence of the same evils afterwards would not operate in the same way to repress population, or as if population would in the mean time have acquired any preternatural strength, with which its counteracting causes would be unable to contend, or as if the mere mechanical checks to population from the actual evils attendant upon it were not always necessarily a match for, and proportioned to, the strength of the principle itself, and its immediate tendency to excess. It is astonishing to see how those men, who pique themselves the most on the solidity of their understandings, and on a kind of dull matter-of-fact plodding accuracy, are perpetually led away by their imaginations: the more so because they are the dupes of their own vanity, and never suspect that they are liable to any such deception. In the present instance our author has been hurried into an unfounded assumption by having his imagination heated with a _personification_. He has given to the principle of population a personal existence, conceiving of it as a sort of infant Hercules, as one of that terrific giant brood, which you can only master by strangling it in its cradle; forgetting that the antagonist principle which he has made its direct counterpoise, still grows with its growth and strengthens with its strength, being in fact its own offspring: and that the sharper evils which excessive population brings along with it, more severe in proportion to its excess, naturally tend to repress and keep population down to the same level, other circumstances being supposed the same. Nothing can be clearer to my understanding than this; yet it is upon the misrepresentation or misconception of this principle that most of Mr. Malthus’s sophisms and ambiguities hinge.

It is necessary to make a distinction between the tendency in population to increase, and its power to increase; otherwise we may fall into great errors. The power of population to increase is an abstract thing independent of circumstances, and which is therefore always the same. Its effects may therefore be very well described by a mathematical series. When we speak of the power of population to increase in a certain continued ratio, we do not mean to say that it will or will not do so, but merely that it is possible that it should do so from the nature of the principle itself. The power of population to increase is in fact the same both before and after it has become excessive. But I conceive this is not the case with its _tendency_ to increase, unless we mean its _unchecked tendency_, which is saying nothing; for if we speak of its real tendency to increase, this certainly is not always the same, but depends exceedingly on circumstances, that is, is greater or less in proportion as the population is or is not excessive. The ratio in which Mr. Malthus has represented population as having a natural tendency to increase, can therefore only relate to its unchecked progress, or to its increase while the means of subsistence can be made to keep pace with it; inasmuch as it has an actual tendency to increase in this ratio, only while it is free from checks; but the moment these checks begin to operate it is necessarily limited by them, or kept down within a certain point to the level of the means of subsistence. In short, as a practical guide, Mr. Malthus’s table is extremely fallacious; for the population has a tendency to go on as 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. only while the subsistence answers to it, or is as 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. and when the means of subsistence can only be made to increase as 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. then the population will, in the natural course of things, come down to it and increase only as 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. or supposing it to have generally a certain tendency to excess, it will then increase as 1¼, 2½, 3¾, 5, &c. The actual, positive, practical tendency in population _to increase_ is not therefore always the same, and for that very reason its tendency _to excess_ is always the same, neither greater nor less, in consequence of the absolute increase in population. Mr. Malthus himself admits fully the distinction between the actual increase of population and its excessive increase, between the tendency of population to increase with the means of subsistence and its tendency to increase beyond those means. In fact, almost one half of his voluminous work is taken up by extensive historical researches to prove that the population is in all ages and countries, in every form of society, and stage of civilization kept down _nearly_ to the means of subsistence: that population has not therefore at one time more than another, when it is strong than when it is weak, in an improved than in a neglected state of cultivation, a tendency to rush on beyond its necessary limits: yet if there is any one inference to be drawn from the general spirit and tenor of Mr. Malthus’s reasonings, it is this, that we ought not to encourage population, nor be anxious about the increase of the means of subsistence, but ought rather to keep them back as much as possible, because every addition made to population by whatever means or in whatever circumstances, has a direct and unavoidable tendency to make it go on increasing with an accelerated force; or that the positive benefit of an enlarged population is always counterbalanced by the increased danger of the excess to which it naturally leads. Mr. Malthus by setting a certain degree of plenty against a certain degree of excessive population, has made it appear as if the two things were inseparably connected, as if supposing a certain progress made in the one ratio you may then by passing over to the opposite line see immediately what progress had been made at the same time in the other, that is, what quantity of actual and excessive population, proportioned to the increase in the means of subsistence and its immediate consequence, would require to be cut off by forcible and unnatural means, by vice and misery. It therefore looks very much as if plenty were the immediate fore-runner of famine, as if by sowing the seeds of virtue and happiness you were ensuring a larger harvest of vice and misery, the evil engrafted on any good being always greater than the real benefit itself, and as if by advancing population and increasing the means of its support, you were only opening a new Iliad of woes, and giving larger scope to the baneful operation of this principle. So that it is not the increase of good that we are to think of, but the introduction of evil that we are to guard against. The proportion by which we are to be guided is clear and demonstrable; it is as 256 to 9, and so regularly through all the gradations upwards and downwards. At this rate it is pretty clear that our only object must be to confine human happiness within as narrow limits, and to keep the population down as low as possible, at least to suffer no addition to it. We are something in the condition of a man suspended on a balance with sharp-pointed spikes placed close to his body, and who must not stir for his life. Now the source of this fallacy (on which the whole turns, for without it it is null and abortive) lies here, namely in supposing that of the two ratios here connected together, the one is the cause of, or has any thing to do with the other. For the ratio in the upper line being at number 256 does not depend on the other ratio being at number 9, but simply on its being so many removes from the root or first number. It only expresses a possible or imaginary series, or the independent, direct, physical power of increase, or abstract tendency to increase in population at each step, and what that increase would amount to in a given number of steps, being left entirely to itself. If it expresses any thing else, or the actual increase of population combined with and in reference to the means of subsistence, it is utterly false and delusive, and a contradiction in terms. For population as regulated by, and arising out of the means of subsistence cannot have got the start of it in so prodigious a manner, and as unconnected with the increase of the latter cannot depend upon it. In the one case, population instead of being to the means of subsistence as 256 to 9, will only be a little a-head of it, or as 9½ to 9: in the other case it will be as 256, whether the food has in a given time increased from 1 to 9, or only from 1 to 6, or whether it has stood still at 1. The number of inhabitants from the beginning of the world, proceeding by the geometrical ratio, would have been going on just the same whether they had ever had any thing to eat or not (they are a kind of enchanted people who live without food) whether the quantity of food had been more or less, whether there has been any improvements in agriculture or not. Though the improvements in agriculture had stood still at 1 in the arithmetical scale this would not lessen or alter the height to which the geometrical scale would have mounted in the interval. ‘It keeps on its way unslacked of motion.’ By advancing in the arithmetical scale or increasing the means of subsistence, you do not advance the geometrical scale, much less by increasing the disproportion between the two, do you increase the _waste_ population of the world, which must be greater in proportion as less of it had been provided for. On the other hand, you necessarily lessen this disproportion. For instead of supposing that if we had remained at 1 in the lower scale, we should then have been at 1 in the upper, or that if we had advanced no further than 3, the disproportion would then only have been 4 to 3, and so on, whereas by going on it is now as 256 to 9, the fact is that the disproportion instead of being as 256 to 9, would have been 256 to 1, or 2, or 3: and that the further we go in the one scale, though we cannot keep up with, or overtake the other, yet we lose so much the less ground and are nearer it than we should otherwise be. To argue otherwise is to be like the children who when they cannot keep up with others, stand still and begin to cry, thinking this the likeliest way to make them slacken their pace. I shall therefore beg leave to look upon every increase in the means of subsistence or actual population, as so much gained upon the _infinite series_: by keeping back the _actual_ means of subsistence, I do not lessen the _possible_ or abstract tendency of population to increase, and I only add to its actual tendency to increase in proportion as I add to its actual means of support. We have therefore a clear addition to its actual quantity without any addition to its tendency to excess, or without strengthening the evil principle, the germ of incalculable mischief, which population contains within it. Mr. Malthus has taken no pains to guard his readers against the conclusion, that by increasing the actual population, you increase its actual tendency to increase, as if either the disposition to propagate the species were stronger in proportion to the number of those who possess it, or as if in proportion as the power is spread over a larger surface, it were not counteracted by being accompanied in each individual with a proportionable share of common sense and reason, so that he will not be a bit more likely to run upon famine because there will be twice as many to keep him company as there used to be. The tendency to excessive population in any community does not depend upon the number of individuals in it, who have the power of abusing their liberty, or on the quantity of mischief they _might_ do, but upon the moral character of the individuals composing it, upon the difference between the strength of moral restraint and the strength of physical appetite, or on the actual inconvenience to which they _will_ submit for the sake of gratifying their passions. In short the tendency to excess does not depend on the point in the scale where the _limit_ is drawn, but upon the tendency to overleap that limit; now this tendency or _impetus_ is not increased by the distance which it has gone, like a stone rolling down a hill, or like a torrent of water accumulating, but is like a cart or waggon left on a declivity with a drag-chain fastened to one of the wheels, which is carried forward till the chain is pulled tight and then it stops of itself. This is a very clumsy comparison, but it has some resemblance to the thing. We are not to calculate the actual tendency to excess in population by the excess of the power itself over the means of subsistence, which is greater as we advance, but by the excess of the power restrained by other motives and principles over the means of subsistence. In algebraic language the tendency to excess is not equal to the power of population simply, but to the power, _minus_ the difficulty of providing for its support, or the influence which that difficulty has on the conduct of rational beings.