The principle stated at the end of the preceding chapter being assumed, the question arises: How can the evils caused by the constant tendency towards over-population be prevented? The method which Mr. Malthus proposed was the substitution of the prudential (or birth-restricting) for the positive (or life-destroying) check. He advised late marriage and celibacy as the most moral means of restraining population. He urged that men should wait until they were in a position to provide for a family before undertaking the responsibilities consequent upon the marriage state. He says: “Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being able to support our children will appear to deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to these obligations is of more effect in the prevention of misery than all the other virtues combined; and that if, in violation of this duty, it was the general custom to follow the first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in the greatest conceivable degree would fail of rescuing society from the most wretched and deplorable state of want, and all the diseases and famines which usually accompany it.”

This, then, was the prudential check advocated by Malthus; but since his time it has been perceived that his remedy is in itself the cause of evils scarcely less terrible than those which it was designed to remove. Further, it is one which, in the vast majority of cases, could not possibly be put into practice; for it assumes a power of mental control over the sexual passion which exists in a comparatively small number of individuals.

The physiological evils arising from celibacy, and, in lesser degree, from prolonged abstention from marriage, are of the most disastrous nature. Celibacy is necessarily a condition of privation and suffering, since it involves the deliberate and incessant suppression of the most powerful instinct of mankind. The pure and elevating joys of wedded and family life are shut out, and existence is shorn of its most delightful features. The unselfish pleasure of promoting the happiness of a loved wife and children is denied to the morbid and gloomy celibate, doomed to a solitary and cheerless existence. And even when permanent celibacy is not contemplated, marriage may be deferred until the bloom and brightness of life are gone for ever, until delay and disappointment have soured the temper and choked the fountain of affection.

Dr. Bertillon, of Paris, has proved conclusively by statistics derived from France, Holland and Belgium, that married persons, especially males, live much longer than single ones, and are less liable to become insane, criminal, or vicious. It has been shown that the married state reduces the danger of insanity by nearly one-half. With regard to the effects of celibacy upon individuals, Dr. Holmes Coote is reported in the Lancet to have said: “No doubt incontinence is a great sin; but the evils connected with continence are productive of far greater misery to society. Any person could bear witness to this who has had experience in the wards of lunatic asylums.”

In addition to the personal ills arising from celibacy, it must be remembered that late marriage directly encourages prostitution, the most hideous blot upon our social state. Malthus, indeed, laid great stress upon the duty of chastity whilst young men were engaged in accumulating the means to enable them to marry and rear a family later in life. He might as fitly have preached to the whirlwind, or exhorted the storm to moderate its violence. The power of restraint is given to but few men; and, even when that restraint can be exercised, it is only at the cost of much suffering and physical and moral detriment.

The later school of thinkers, whilst adopting the principle formulated by Malthus, propound an infinitely better method of compassing the end which he had in view. They advocate early marriage and limited families. It is not necessary that young men and women should sacrifice the youth and freshness of their lives in order that they may marry when the evening shadows are lengthening around them. The blessings of domestic comfort, of intimate companionship and of family love are opened to them in the noontide of life, when the possibility of enjoyment is at its highest point. Mrs. Annie Besant says: “To be in harmony with nature, men and women should be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and until nature evolves a neuter sex celibacy will ever be a mark of imperfection.… No one who desires society to be happy and healthy should recommend late marriage as a cure for the social evils around us. Early marriage is best, both physically and morally; it guards purity, softens the affections, trains the heart, and preserves physical health; it teaches thought for others, gentleness and self-control; it makes men gentler and women braver from the contact of their differing natures. The children that spring from such marriages—where not following each other too rapidly—are more vigorous and healthy than those of middle-aged parents; and in the ordinary course of nature the parents of such children live long enough to see them make their start in life, to aid, strengthen, and counsel them at the beginning of their career.”

Medical science has shown that the size of families is absolutely under the control of parents, if they will but exercise a reasonable degree of care and forethought. A young couple may now enter the marriage-state without misgiving: for the number of their offspring can be regulated in proportion to their means as surely as they can determine the amount of their expenditure upon clothing or luxuries.

Thus the teachings of Malthusianism, combined with the later development of innocent prudential checks, open up boundless possibilities for the improvement of social conditions. When the law of population—a law of nature—is clearly understood, it becomes possible for man, by the exercise of his reason, to control its operation, just as he constructs dykes to protect his crops from floods, or diverts the lightning harmlessly into the ground.

Let us see, then, how the general adoption of the New-Malthusian principle of early marriage and limited families would affect the welfare of individuals and of the nation at large.

The knowledge of prudential checks immensely increases the possibility of happiness for every man and woman whose means are “limited.” Marriage ceases to be a hazardous enterprise, which may bring in its train liabilities terribly out of proportion to the power of meeting them. The husband is relieved from anxiety lest his children may increase whilst his ability to provide suitably for them remains a fixed, or even diminishing, quantity. The wife need no longer dread the burden of continual child-bearing and the incessant servitude of domestic drudgery. How much of the drunkenness that exists amongst the working-class is due to the discomfort of a crowded and cheerless home! The husband, wearied with his day’s toil, returns to his narrow lodgings to find his wife, harassed and soured by the petty cares of a large family, sharp in temper and tongue. The tender romance of courtship is dispelled by the never-ending round of household slavery, with the constant need of “making both ends meet,” of contriving that every sixpence shall do the work of a shilling. And over all there hangs the haunting fear that sickness or loss of employment may disable the bread-winner, and that the wolf of hunger, ever waiting outside, may show his fangs within the door. Little cause is there for wonder that in many cases the sweetheart of happier days becomes a shrew and slattern, or that the toil-worn husband flies to the ruinous joys of the tap-room in a vain attempt to escape from the vexations that surround him in his “home.”

And what of the children? They are at once the innocent cause and the helpless victims of the misery that encompasses them. The wage that would amply provide for two or three is inadequate for the proper support of seven or eight, and their little frames suffer from insufficient nourishment. The overburdened mother cannot bestow upon so large a flock the loving care and attention that children need for their proper physical and mental development. Thus they grow up (if haply they survive), enfeebled in mind and constitution, transmitting to the next generation their own defects in an aggravated form.

It is amongst the very poorest of our fellow-creatures that we see the horrors of over-population in their most heartrending aspect. In the squalid courts and alleys of our great cities the dismal stream of child-life is constantly at high-water mark. The parents, ignorant and hopeless, callous by reason of their daily contact with misery, “increase and multiply” instinctively, as do the beasts of the field. Amongst the poor the birth-rate is (broadly speaking) double as high as that of the richer classes. A few years ago the birth-rate in wealthy Kensington was 20 per 1,000; in the poor district of Bethnal Green it was 40 per 1,000. This deplorable state of things is not peculiar to Great Britain: it prevails, with slight variations as to details, in all so-called civilised countries.

But the birth-rate tells only one-half of the piteous tale: it is the death-rate which completes the measure of human suffering caused by the insensate increase of population. In the course of his address to the Association of Sanitary Inspectors in 1888, Sir Edwin Chadwick stated that amongst the gentry and professional persons the deaths of children under five years of age in Brighton formed 8·93 per cent. of the total deaths, while among the wage-earning class they formed 45·44 per cent. He also said that in Brighton the mean (or average) age at death for wage-earners is 28·8 years; for the rich it is 63 years. Dr. Playfair has shown that 18 per cent. of the children of the upper class, 36 per cent. of those of the tradesman class, and 55 per cent. of those of the workmen die before they reach the age of five years.

Here we see the painful positive or natural checks to population at work in our very midst. Death stands with his sword and ruthlessly strikes out the redundant lives. What pen can picture the frightful suffering indicated by the figures given above? The mother’s pangs of child-birth: her protracted agony of grief as she watches the ravages of disease upon the weakly frame of her ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-tended babe: the last dread scene when death releases from its misery the child that should never have been called into existence! This squalid tragedy is enacted a thousand times; and the upshot of it all is five hundred little coffins hastily thrust into the earth.

And what of those that survive? Here and there one may rise above his fellows in the struggle for existence; but the vast majority of those who pass through the valley of the shadow of death emerge into a laborious and joyless existence. Of the males a section will drift into pauperism or crime; many of the females will be driven by want to the shameful traffic of prostitution. The honest and industrious are doomed to a life of incessant toil and privation; and with their numerous offspring will begin another cycle of the obscure tragedy.

In this way, the nation ever renews within itself the elements of its own weakness and despair. The question of the unemployed is ultimately a question of over-population; and wages are reduced by the competition, one against another, of desperate men seeking bread for their wives and families. Trade Unions and other forms of combination may partially and temporarily improve the condition of a section of the workers; but in the long run every advance in comfort is overtaken and swallowed up by the increase of population stimulated by prosperity.

Thus, unless the teachings of New-Malthusianism be generally acted upon, poverty will remain a permanent feature of society; and, as we have already said, the element of poverty is a constant menace to the community at large. The strength of a chain is that of its weakest link. The wealth, luxury, and refinement of society exist upon a frail tenure if the desperation of the poorest class is suffered to pass a certain limit. History has shown us the civilisation of centuries extinguished by hordes of barbarians, driven by hunger from their sterile lands. In Paris, during times of revolutionary excitement, the Faubourg St. Antoine pours forth its thousands of gaunt and tattered spectres to make war upon society.

Prudence in the matter of population, then, is seen to be the only way of conserving the most valuable and progressive elements in human society. In this, as in other countries, the apostles of the new teaching have been confronted by the prejudices handed down from previous generations; and in the succeeding chapter we shall trace the history of the Malthusian movement in England and abroad.