If it be desired to discover a remedy for an admitted evil, the first step must necessarily be to ascertain its cause. All schemes for the mitigation of the effects of poverty must in the long run end in failure, no matter how ambitious may be the undertakings of those who engage in this futile work. The captain of a sinking vessel does not confine his attention to the pumps, he seeks without delay to stop the inrush of water. And in dealing with the question of poverty it is essential that its root-cause be discovered before any hope of arriving at a solution of the problem can reasonably be entertained.

An enquiry into the facts of nature will show that all forms of vegetable and animal life are capable of reproducing themselves in almost boundless profusion. Darwin, in his work on The Origin of Species, points this out with the greatest clearness. He says: “There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered with the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years; and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny. LinnÆus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds—and there is no plant so unproductive as this—and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then, in twenty years there would be a million plants.” After giving the example of the slow-breeding elephant, he continues: “Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals of many kinds which have run wild in many parts of the world; if the statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses in South America, and latterly in Australia, had not been well authenticated, they would have been incredible. So it is with plants: cases could be given of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, now most numerous over the wild plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of all other plants, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, which have been imported from America since its discovery. In such cases, and endless instances could be given, no one supposes that the fertility of these animals or plants has been suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious explanation is that the conditions of life have been very favorable, and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and young, and that nearly all the young have been able to breed. In such cases, the geometrical rate of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion of naturalised productions in their new homes. In a state of nature, almost every plant produces seed, and among animals there are very few that do not annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert that all plants and animals are tending to increase at a geometrical ratio; that all would most rapidly stock every station in which they could anyhow exist, and that the geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life.”

It was the observation of this striking fact in nature which led an English clergyman, the Rev. Thomas B. Malthus, to study deeply the question of poverty, and to formulate as “the principle of population” that which is now almost universally regarded as a law of nature. Before he published his great work the view was generally accepted that the wealth of a country was in proportion to its population; and statesmen frequently attempted to stimulate, by the distribution of bounties to the parents of excessively large families, the natural rate of increase. A few far-sighted men, such as the elder Mirabeau, Quesnay, and Adam Smith, partially perceived the true doctrine; but it remained for Malthus to examine the question in all its bearings, and to collect patiently and laboriously an overwhelming array of facts which established his contention beyond all reasonable doubt. It will be well here to give some account of this remarkable man and of the work with which his name is indissolubly associated.

Thomas Robert Malthus was born at Dorking, Surrey, in 1766. At the age of thirty-one he became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and shortly afterwards took orders, officiating in a small village in Surrey.

In the closing years of the eighteenth century, the minds of men in England were powerfully influenced by the great social upheaval taking place in France, and political views in this country were entering upon a new phase. The rights of man were coming to be regarded as something more than a phrase, and a generous desire to promote the welfare of the people was gradually taking the place of selfish indifference. Condorcet in France, and William Godwin in England, promulgated the view that the happiness of mankind depended chiefly upon the justice of political institutions, and that national welfare could be indefinitely promoted by just government. Daniel Malthus (the father of Thomas Robert), a man of sanguine and romantic temperament, warmly espoused the ideas set forth by Godwin, and frequently discussed the subject with his son. The younger man, however, by no means shared the paternal enthusiasm, and, following the lines suggested by Hume, Adam Smith, and other writers, he maintained that vice and misery were two powerful obstacles to the improvement of society, and urged, further, that the tendency of mankind to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence gave rise to these evils. His arguments made a deep impression upon the mind of Daniel Malthus, who requested his son to put them in writing. This was accordingly done, and in 1798 T. R. Malthus published the first edition of his work: An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society; with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, Mr. Condorcet and other Writers. (London: 1798. One volume.)

This book aroused a lively controversy, the writer’s theories and conclusions being attacked and defended by various writers. The great interest excited by his essay caused Malthus to enquire still more deeply into the phenomena of poverty, and he determined to travel through Europe for the purpose of collecting facts bearing upon the subject. In 1799 he visited the continent, passing through Denmark, Sweden, and part of Russia, and, later, Switzerland and Savoy. The results of his researches furnished overwhelming proof of the accuracy of his contention; and in 1803 he published a second and much enlarged edition of his Essay, in two volumes. During the remainder of his life, Malthus thrice edited new editions of his work, which to this day remains the greatest monument of his honorable career. He died on 29th December, 1834.

It is not intended here to give an exhaustive analysis of Malthus’s Principle of Population.1 We are concerned only with his theory of population and the conclusions to which that theory points. “The principal object of this essay,” says the author, “is to examine the effects of one great cause intimately connected with the very nature of man, which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers who have treated this subject. The cause to which I allude is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.

“Dr. Franklin has observed that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other’s means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only—as, for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen.

“This is incontrovertibly true. Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law of Nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law, and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.

“In plants and irrational animals the view of the subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species, and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted; and the superabundant effects are repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment.”

Malthus then adduces evidence of the extremely rapid increase of population amongst mankind under conditions in which food is abundant and easily obtainable. He calculates that population, if unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. But he points out that the food supply can by no means be increased with equal facility. Even if it were possible in one period of twenty-five years to double the amount produced, there is no reason to suppose that the operation could be repeated during the following twenty-five years. As the demand for food increased, less fruitful soils would be taken into cultivation, and the additions that could be made to the former average produce would be gradually and regularly diminishing. Malthus then makes the following calculation:

“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 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 fairly be pronounced, therefore, that considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable 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 11,000,000 (Mr. Malthus writes in 1806), and suppose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be 22,000,000, 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 44,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 33,000,000. In the next period the population would be 88,000,000, 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 176,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 55,000,000, leaving a population of 121,000,000 totally unprovided for.”

Now let us see how this stupendous possible power of increase in the human race has been kept in check.

The positive checks (i.e., checks which have operated through the action of natural laws) to an excessive increase of population comprehend the premature death of children and adults by disease, starvation, war and infanticide. Nature has a short and sharp way of dealing with her superfluous children. Amongst savage tribes the positive checks alone are brought into operation. The pages of human history teem with tragic records of famines decimating the unhappy victims of over-population; of pestilence stalking through the land, slaying its tens of thousands; of wars devastating countries and overwhelming the inhabitants in ruin, misery and death. In certain parts of the world the pangs of hunger have destroyed in men and women the primal instinct of parental love; and, in the fifth chapter of his work, Malthus shows how, in the South Sea Islands, where the possible expansion of population was extremely small, the frightful expedient of infanticide was largely resorted to by the inhabitants to check their natural increase. Even then, however, the pressure on the means of subsistence was so great that food became scarce at certain seasons of the year, and destructive wars ensued. Captain Vancouver, visiting Otaheite for the second time in 1791, found that most of the natives whom he had known fourteen years before had perished in battle.

In the course of numerous examples of the effects of over-population upon the condition of the masses in various countries, Malthus gives a striking example of the appalling misery to which even industrious laborers were reduced in densely-peopled China. He quotes the words of a Jesuit missionary, who stated that a Chinaman “will pass whole days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in water, and in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and to drink the insipid water in which it is boiled.” This is obviously an exaggeration, since it would be impossible to maintain life under such conditions; but it serves to show the deplorable state to which the workers may be reduced by excessive population.

It is unnecessary here to follow Malthus through his exhaustive survey of the condition of nations affected by over-population in various stages of the world’s history. Our purpose is rather to furnish an indication of the principle than to reproduce in detail the observations upon which it is based. The most concise formula in which the theory of Malthus has been expressed is as follows: “That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.”