August 19, 2025 • 35 mins
In Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits, William Hazlitt masterfully captures the essence of his era through insightful monographs on a constellation of literary luminaries. Meet the likes of Jeremy Bentham, the architect of utilitarian philosophy, and William Godwin, who elevated morality beyond human reach. Delve into the minds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Irving, and Sir Walter Scott, as Hazlitt reveals their distinct contributions to literature and society. From the eloquence of Thomas Campbell, known for Pleasures of Hope, to the impactful thoughts of William Wordsworth and Thomas Malthus, Hazlitt provides a vivid portrayal of his contemporaries. Engaging comparisons between the works of Charles Lamb and Washington Irving further enrich this collection, making it a fascinating exploration of the literary landscape of his time. Summary by Craig Campbell.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eleven of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Chapter eleven.
Thomas Malthus. Mister Malthus may be considered as one of
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those rare and fortunate writers who have attained a scientific
reputation in questions of moral and political philosophy. His name
undoubtedly stands very high in the present age, and will
in all probability go down to posterity with more or
less of renown or obloquy. It was said by a
person well qualified to judge, both from strength and candor
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of mind, that it would take a thousand years at
least to answer his work on population. He has certainly
thrown a new light on that question and changed the
aspect of political economy in a decided and material point
of view. Whether he has not also endeavored to spread
a gloom over the hopes and more sanguine speculations of man,
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and to cast a slur upon the face of nature
is another question. There is this to be said for
mister Malthus that in speaking of him, one knows what
one is talking about. He is something beyond a mere name.
One has not to beat the bush about his talents,
his attainments, his vast reputation, and leave off without knowing
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what it all amounts to. He is not one of
those great men who set themselves off and strut and
fret an hour upon the stage during a day dream
of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the
common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption
gives them the least individual claim. He is dug into
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the mind of truth and brought up or mixed with
dross in wane his merits. We come at once to
the question of what he has done or failed to do.
It is a specific claim that he sets up. When
we speak of mister Malthus, we mean the Essay on Population,
and when we mention the Essay on Population, we mean
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a distinct, leading proposition that stands out intelligibly from all
trashy pretense, and is a ground on which to fix
the levers that may move the world backwards or forwards.
He has not left opinion where he found it. He
has advanced or given it a wrong bias, or thrown
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a stumbling block in its way. In a word, his
name is not stuck like so many others in the
firmament of reputation. Nobody knows why. Inscribed in great letters
and with a transparency of talents, genius, learning blazing round it,
it is tantamount to an idea. It is identified with
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the principle. It means that the population cannot go on
perpetually increasing without pressing on the limits of the means
of subsistence, that a check of some kind or other
must sooner or later be opposed to it. This is
the essence of the doctrine which mister Malthus has been
the first to bring into general notice, and as we
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think to establish beyond the fear of contradiction, Admitting then
as we do, the prominence and the value of his
claims to public attention, it yet remains a question how
far those claims are as to the talent displayed in
them strictly original, how far as to the logical accuracy
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with which he has treated the subject he has introduced
foreign and doubtful matter into it, And how far as
to the spirit in which he has conducted his inquiries
and applied a general principle to particular objects, he has
only drawn fair and inevitable conclusions from it, or endeavored
to tamper with and rest it to sinister and survivor purposes.
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A writer who shrinks from following up a well founded
principle into its untoward consequences from timidity or false delicacy
is not worthy of the name of a philosopher. A
writer who assumes the garb of candor and inflexible love
of truth to garble and pervert it, to crouch to power,
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and pander to prejudice deserves a worse title than that
of a sophist. Mister Malthus's first Octavo volume on this subject,
published in the year seventeen ninety eight, was intended as
an answer to mister Godwin's inquiry concerning political justice. It
was well got up for the purpose and had an
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immediate effect. It was what in the language of the
ring is called a facer. It made mister Godwin and
the other advocates of modern philosophy look about them. It
may be almost doubted whether mister Malthus was in the
first instance serious in many things that he threw out
or whether he did not hazard the whole as an
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amusing and extreme paradox, which might puzzle the reader, as
it had done himself in an idle moment, but to
which no practical consequence whatever could attach. This state of
mind would probably continue till the irritation of enemies and
the encouragement of friends convinced him that what he had
at first exhibited as an idle fancy was in fact
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a very valuable discovery, or, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
had yet a precious jewel in its head. Such a
supposition would at least account for some things in the
original essay which scarcely any rider would venture upon, except
as professed exercises of ingenuity, and which have been since
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in part retracted. But a wrong bias was thus given,
and the author's theory was thus rendered warped, disjointed, and
sophistical from the very outset. Nothing could, in fact be
more illogical, not to say absurd, than the whole of
mister Malthus's reasoning applied as an answer par excellence to
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mister Godwin's book, or to the theories of other utopian philosophers.
Mister Godwin was not singular, but was kept in countenance
by many authorities, both ancient and modern. In supposing a
state of society possible, in which the passions and wills
of individuals would be conformed to the general good, in
which the knowledge of the best means of promoting human
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welfare and the desire of contributing to it would banish
vice and misery from the world, and in which the
stumbling blocks of ignorance, of selfishness and the indulgence of
gross appetite being removed, all things would move on, by
the mere impulse of wisdom and virtue to still a
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higher and higher degree of perfection and happiness compared with
the lamentable and gross deficiencies of a existing institutions. Such
a view of futurity, as barely possible, could not fail
to allure the gaze in tempt. The aspiring thoughts of
the philanthropists and the philosopher, the hopes and the imaginations
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of speculative men, could not but rush forward into this
ideal world, as into a vacuum of good and from
the mighty stream of tendency, as mister Wordsworth in The
Cant of the Day calls it, there was danger that
the proud monuments of time, hallowed institutions, that the strongholds
of power and corruption, that the Corinthian capitals of polished society,
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with the base and pediments, might be overthrown and swept
away as by a hurricane. There were not wanting persons
whose ignorance, whose fears, whose pride, or whose prejudices contemplated
such an alternative with horror, and who would naturally feel
no small obligation to the man who should relieve their
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apperce hensions from the stunning roar of this mighty change
of opinion that thundered at a distance, and should be able,
by some logical apparatus or unexpected turn of the argument,
to prevent the vessel of the state from being hurried
forward with the progress of improvement and dashed in pieces
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down the tremendous precipice of human perfectibility. Then comes mister
Malthus forward with the geometrical and arithmetical ratios in his hands,
and holds them out to his affrighted contemporaries as the
only means of salvation. For so argued the author of
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the essay, let the principles of mister Godwin's inquiry and
of other similar works be carried literally and completely into effect.
Let every corruption and abuse of power be entirely got
rid of. Let virtue, knowledge, and civilization be advanced to
the greatest height. That these visionary reforms would suppose that
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the passions and appetites be subjected to the utmost control
of reason and influence of public opinion. Grant them, in
a word, all that they ask, and the more completely
their views are realized, the sooner will they be overthrown again,
And the more inevitable and fatal will be the catastrophe.
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For the principle of population will still prevail, and from
the comfort, ease, and plenty that will abound will receive
an increasing force and impetus. The number of mouths to
be fed will have no limit, but the food that
is to supply them cannot keep pace with the demand
for it. We must come to a stop somewhere, even
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though each square yard, by extreme improvements in cultivation, could
maintain its man. In this state of things, there will
be no remedy. The wholesome checks of vice and misery,
which have hitherto kept this principle within bounds, will have
been done away. The voice of reason will be unheard.
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The passions only will bear sway. Famine, distress, havoc and
dismay will spread around. Hatred, violence, war, and bloodshed will
be the infallible consequence. And from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement,
and social advantage, we shall be hurled once more into
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a profounder abyss of misery, want and barbarism than ever
by the sole operation of the principle of population. Such
is a brief abstract of the argument of the essay
can anything be less conclusive? A more complete fallacy and
petitio principii Mister Malthus concedes he assumes a state of perfectibility,
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such as his opponents imagined, in which the general good
is to obtain the entire mastery of individual interests and reason,
of gross appetites and passions. And then when he argues
that such a perfect structure of society will fall by
its own weight, or rather be undermined by the principle
of population, because in the highest possible state of the
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subjugation of passions to reason, they will be absolutely lawless
and unchecked, And because as men become enlightened, quick sighted,
and public spirited, they will show themselves utterly blind to
the consequences of their actions, utterly indifferent to their own
well being, and that of all succeeding generations whose fate
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is placed in their hands. This we conceive to be
the boldest paraogism that ever was offered to the world,
or palmed upon willing credulity. Against whatever other scheme of
reform this objection might be valid, the one it was
brought expressly to overturn was impregnable against it, invulnerable to
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its slightest. Grays say that the utopian reasoners of visionaries unfounded,
that the state of virtue and knowledge they suppose in
which reason shall have become all in all can never
take place, That it is inconsistent with the nature of
man and with all experience well and good. But to
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say that society will have attained this high and palmy state,
that reason will have become the master key to all
our motives, and that when arrived at its greatest power,
it will cease to act at all, but will fall
down dead, inert and sense. This before the principle of
population is an opinion which one would think few people
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would choose to advance or sent to without strong inducements
for maintaining or believing it. The fact, however, is that
mister Malthus found this argument entire, the principle and the
application of it in an obscure and almost forgotten work
published about the middle of the last century entitled Various
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Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence by a Scotch gentleman
of the name of Wallace. The chapter in this work
on the principle of population, considered as a bar to
all ultimate views of human improvement, was probably written to
amuse an idle hour, or read as a paper to
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exercise the wits of some literary society in the Northern capital,
and no farther responsibility or importance annexed to it. Mister Malthus,
by adopting and setting his name to it, has given
its sufficient currency and effect. It sometimes happens that one
writer is the first to discover a certain principle or
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lay down a given observation, that another makes an application of,
or draws a remote or an immediate inference from it,
totally unforeseen by the first, and from which in all
probability he might have widely dissented. But this is not
so in the present instance. Mister Malthus has borrowed, perhaps
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without consciousness at any rate, without acknowledgment, both the preliminary
statement that the increase and the supply of food from
a limited earth and a limited fertility must have an end,
while the tendency to increase in the principle of population
has none without some external and forcible restraint on it,
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and the subsequent use made of this statement as an
insuperable bar to all schemes of utopian or progressive improvement.
Both these he has borrowed whole from Wallace, with all
their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and
greater ones to them out of his own store. In
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order to produce something of a startling and dramatic effect.
He has strained a point or two in order to
quell and frighten away the bugbear of modern philosophy. He
was obliged to make a sort of monster of the
principle of population, which was brought into the field against it,
and which was to swallow it up quick No half measures,
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no middle course of reasoning would do. With a view
to meet the highest possible power of reason in the
new order of things, mister Malthus saw the necessity of
giving the greatest possible physical weight to the antagonist principle,
and he accordingly lays it down that its operation is
mechanical and irresistible. He premises these two propositions as the
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basis of all his reasoning. Number one, that food is
necessary to man. Number two, that the desire to propagate
the species is an equally indispensable law of our existence,
thus making it appear that these two wants or impulses
are equal and coordinate principles of action. If this double
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statement had been true, the whole scope and structure of
his reasoning, as hostile to human hopes and sanguine speculations,
would have been irrefragible. But as it is not true,
the whole in that view falls to the ground. According
to mister Malthus's octavo addition, the sexual passion is as
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necessary to be gratified as the appetite of hunger, and
a man can no more exist without propagating his species
than he can live without eating words. So neither of
these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any
restraint from reason or foresight, and the only checks to
the principle of population must be vice and misery, the
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argument would be triumphant and complete. But there is no analogy,
no parity in the two cases, such as our author
here assumes no man can live for any length of
time without food, many persons live all their lives without gratifying.
The other sense, the law longer the craving after food
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is unsatisfied, the more violent, imperious, and uncontrollable the desire becomes.
Whereas the longer the gratification of the sexual passion is resisted,
the greater force does habit and resolution acquire over it.
And generally speaking, it is a well known fact, attested
by all observation in history, that this latter passion is
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subject more or less to control from personal feelings in character,
from public opinions, and the institutions of society, so as
to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence or
to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of
moral restraint, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and
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unheard of consequences of the principle of population. Our author,
having no longer an extreme case to make out, admits
and is willing to patronize. In addition to the two
former and an exclusive ones of vice and misery. In
the second and remaining additions of his work, mister Malthus
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has shown some awkwardness or even reluctance, in softening down
the harshness of his first peremptory decision. He sometimes grants
his grand exception, cordially proceeds to argue stoutly and to
try conclusions upon it. At other times he seems disposed
to cavil about or retract it. The influence of moral
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restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all. It is
indeed difficult, more particularly for so formal and nice a
reasoner as mister Malthus, to peace such contradictions plausibly or
gracefully together. We wonder how he manages it, how anyone
should attempt it. The whole question, the gist of the
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argument of his early volume, turned upon this. Whether vice
and misery were the only actual or possible checks to
the principle of population? He then said they were, and
farewell to building castles in the air. He now says
that moral restraint is to be coupled with these, and
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that its influence depends greatly on the state of laws
and manners, and utopia stands where it did a great
way off, indeed, but not turn topsy turvy by our
magician's Wand should we ever arrive there, that is attained
to a state of perfect moral restraint, we shall not
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be driven headlong back into Epicurusu's style for want of
the only possible checks to population, vice and misery, and
in proportion, as we advance that way, that is, as
the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for
vice and misery will be diminished instead of being increased.
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According to the first alarm given by the essay, again,
the advance of civilization and population in consequence with the
same degree of moral restraint as there exists in England
at this present time, for instance, is a good and
not an evil. But this does not appear from the essay.
The essay shows that population is not, as had been
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sometimes taken for granted, an abstract and unqualified good, but
it led many persons to suppose that it was an
abstract and unqualified evil, to be checked only by vice
and misery, and producing, according to its encouragement, a greater
quantity of vice and misery. And this eir the author
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has not been at sufficient pains to do away. Another
thing in which mister Malthus attempted to clench Wallace's argument
was in giving to the disproportionate power of increase in
the principle of population and the supply of food a
mathematical form, or reducing it to the arithmetical and geometrical
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ratios in which we believe mister Malthus is now generally admitted,
even by his friends and admires, to have been wrong.
There is evidently no inherent difference in the principle of
increase in food or population, since a grain of corn,
for example, will propagate and multiply itself much faster even
than the human species. A bushel of wheat will sow afield,
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that field will furnish seed for twenty others, so that
the limit to the means of subsistence is only the
want of room to raise it in, or, as Wallace
expresses it, a limited fertility and a limited earth. Up
to the point where the earth or any given country
is fully occupied or cultivated, the means of subsistence naturally
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increases in the geometrical ratio, and will more than keep
pace with the natural and unrestrained progress of population, and
beyond that point they do not go on increasing, even
in mister Malthus's arithmetical ratio, but are stationary or nearly so.
So far then is the proportion from being universally and
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mathematically true that in no part of the world or
state of society does it hold good. But our theorist,
by laying down this double ratio as a law of nature,
gains this advantage that at all times it seems as if,
whether in new or old peopled countries, in fertile or
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barren soils, the population was pressing hard on the means
of subsistence. And again it seemed as if the evil
increased with the progress of improvement in civilization. Or if
you cast your eye at the scale which is supposed
to be calculated upon trust and infallible data, you find
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that when the population is at eight, the means of
subsistence are at four, so that here there is only
a deficit of one half. But when it is at
thirty two, they have only got to six, so that
here there is a difference of twenty six in thirty two,
and so on in proportion. The farther we proceed, the
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more enormous is the mass of vice and misery we
must undergo as a consequence of the natural excess of
the population over the means of subsistence, and as a
salutary check to its farther desolating progress. The mathematical table
placed at the front of the essay therefore leads to
a secret suspicion or bear faced assumption, that we ought,
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in mere kindness and compassion, to give every sort of
indirect and underhand encouragement, to say the least, to the
providential checks of vice and misery. As the sooner we
arrest this formidable and paramount evil in its course, the
less opportunity we leave it of doing incalculable mischief. Accordingly,
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whenever there is the least talk of colonizing new countries,
of extending the population, or adding to social comforts and improvements,
mister Malthus conjures up his double ratios and insists on
the alarming results of advancing them a single step forward
in the series. By the same result, it would be
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better to return at once to a state of barbarism,
and to take the benefit of acorns and scuttlefish as
a security against the luxuries and wants of civilized life.
But it is not our ingenious author's wish to hint
at or recommend any alterations in existing institutions, and he
is therefore silent on that unpalatable part of the subject
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and natural inference from his principles. Mister Malthus's gospel is
preached to the poor. He lectures them on economy, on morality,
the regulation of their passions, which he says at other
times are amenable to no restraint, and on the ungracious
topic that the laws of nature, which are the laws
of God, have doomed them and their family to starve
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for want of a right to the smallest portion of
food beyond what their labor will supply, or some charitable
hand may hold out in compassion. This is illiberal, and
it is not philosophical. The laws of nature or of
God to which the author appeals are no other than
a limited fertility and a limited earth. Within those bounds,
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the rest is regulated by the laws of man. The
division of the produce of the soil, the price of labour,
the relief afforded to the poor are matters of human arrangement.
While any charitable hand can extend relief, it is a
proof that the means of subsistence are not exhausted in themselves,
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that the tables are not full. Mister Malthus says that
the laws of nature, which are the laws of God,
have rendered that relief physically impossible, and yet he would
abrogate the poor laws by an act of the legis,
in order to take away that impossible relief which the
laws of God deny, and which the laws of man
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actually afford. We cannot think that this view of his subject,
which is prominent and dwelt on at great length and
with much pertinacity, is dictated either by rigid logic or
melting charity. A laboring man is not allowed to knock
down a hare or a partridge that spoils his garden.
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A country squire keeps a pack of hounds. A lady
of quality rides out with a footman behind her on
two sleek, well fed horses. We have not a word
to say against all this as exemplifying the spirit of
the English Constitution, as a part of the law of
the land, or as an artificial distribution of light and
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shade in the social picture. But if anyone insists at
the same time that the laws of nature, which are
the laws of God, have doomed the poor and their
families to starve, because the principle of population has encroached
upon and swallowed up the means of subsistence, so that
not a mouthful of food is left by the grinding
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law of necessity for the poor. We beg leave to
deny both the fact and inference, and we put it
to mister Malthus whether we are not, in strictness justified
in doing so. We have perhaps said enough to explain
our feeling on the subject of mister Malthus's merits and defects.
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We think he had the opportunity and the means in
his hands of producing a great work on the principle
of population, but we believe he has let it slip
from his having an eye to other things besides that
broad and unexplored question. He wished not merely to advance
to the discovery of certain great and valuable truths, but
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at the same time to overthrow certain unfashionable paradoxes by
exaggerated statements, to curry favor with existing prejudices and interests
by garbled representations. He has, in other words, as it
appears to us, on a candid retrospect, and without any
feeling of controversial asperity. Rankling in our minds sunk the
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philosopher and the friend of his species, a character to
which he might have aspired in the Sophist and party writer.
The period at which mister Malthus came forward teemed with
answers to modern philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and humanity,
with abusive histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with
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fulsome panegyrics to the Roman emperors, at the very time
when we were reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire,
with the slime and offal of desperate civility. And we
cannot but consider the essay as one of the poisonous
ingredients thrown into the cauldron of life, lejitimacy to make
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it thick and slab our. Author has indeed so far
done service to the cause of truth that he has
counteracted many capital heirs formally prevailing as to the universal
and indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances. But he
has countenanced opposite errors, which, if adopted in theory and practice,
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would be even more mischievous, and has left it to
future philosophers to follow up the principle that some check
must be provided for the unrestrained progress of population into
a set of wiser and more humane consequences. Mister Godwin
has lately attempted an answer to the essay, thus giving
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mister Malthus a Roland for his oliver. But we think
he has judged ill in endeavoring to invalidate the principle
instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication of it.
There is one argument introduced mos in this reply, which
will perhaps amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.
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It has sometimes occurred to me whether mister Malthus did
not catch the first hint of his geometrical ratio from
a curious passage of Judge Blackstone on the consanguinity, which
is as follows. The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently
plain and obvious, but it is at the first view
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astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every
man has within no very great number of degrees, and
so many different bloods. Is a man said to contain
in his veins as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these,
he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents,
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he hath four in the second, the parents of his father,
and the parents of his mother. He hath eight in
the third the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers.
And by the same rule of progression, he hath one
hundred and twenty eight in the seventh, a thousand and
twenty four in the tenth, and at the twentieth degree,
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or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above
a million of ancestors. A common arithmetic will demonstrate. This
will seem surprising to those who are un acquainted with
the increasing power of progressive numbers, but is palpably evident
from the following table of geometrical progression, in which the
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first term is two and the denominator also two. Or,
to speak more intelligibly, it is evident for that each
of us has two ancestors in the first degree, the
number of which is doubled at every remove, because each
of our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.
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A chart of lineal degrees number of ancestors first degree
to TiO two, second degree four, third degree eight, fourth
degree sixteen, fifth degree thirty two, sixth degree sixty four,
seventh degree one hundred and twenty eight, eighth degree two
hundred and fifty six, ninth degree five hundred and twelve,
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tenth degree one thousand, twenty four, eleventh degree two thousand,
forty eight, twelfth degree four thousand, ninety six, thirteenth degree
eight thousand, one hundred and ninety two, fourteenth degree sixteen thousand,
three hundred eighty four, fifteenth degree thirty two thousand, seven
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hundred and sixty eight, sixteenth degree sixty five thousand, five
hundred and thirty six, seventeenth degree one hundred and thirty
one thousand and seventy two, eighteenth degree two hundred and
sixty two thousand, one hundred forty four, nineteen degree five
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hundred twenty four thousand, two hundred eighty eight, twentieth degree
one million, forty eight thousand, five hundred and seventy six.
End of chart. This argument, however, proceeds mister Godwin from
Judge Blackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally
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apply to Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world
and prove that the human species is hastening fast to
extinction than to the purpose for which mister Malthus has
employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it
to show that the race of mankind will ultimately terminate
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in unity. Mister Malthus indeed should have reflected that it
is much more certain that every man has had ancestors
than that he will have posterity, and that it is
still more doubtful whether he will have poster to twenty
or to an indefinite number of generations. End of quotation
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from the Inquiry concerning Population, page one hundred. Mister Malthus's
style is correct and elegant, his tone of controversy mild
and gentlemanly, and the care with which he has brought
his facts and documents together deserves the highest praise. He
has lately quitted his favorite subject of population, and broke
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a lance with mister Ricardo on the question of rent
and value. The partisans of mister Ricardo, who are also
the admirers of mister Malthus, say that the usual sagacity
of the latter has here failed him, and that he
has shown himself to be a very illogical writer. To
have said this of him formerly, on another ground was
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accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily
to be forgiven. Indeed, mister Malthus has always been a
sort of darling in the public eye, whom it was
on safe to meddle with. He has contrived to make
himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes
of human perfectibility and on the poor laws as Mandeville
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formerly procured enemies by his attacks on human perfections and
on charity schools, And among other instances that we might
mention Plug Pulteney, the celebrated ad miser, of whom mister
Burke said, on his having a large estate left him
that now it was to be hoped he would set
up a pocket handkerchief, was so enamored with the saving
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schemes and humane economy of the essay that he desired
a friend to find out the author and offer him
a church living. This liberal intention was, by design or
accident unhappily frustrated. End of Chapter eleven,
Chapter eleven of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Haslett. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Chapter eleven.
Thomas Malthus. Mister Malthus may be considered as one of
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those rare and fortunate writers who have attained a scientific
reputation in questions of moral and political philosophy. His name
undoubtedly stands very high in the present age, and will
in all probability go down to posterity with more or
less of renown or obloquy. It was said by a
person well qualified to judge, both from strength and candor
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of mind, that it would take a thousand years at
least to answer his work on population. He has certainly
thrown a new light on that question and changed the
aspect of political economy in a decided and material point
of view. Whether he has not also endeavored to spread
a gloom over the hopes and more sanguine speculations of man,
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and to cast a slur upon the face of nature
is another question. There is this to be said for
mister Malthus that in speaking of him, one knows what
one is talking about. He is something beyond a mere name.
One has not to beat the bush about his talents,
his attainments, his vast reputation, and leave off without knowing
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what it all amounts to. He is not one of
those great men who set themselves off and strut and
fret an hour upon the stage during a day dream
of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the
common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption
gives them the least individual claim. He is dug into
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the mind of truth and brought up or mixed with
dross in wane his merits. We come at once to
the question of what he has done or failed to do.
It is a specific claim that he sets up. When
we speak of mister Malthus, we mean the Essay on Population,
and when we mention the Essay on Population, we mean
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a distinct, leading proposition that stands out intelligibly from all
trashy pretense, and is a ground on which to fix
the levers that may move the world backwards or forwards.
He has not left opinion where he found it. He
has advanced or given it a wrong bias, or thrown
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a stumbling block in its way. In a word, his
name is not stuck like so many others in the
firmament of reputation. Nobody knows why. Inscribed in great letters
and with a transparency of talents, genius, learning blazing round it,
it is tantamount to an idea. It is identified with
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the principle. It means that the population cannot go on
perpetually increasing without pressing on the limits of the means
of subsistence, that a check of some kind or other
must sooner or later be opposed to it. This is
the essence of the doctrine which mister Malthus has been
the first to bring into general notice, and as we
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think to establish beyond the fear of contradiction, Admitting then
as we do, the prominence and the value of his
claims to public attention, it yet remains a question how
far those claims are as to the talent displayed in
them strictly original, how far as to the logical accuracy
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with which he has treated the subject he has introduced
foreign and doubtful matter into it, And how far as
to the spirit in which he has conducted his inquiries
and applied a general principle to particular objects, he has
only drawn fair and inevitable conclusions from it, or endeavored
to tamper with and rest it to sinister and survivor purposes.
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A writer who shrinks from following up a well founded
principle into its untoward consequences from timidity or false delicacy
is not worthy of the name of a philosopher. A
writer who assumes the garb of candor and inflexible love
of truth to garble and pervert it, to crouch to power,
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and pander to prejudice deserves a worse title than that
of a sophist. Mister Malthus's first Octavo volume on this subject,
published in the year seventeen ninety eight, was intended as
an answer to mister Godwin's inquiry concerning political justice. It
was well got up for the purpose and had an
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immediate effect. It was what in the language of the
ring is called a facer. It made mister Godwin and
the other advocates of modern philosophy look about them. It
may be almost doubted whether mister Malthus was in the
first instance serious in many things that he threw out
or whether he did not hazard the whole as an
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amusing and extreme paradox, which might puzzle the reader, as
it had done himself in an idle moment, but to
which no practical consequence whatever could attach. This state of
mind would probably continue till the irritation of enemies and
the encouragement of friends convinced him that what he had
at first exhibited as an idle fancy was in fact
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a very valuable discovery, or, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
had yet a precious jewel in its head. Such a
supposition would at least account for some things in the
original essay which scarcely any rider would venture upon, except
as professed exercises of ingenuity, and which have been since
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in part retracted. But a wrong bias was thus given,
and the author's theory was thus rendered warped, disjointed, and
sophistical from the very outset. Nothing could, in fact be
more illogical, not to say absurd, than the whole of
mister Malthus's reasoning applied as an answer par excellence to
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mister Godwin's book, or to the theories of other utopian philosophers.
Mister Godwin was not singular, but was kept in countenance
by many authorities, both ancient and modern. In supposing a
state of society possible, in which the passions and wills
of individuals would be conformed to the general good, in
which the knowledge of the best means of promoting human
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welfare and the desire of contributing to it would banish
vice and misery from the world, and in which the
stumbling blocks of ignorance, of selfishness and the indulgence of
gross appetite being removed, all things would move on, by
the mere impulse of wisdom and virtue to still a
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higher and higher degree of perfection and happiness compared with
the lamentable and gross deficiencies of a existing institutions. Such
a view of futurity, as barely possible, could not fail
to allure the gaze in tempt. The aspiring thoughts of
the philanthropists and the philosopher, the hopes and the imaginations
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of speculative men, could not but rush forward into this
ideal world, as into a vacuum of good and from
the mighty stream of tendency, as mister Wordsworth in The
Cant of the Day calls it, there was danger that
the proud monuments of time, hallowed institutions, that the strongholds
of power and corruption, that the Corinthian capitals of polished society,
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with the base and pediments, might be overthrown and swept
away as by a hurricane. There were not wanting persons
whose ignorance, whose fears, whose pride, or whose prejudices contemplated
such an alternative with horror, and who would naturally feel
no small obligation to the man who should relieve their
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apperce hensions from the stunning roar of this mighty change
of opinion that thundered at a distance, and should be able,
by some logical apparatus or unexpected turn of the argument,
to prevent the vessel of the state from being hurried
forward with the progress of improvement and dashed in pieces
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down the tremendous precipice of human perfectibility. Then comes mister
Malthus forward with the geometrical and arithmetical ratios in his hands,
and holds them out to his affrighted contemporaries as the
only means of salvation. For so argued the author of
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the essay, let the principles of mister Godwin's inquiry and
of other similar works be carried literally and completely into effect.
Let every corruption and abuse of power be entirely got
rid of. Let virtue, knowledge, and civilization be advanced to
the greatest height. That these visionary reforms would suppose that
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the passions and appetites be subjected to the utmost control
of reason and influence of public opinion. Grant them, in
a word, all that they ask, and the more completely
their views are realized, the sooner will they be overthrown again,
And the more inevitable and fatal will be the catastrophe.
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For the principle of population will still prevail, and from
the comfort, ease, and plenty that will abound will receive
an increasing force and impetus. The number of mouths to
be fed will have no limit, but the food that
is to supply them cannot keep pace with the demand
for it. We must come to a stop somewhere, even
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though each square yard, by extreme improvements in cultivation, could
maintain its man. In this state of things, there will
be no remedy. The wholesome checks of vice and misery,
which have hitherto kept this principle within bounds, will have
been done away. The voice of reason will be unheard.
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The passions only will bear sway. Famine, distress, havoc and
dismay will spread around. Hatred, violence, war, and bloodshed will
be the infallible consequence. And from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement,
and social advantage, we shall be hurled once more into
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a profounder abyss of misery, want and barbarism than ever
by the sole operation of the principle of population. Such
is a brief abstract of the argument of the essay
can anything be less conclusive? A more complete fallacy and
petitio principii Mister Malthus concedes he assumes a state of perfectibility,
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such as his opponents imagined, in which the general good
is to obtain the entire mastery of individual interests and reason,
of gross appetites and passions. And then when he argues
that such a perfect structure of society will fall by
its own weight, or rather be undermined by the principle
of population, because in the highest possible state of the
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subjugation of passions to reason, they will be absolutely lawless
and unchecked, And because as men become enlightened, quick sighted,
and public spirited, they will show themselves utterly blind to
the consequences of their actions, utterly indifferent to their own
well being, and that of all succeeding generations whose fate
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is placed in their hands. This we conceive to be
the boldest paraogism that ever was offered to the world,
or palmed upon willing credulity. Against whatever other scheme of
reform this objection might be valid, the one it was
brought expressly to overturn was impregnable against it, invulnerable to
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its slightest. Grays say that the utopian reasoners of visionaries unfounded,
that the state of virtue and knowledge they suppose in
which reason shall have become all in all can never
take place, That it is inconsistent with the nature of
man and with all experience well and good. But to
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say that society will have attained this high and palmy state,
that reason will have become the master key to all
our motives, and that when arrived at its greatest power,
it will cease to act at all, but will fall
down dead, inert and sense. This before the principle of
population is an opinion which one would think few people
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would choose to advance or sent to without strong inducements
for maintaining or believing it. The fact, however, is that
mister Malthus found this argument entire, the principle and the
application of it in an obscure and almost forgotten work
published about the middle of the last century entitled Various
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Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence by a Scotch gentleman
of the name of Wallace. The chapter in this work
on the principle of population, considered as a bar to
all ultimate views of human improvement, was probably written to
amuse an idle hour, or read as a paper to
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exercise the wits of some literary society in the Northern capital,
and no farther responsibility or importance annexed to it. Mister Malthus,
by adopting and setting his name to it, has given
its sufficient currency and effect. It sometimes happens that one
writer is the first to discover a certain principle or
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lay down a given observation, that another makes an application of,
or draws a remote or an immediate inference from it,
totally unforeseen by the first, and from which in all
probability he might have widely dissented. But this is not
so in the present instance. Mister Malthus has borrowed, perhaps
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without consciousness at any rate, without acknowledgment, both the preliminary
statement that the increase and the supply of food from
a limited earth and a limited fertility must have an end,
while the tendency to increase in the principle of population
has none without some external and forcible restraint on it,
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and the subsequent use made of this statement as an
insuperable bar to all schemes of utopian or progressive improvement.
Both these he has borrowed whole from Wallace, with all
their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and
greater ones to them out of his own store. In
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order to produce something of a startling and dramatic effect.
He has strained a point or two in order to
quell and frighten away the bugbear of modern philosophy. He
was obliged to make a sort of monster of the
principle of population, which was brought into the field against it,
and which was to swallow it up quick No half measures,
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no middle course of reasoning would do. With a view
to meet the highest possible power of reason in the
new order of things, mister Malthus saw the necessity of
giving the greatest possible physical weight to the antagonist principle,
and he accordingly lays it down that its operation is
mechanical and irresistible. He premises these two propositions as the
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basis of all his reasoning. Number one, that food is
necessary to man. Number two, that the desire to propagate
the species is an equally indispensable law of our existence,
thus making it appear that these two wants or impulses
are equal and coordinate principles of action. If this double
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statement had been true, the whole scope and structure of
his reasoning, as hostile to human hopes and sanguine speculations,
would have been irrefragible. But as it is not true,
the whole in that view falls to the ground. According
to mister Malthus's octavo addition, the sexual passion is as
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necessary to be gratified as the appetite of hunger, and
a man can no more exist without propagating his species
than he can live without eating words. So neither of
these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any
restraint from reason or foresight, and the only checks to
the principle of population must be vice and misery, the
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argument would be triumphant and complete. But there is no analogy,
no parity in the two cases, such as our author
here assumes no man can live for any length of
time without food, many persons live all their lives without gratifying.
The other sense, the law longer the craving after food
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is unsatisfied, the more violent, imperious, and uncontrollable the desire becomes.
Whereas the longer the gratification of the sexual passion is resisted,
the greater force does habit and resolution acquire over it.
And generally speaking, it is a well known fact, attested
by all observation in history, that this latter passion is
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subject more or less to control from personal feelings in character,
from public opinions, and the institutions of society, so as
to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence or
to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of
moral restraint, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and
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unheard of consequences of the principle of population. Our author,
having no longer an extreme case to make out, admits
and is willing to patronize. In addition to the two
former and an exclusive ones of vice and misery. In
the second and remaining additions of his work, mister Malthus
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has shown some awkwardness or even reluctance, in softening down
the harshness of his first peremptory decision. He sometimes grants
his grand exception, cordially proceeds to argue stoutly and to
try conclusions upon it. At other times he seems disposed
to cavil about or retract it. The influence of moral
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restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all. It is
indeed difficult, more particularly for so formal and nice a
reasoner as mister Malthus, to peace such contradictions plausibly or
gracefully together. We wonder how he manages it, how anyone
should attempt it. The whole question, the gist of the
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argument of his early volume, turned upon this. Whether vice
and misery were the only actual or possible checks to
the principle of population? He then said they were, and
farewell to building castles in the air. He now says
that moral restraint is to be coupled with these, and
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that its influence depends greatly on the state of laws
and manners, and utopia stands where it did a great
way off, indeed, but not turn topsy turvy by our
magician's Wand should we ever arrive there, that is attained
to a state of perfect moral restraint, we shall not
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be driven headlong back into Epicurusu's style for want of
the only possible checks to population, vice and misery, and
in proportion, as we advance that way, that is, as
the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for
vice and misery will be diminished instead of being increased.
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According to the first alarm given by the essay, again,
the advance of civilization and population in consequence with the
same degree of moral restraint as there exists in England
at this present time, for instance, is a good and
not an evil. But this does not appear from the essay.
The essay shows that population is not, as had been
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sometimes taken for granted, an abstract and unqualified good, but
it led many persons to suppose that it was an
abstract and unqualified evil, to be checked only by vice
and misery, and producing, according to its encouragement, a greater
quantity of vice and misery. And this eir the author
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has not been at sufficient pains to do away. Another
thing in which mister Malthus attempted to clench Wallace's argument
was in giving to the disproportionate power of increase in
the principle of population and the supply of food a
mathematical form, or reducing it to the arithmetical and geometrical
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ratios in which we believe mister Malthus is now generally admitted,
even by his friends and admires, to have been wrong.
There is evidently no inherent difference in the principle of
increase in food or population, since a grain of corn,
for example, will propagate and multiply itself much faster even
than the human species. A bushel of wheat will sow afield,
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that field will furnish seed for twenty others, so that
the limit to the means of subsistence is only the
want of room to raise it in, or, as Wallace
expresses it, a limited fertility and a limited earth. Up
to the point where the earth or any given country
is fully occupied or cultivated, the means of subsistence naturally
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increases in the geometrical ratio, and will more than keep
pace with the natural and unrestrained progress of population, and
beyond that point they do not go on increasing, even
in mister Malthus's arithmetical ratio, but are stationary or nearly so.
So far then is the proportion from being universally and
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mathematically true that in no part of the world or
state of society does it hold good. But our theorist,
by laying down this double ratio as a law of nature,
gains this advantage that at all times it seems as if,
whether in new or old peopled countries, in fertile or
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barren soils, the population was pressing hard on the means
of subsistence. And again it seemed as if the evil
increased with the progress of improvement in civilization. Or if
you cast your eye at the scale which is supposed
to be calculated upon trust and infallible data, you find
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that when the population is at eight, the means of
subsistence are at four, so that here there is only
a deficit of one half. But when it is at
thirty two, they have only got to six, so that
here there is a difference of twenty six in thirty two,
and so on in proportion. The farther we proceed, the
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more enormous is the mass of vice and misery we
must undergo as a consequence of the natural excess of
the population over the means of subsistence, and as a
salutary check to its farther desolating progress. The mathematical table
placed at the front of the essay therefore leads to
a secret suspicion or bear faced assumption, that we ought,
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in mere kindness and compassion, to give every sort of
indirect and underhand encouragement, to say the least, to the
providential checks of vice and misery. As the sooner we
arrest this formidable and paramount evil in its course, the
less opportunity we leave it of doing incalculable mischief. Accordingly,
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whenever there is the least talk of colonizing new countries,
of extending the population, or adding to social comforts and improvements,
mister Malthus conjures up his double ratios and insists on
the alarming results of advancing them a single step forward
in the series. By the same result, it would be
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better to return at once to a state of barbarism,
and to take the benefit of acorns and scuttlefish as
a security against the luxuries and wants of civilized life.
But it is not our ingenious author's wish to hint
at or recommend any alterations in existing institutions, and he
is therefore silent on that unpalatable part of the subject
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and natural inference from his principles. Mister Malthus's gospel is
preached to the poor. He lectures them on economy, on morality,
the regulation of their passions, which he says at other
times are amenable to no restraint, and on the ungracious
topic that the laws of nature, which are the laws
of God, have doomed them and their family to starve
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for want of a right to the smallest portion of
food beyond what their labor will supply, or some charitable
hand may hold out in compassion. This is illiberal, and
it is not philosophical. The laws of nature or of
God to which the author appeals are no other than
a limited fertility and a limited earth. Within those bounds,
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the rest is regulated by the laws of man. The
division of the produce of the soil, the price of labour,
the relief afforded to the poor are matters of human arrangement.
While any charitable hand can extend relief, it is a
proof that the means of subsistence are not exhausted in themselves,
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that the tables are not full. Mister Malthus says that
the laws of nature, which are the laws of God,
have rendered that relief physically impossible, and yet he would
abrogate the poor laws by an act of the legis,
in order to take away that impossible relief which the
laws of God deny, and which the laws of man
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actually afford. We cannot think that this view of his subject,
which is prominent and dwelt on at great length and
with much pertinacity, is dictated either by rigid logic or
melting charity. A laboring man is not allowed to knock
down a hare or a partridge that spoils his garden.
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A country squire keeps a pack of hounds. A lady
of quality rides out with a footman behind her on
two sleek, well fed horses. We have not a word
to say against all this as exemplifying the spirit of
the English Constitution, as a part of the law of
the land, or as an artificial distribution of light and
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shade in the social picture. But if anyone insists at
the same time that the laws of nature, which are
the laws of God, have doomed the poor and their
families to starve, because the principle of population has encroached
upon and swallowed up the means of subsistence, so that
not a mouthful of food is left by the grinding
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law of necessity for the poor. We beg leave to
deny both the fact and inference, and we put it
to mister Malthus whether we are not, in strictness justified
in doing so. We have perhaps said enough to explain
our feeling on the subject of mister Malthus's merits and defects.
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We think he had the opportunity and the means in
his hands of producing a great work on the principle
of population, but we believe he has let it slip
from his having an eye to other things besides that
broad and unexplored question. He wished not merely to advance
to the discovery of certain great and valuable truths, but
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at the same time to overthrow certain unfashionable paradoxes by
exaggerated statements, to curry favor with existing prejudices and interests
by garbled representations. He has, in other words, as it
appears to us, on a candid retrospect, and without any
feeling of controversial asperity. Rankling in our minds sunk the
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philosopher and the friend of his species, a character to
which he might have aspired in the Sophist and party writer.
The period at which mister Malthus came forward teemed with
answers to modern philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and humanity,
with abusive histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with
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fulsome panegyrics to the Roman emperors, at the very time
when we were reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire,
with the slime and offal of desperate civility. And we
cannot but consider the essay as one of the poisonous
ingredients thrown into the cauldron of life, lejitimacy to make
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it thick and slab our. Author has indeed so far
done service to the cause of truth that he has
counteracted many capital heirs formally prevailing as to the universal
and indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances. But he
has countenanced opposite errors, which, if adopted in theory and practice,
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would be even more mischievous, and has left it to
future philosophers to follow up the principle that some check
must be provided for the unrestrained progress of population into
a set of wiser and more humane consequences. Mister Godwin
has lately attempted an answer to the essay, thus giving
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mister Malthus a Roland for his oliver. But we think
he has judged ill in endeavoring to invalidate the principle
instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication of it.
There is one argument introduced mos in this reply, which
will perhaps amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.
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It has sometimes occurred to me whether mister Malthus did
not catch the first hint of his geometrical ratio from
a curious passage of Judge Blackstone on the consanguinity, which
is as follows. The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently
plain and obvious, but it is at the first view
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astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every
man has within no very great number of degrees, and
so many different bloods. Is a man said to contain
in his veins as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these,
he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents,
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he hath four in the second, the parents of his father,
and the parents of his mother. He hath eight in
the third the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers.
And by the same rule of progression, he hath one
hundred and twenty eight in the seventh, a thousand and
twenty four in the tenth, and at the twentieth degree,
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or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above
a million of ancestors. A common arithmetic will demonstrate. This
will seem surprising to those who are un acquainted with
the increasing power of progressive numbers, but is palpably evident
from the following table of geometrical progression, in which the
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first term is two and the denominator also two. Or,
to speak more intelligibly, it is evident for that each
of us has two ancestors in the first degree, the
number of which is doubled at every remove, because each
of our ancestors had also two ancestors of his own.
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A chart of lineal degrees number of ancestors first degree
to TiO two, second degree four, third degree eight, fourth
degree sixteen, fifth degree thirty two, sixth degree sixty four,
seventh degree one hundred and twenty eight, eighth degree two
hundred and fifty six, ninth degree five hundred and twelve,
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tenth degree one thousand, twenty four, eleventh degree two thousand,
forty eight, twelfth degree four thousand, ninety six, thirteenth degree
eight thousand, one hundred and ninety two, fourteenth degree sixteen thousand,
three hundred eighty four, fifteenth degree thirty two thousand, seven
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hundred and sixty eight, sixteenth degree sixty five thousand, five
hundred and thirty six, seventeenth degree one hundred and thirty
one thousand and seventy two, eighteenth degree two hundred and
sixty two thousand, one hundred forty four, nineteen degree five
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hundred twenty four thousand, two hundred eighty eight, twentieth degree
one million, forty eight thousand, five hundred and seventy six.
End of chart. This argument, however, proceeds mister Godwin from
Judge Blackstone of a geometrical progression would much more naturally
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apply to Montesquieu's hypothesis of the depopulation of the world
and prove that the human species is hastening fast to
extinction than to the purpose for which mister Malthus has
employed it. An ingenious sophism might be raised upon it
to show that the race of mankind will ultimately terminate
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in unity. Mister Malthus indeed should have reflected that it
is much more certain that every man has had ancestors
than that he will have posterity, and that it is
still more doubtful whether he will have poster to twenty
or to an indefinite number of generations. End of quotation
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from the Inquiry concerning Population, page one hundred. Mister Malthus's
style is correct and elegant, his tone of controversy mild
and gentlemanly, and the care with which he has brought
his facts and documents together deserves the highest praise. He
has lately quitted his favorite subject of population, and broke
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a lance with mister Ricardo on the question of rent
and value. The partisans of mister Ricardo, who are also
the admirers of mister Malthus, say that the usual sagacity
of the latter has here failed him, and that he
has shown himself to be a very illogical writer. To
have said this of him formerly, on another ground was
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accounted a heresy and a piece of presumption not easily
to be forgiven. Indeed, mister Malthus has always been a
sort of darling in the public eye, whom it was
on safe to meddle with. He has contrived to make
himself as many friends by his attacks on the schemes
of human perfectibility and on the poor laws as Mandeville
(35:10):
formerly procured enemies by his attacks on human perfections and
on charity schools, And among other instances that we might
mention Plug Pulteney, the celebrated ad miser, of whom mister
Burke said, on his having a large estate left him
that now it was to be hoped he would set
up a pocket handkerchief, was so enamored with the saving
(35:32):
schemes and humane economy of the essay that he desired
a friend to find out the author and offer him
a church living. This liberal intention was, by design or
accident unhappily frustrated. End of Chapter eleven,
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