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Page 10
The distinguishing feature about this edition was the addition of moral
restraint as a check, to the two already described, vice and misery.
Malthus maintained that population has the power of doubling itself
every 25 years. Not that it _does_ so, or _had done_ so, or _will do
so_, but that it is _capable_ of doing so, and he instanced the American
Colonies to prove this statement.
One would scarcely think it was necessary to enforce this distinction,
between what population has done, or is doing, and what it is capable
of doing. But when social writers, like Francesco Nitti (Population and
the Social System, p. 90), urge as an argument against Malthus's
position that, if his principles were true, a population of 176,000,000
in the year 1800 would have required a population of only one in the
time of our Saviour, it is necessary to insist upon the difference
between _increase_ and the _power of increase_.
One specific instance of this doubling process is sufficient to prove
the _power of increase_ possessed by a community, and the instance of
the American Colonies, cited by Malthus, has never been denied.
A doubling of population in 25 years was thus looked upon by Malthus as
the normal increase, under the most favourable conditions; but the
checks to increase, vice, misery, and moral restraint are operative in
varying degrees of intensity in civilized communities, and these may
limit the doubling to once in 50, or once in 100 years, stop it
altogether, or even sweep a nation from the face of the earth.
The natural increase among the lower animals is limited by misery only,
in savage man by vice and misery only, and in civilized man by misery,
vice, and moral restraint.
Misery is caused by poverty, or the need of food or clothing, and is
thus proportionate to the means of subsistence. As the means of
subsistence are abundant, misery will be less, the death-rate lower,
and _caeteris paribus_ the birth-rate higher. The increase will be
directly proportional to the means of subsistence.
Vice as a check to increase, is common to civilized and savage man, and
limits population by artificial checks to conception, abortion,
infanticide, disease, and war. The third check, moral restraint, is
peculiar to civilized man, and in the writings of Malthus, consists in
restraint from marriage or simply delayed marriage.
Bonar says (Malthus and his Work, p. 53), "Moral restraint in the pages
of Malthus, simply means continence which is abstinence from marriage
followed by no irregularities."
These checks have their origin in a need for, and scarcity of
food,--food comprising all those conditions necessary to healthy life.
The need of food is vital and permanent. The desire for food, immediate
and prospective, is the first motive of all animal activity, but the
amount of food available in the world is limited, and the possible
increase of food is estimated by Malthus at an arithmetical ratio.
Whether or not this is an accurate estimate of the ratio of food
increase is immaterial. Malthus's famous progressions, the geometrical
ratio of increase in the case of animals, and the arithmetical ratio of
increase in the case of food, contain the vital and irrefutable truth of
the immense disproportion between the power of reproduction in man and
the power of production in food.
Under the normal conditions of life, the population tends constantly to
press upon, and is restrained by the limits of food. The true
significance of the word _tends_ must not be overlooked, or a similar
fallacy to that of Nitti's will occur, when he overlooked the
significance of the term "power to multiply." It is perfectly true to
say, that population _tends_ to press upon the limits of subsistence,
and unrestrained by moral means or man's reason actually does so.
Some social writers appear to think that, if they can show that
production has far outstripped population, that, in other words,
population for the last fifty years at least has _not_ pressed upon the
limits of food, Malthus by that fact is refuted.
Nitti says (Population and the Social System, p. 91), "But now that
statistics have made such great progress, and the comparison between the
population and the means of subsistence in a fixed period of time is no
longer based upon hypothesis, but upon concrete and certain data in a
science of observation it is no longer possible to give the name of law
to a theory like that of Malthus, which is a complete disagreement with
facts. As our century has been free from the wars, pestilences and
famines which have afflicted other ages, population has increased as it
never did before, and, nevertheless, the production of the means of
subsistence has far exceeded the increase of men."
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