BMJ No 7123 Volume 315
Education and debate Saturday 20/27 December Christmas 1997 issue
History
Two hundred years since Malthus
John A Black He campaigned unsuccessfully for the gradual abolition of the old poor
laws which, he thought, encouraged the working class to marry young and
to have large families. In his second edition he introduced the concept
of the "preventive checks" by moral restraint - late marriage and
restraint within marriage. The reduction in fertility which Malthus
advocated was achieved by the acceptance of birth control, to which he
was violently opposed. He was attacked during his lifetime and has been
misinterpreted and misunderstood ever since.
Fig 1 - John Linnell's portrait of Malthus in 1833,
aged 67. (Reproduced with permission of the governors of Haileybury and
Imperial Service College) Thomas Robert Malthus (known as Robert) (fig 1) was born on
14 February 1766 near Dorking, Surrey. He was born with a cleft lip and
palate, but this does not seem to have hindered his academic career. In
1785 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics,
obtaining a first class degree. He was elected fellow of the college in
1797, and four years later took Holy Orders. In 1805 he was appointed
professor of history and political economy at the newly founded College
of the East India Company, at Haileybury, in Hertfordshire (now
Haileybury and Imperial Service College). He held this post until his
death in 1834 from "disease of the heart" in Bath (fig 2). He
married at the age of 38 and had three c
Fig 2 - Memorial to Malthus in Bath Abbey. (From
The Malthusian population theory by G F McCleary.
London: Faber and Faber, 1953.) He set out his views clearly: "The power of population is infinitely
greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
Population when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in arithmetical ratio ... By that law of our
nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of
these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and
constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of
subsistence." He defined the checks as follows: "The positive checks to population
are extremely various ... Under this head, therefore,
may be enumerated all unwholesome occupations, severe labour and
exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children,
great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of common diseases
and epidemics, wars, plague and famines."
Summarising his views, he wrote: "The truth is, that the pressure of
distress on this part of a community [the poor] is an evil so deeply
seated that no human ingenuity can reach it." North America provided
the evidence that population could increase in
geometrical ratio. Malthus noted that, "In the
northern states of America ... the population has
been found to double itself, for above a century and a half
successively in less than twenty-five years
.... It may safely be pronounced therefore,
that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every
twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio."
On the question of food supply, he wrote: "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."
Appreciating now that population was not controlled solely by positive
checks, Malthus introduced the concept of "preventive checks." He
divided them into those arising from "vice" and "moral
restraint," by which he meant chaste restraint from marriage - that
is, late marriage without previous sexual liaisons, and restraint
within marriage, with voluntary restriction of the number of children.
Preventive checks arising from vice were: "Promiscuous intercourse,
unnatural passions, violations of the marriage bed, and improper acts
to conceal the consequences of irregular connexions." According to
Malthus, the "lower orders" had lost their self respect and were
marrying young and producing more children than they could
Fig 3 - Title page of the first edition. Godwin's
name is misspelt Malthus advocated the gradual abolition of the poor laws with
safeguards against undue distress, but retaining the threat of economic
hardship. He thought that "the fear of want, rather than want itself,
that is the best stimulus to industry."
In spite of this approach he was able to write a shockingly repressive
passage (not in the sixth edition): "A man is born into a world
already possessed if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom
he has a just demand, and if society do not want his labour, has no
claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no
business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no
vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly
execute her orders."(2)
Malthus proposed that the working classes should copy the habits of the
middle classes, who married late and had small families. He had a poor
opinion of the upper classes: "Those among the higher classes, who
live principally in towns, often want the inclination to marry, from
the facility with which they can indulge themselves in an illicit
intercourse with the sex."
To promote his views, Malthus advocated universal primary education:
"[We] have been miserably deficient. It is surely a national
disgrace, that the education of the lower classes of people in England
should be left merely to a few Sunday Schools, supported by a
subscription from individuals, who can give to the course of
instruction in them any kind of bias which they please."
Malthus had a humane side to his character. He condemned the
social evils resulting from the industrial revolution and was concerned
about the ill treatment of illegitimate children and the high mortality
of children in the towns. "In London, according to former
calculations, one half of the born died under three years of age."
He attributed this to poor housing and atmospheric pollution: "There
certainly seems to be something in great towns, and even in moderate
towns, peculiarly unfavourable to the very early stages of life ... it
arises from the closeness and foulness of the air, which may be
supposed to be unfavourable to the tender lungs of children."
To understand Malthus's ideas and the reasons his policies
failed, it is necessary to review the social, economic, and demographic
changes which were occurring at the time. The economic situation of the
agricultural labourers was deplorable. The enclosure movement meant
that they had lost their security of employment, their cottages, and
the common rights which had given them some independence.(3)
Many families became destitute and were forced to live in the
workhouses.
Between 1731 and 1811 the population almost doubled and the price of
food increased two and a half times.(4) Concurrently,
fertility was rising, reaching a peak in 1790, and real wages were
falling, with a nadir in 1811 (fig 4). On 6 May 1795 the magistrates at
Speenhamland in Berkshire, in an effort to alleviate distress,
introduced supplementary "wages," tied to the price of bread, for
"all poor and industrious [employed] men." This reduced the
agricultural workers to dependent paupers, placed an intolerable burden
on the parish, and encouraged landowners to keep wages
low.
Malthus attributed the rising population to this dependency culture,
which, he thought, encouraged early marriage and large families. He
feared social unrest, even revolution, due to food shortages. There
were serious food riots in 1816.
Fig 4 - Gross reproduction rates in five year cohorts
compared with 25 year moving average of real wage index. Gross
reproduction rates, which were used by Wrigley and Schofield as an
index of fertility,(4) are age specific birth rates of
women. (Reproduced from The Population History of England
1541-1871 with the permission of the authors and publishers) There were also demographic changes. In preindustrial England the
working classes practised virtually no birth control - coitus
interruptus was thought to be injurious to health. Fertility was
determined by the ability of a couple to afford to marry and have
children. This meant late marriage and small families. Though Malthus
did not discuss infanticide or abortion, Darwin regarded infanticide,
particularly of female infants, and abortion, as important positive
checks.(5) According to the preindustrial pattern, the coincidence of stable food
prices and rising wages should have caused fertility to rise. Instead,
from 1840 onwards, fertility began to fall and continued to fall until
the end of the century (fig 4). This was because contraception (the
vaginal sponge had been introduced from France, coitus interruptus was
now acceptable, and condoms had been used mainly to avoid venereal
disease from prostitutes) had become respectable and couples were
choosing to limit their families and to enjoy increased material
comfort.
Malthus was violently opposed to contraception and only referred to it
obliquely: "A promiscuous intercourse to such a degree as to prevent
the birth of children seems to lower in the most marked degree the
dignity of human nature."
Malthus advocated several socially progressive ideas but these
were never implemented in his lifetime. His social policies were
defeated by a combination of socioeconomic progress and by the
acceptance of an effective preventive measure, which he had refused to
recognise. His lasting contributions, however, were the concepts of the
tension between population and food supply and the positive and
preventive checks to po For almost a century Malthus's ideas were regarded as obsolete but the
Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth revived the
Malthusian analysis by pointing out the limitations of food supplies
and non-renewable sources of material and energy to cope with the
population explosion.(6)
Victoria Mill House, John A Black,
References
1 An essay on the principle of population.
1st ed. London: J Johnson, 1798.
2 Malthus T R. An essay on the principle of
population. 2nd ed. London: J Johnson, 1803:531.
3 Hammond J L, Hammond B. The village labourer 1760 -1832.
Abingdon: Fraser Stewart, 1995:100.
4 Wrigley E A, Schofield R S. The population history of
England 1541-1871. London: Arnold, 1981:403.
5 Darwin C. The descent of man and selection in relation
to sex. London: Murray, 1871:134.
6 Meadows D H, Meadows D L, Randers J, Behrens W H. The
limits to growth. New York: Universe Books,
1972.
Malthus was by training a mathematician and by profession a
teacher of political economy, but his work was greatly influenced by
his Christian convictions. In the first edition of his
Essay, published in 1798, he put forward the hypothesis
that population, if unchecked, would increase by geometrical ratio,
doubling itself every 25 years, while food supply could increase by
only arithmetical ratio. He suggested that population was controlled by
"positive checks" such as war, famine, and disease.
Academic career
Positive checks to population
Reacting against his father's enthusiasm for the Utopian ideas of
the Marquis de Condorcet and William Godwin, Malthus published the
first edition of his "essay" as a long pamphlet in 1798 (fig 3).
Its full title was "An essay on the principle of population as
it affects the future improvement of society. With
remarks on the speculations of Mr. Goodwin, M. Condorcet, and
other writers."(1)
Preventive checks
Malthus visited Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia in 1799 and
France and Switzerland in 1802, accumulating material, which was
incorporated into the second edition, published in 1803, under his own
name.(2) Significantly, the subtitle was altered to "Or a
view of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an
inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation
of the evils which it occasions."
Malthus's solution
The other side of Malthus
Changes in England
For 250 years before Malthus, population had been linked to the
price of food, with the prices increasing faster than population.
Between 1811 and 1871 the population again doubled, but this time food
prices fell, then stabilised; this was due to improvements in
agriculture and to the economies of scale resulting from the
enclosures. Wages began to rise, due to the demand for labour by
the industrial revolution, and continued to rise for the rest of the
century (fig 4). Conclusion
Framlingham,
Woodbridge,
Suffolk IP13 9EG
retired
consultant paediatrician
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