ON THE THEORIES OF MALTHUS AND GODWIN.

In order to put our readers fully into possession of the questions at issue between Mr. Malthus and Mr. Godwin, we shall briefly state the origin, progress, and present condition of the controversy between them: our design will necessarily involve us in the investigation of some of the most important, and heretofore the least discussed topics of political economy.

Mr. Malthus informs the public, in the preface to the "Essay on Population," that that work was first suggested "by a paper in Mr. Godwin's Political Inquirer." The paper, to which Mr. Malthus refers, is, we believe, that entitled "of riches and poverty," in which Mr. Godwin indulges in some speculations upon the accession of happiness, that would result to the human race from an equal distribution of leisure and labour, or (which he regards as the same thing) of riches and poverty.

For the purpose of showing, among other matters, that these speculations upon political systems, founded on the principle of equal property, were utterly vain, and that no society, in which they were attempted to be realized, could last a single generation, Mr. Malthus was induced to write his "Essay on the principle of Population." The object of that work is to prove, that there is a law of human nature, which Mr. Malthus calls the principle of population, by which man multiplies his kind more rapidly than his subsistence; a law, to use Mr. Malthus's own words, "by force of which, man has a tendency to increase in a geometrical progression, whereas his subsistence can only be increased in a concurrent arithmetical progression."

The effect, according to Mr. Malthus, of this law upon a state. of society, in which the principle of equal property was established, would be, that the members of the society would be so augmented by its operation, in comparison with their subsistence, that want, poverty, the necessity of daily labour, crime, sickness, and so forth, would almost immediately fall upon the entire or part of the society, and thus reduce it to the condition, in which men are placed, who live under the ordinary constitutions of the world.

This answer to the system of equality Mr. Malthus considers so preeminently conclusive, that he resisted the suggestions of some of his friends, who advised him to omit, from the last edition of his works, what related to the subject, it having, in their estimation, lost much of the interest it once possessed. Mr. Malthus, on the contrary, thought "that there ought to be, somewhere

• Third vol. Essay, page 37.

pen, when he wrote the Political Justice:" the object of his work is to show, that the fundamental proposition of Mr. Malthus, namely, that the human race has a tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence, is not true; and we perfectly agree with Mr. Godwin in regarding it to be false, although we have come to this conclusion by a process somewhat different from his. Some of his positions we look upon as unfounded, and, in our opinion, he has overlooked some important bearings of the question.

In the first place, we must observe, that this proposition of Mr. Malthus is not as clearly expressed as it should be; and it is obvious, that Mr. Godwin has affixed to it a sense different from that designed by Mr. Malthus. The ambiguity in the proposition arises from the use of the word "tendency," which renders it susceptible, judged of by its internal structure, without reference to context, of either of these meanings:

1st. That man does increase, in point of fact, more rapidly than his subsistence.

2d. That he does not, in fact, increase more rapidly than his subsistence, but would do so, if he were not prevented by some check.

From the general scope of Mr. Malthus's book, there can be little doubt that the second of these meanings was almost always present to his mind, when he used this proposition; but it can not be denied that there is a great deal of unsteadiness throughout his writings on this subject. Accordingly, Mr. Godwin has argued as if Mr. Malthus had intended his reader to understand, that, in countries where population advances slowly, or not at all, as many children are produced, as in a country where it advances at full speed; the consequence of which would be, that multitudes of children come to maturity in the countries where population advances fast, who perish in their infancy in countries where it advances slowly. "It is clearly," says Mr. Godwin, "Mr. Malthus's doctrine, that the population is kept down in the old world, not by a small number of children being born among us, but by the excessive number of children that perish in their nonage, through the instrumentality of vice and of misery." This doctrine Mr. Godwin denies, and with reason charges to be contrary to experience.

Now, from the other parts of the Essay, and the general bearing of Mr. Malthus's works, we are satisfied that this is not exactly the doctrine of Mr. Malthus: at the same time, it must be avowed, that it is not very easy to point out with precision how far tt is, and how far it is not, his doctrine. To some extent it unquestionably is; and in our opinion, this obscurity arises as much from the bad classification, into which he has distributed his "checks upon population," as from the dubious wording of

his proposition. Having stated as a maxim that population was limited by subsistence, it behoved him to show the means, by which the alleged tendency to exceed it was kept within that limit. Accordingly he states*, that it is kept within it, by a preventive and by a positive, or, as we should rather call it, by a corrective check: the first check comprehended every thing which prevented, as the term imports, too many people from being born; the second included every thing which carried off those, who escaped the preventive operation of the first. So far every thing was clear; and would have continued so throughout the book, if his farther and more particular enumeration of the several matters, which operated as checks, had consisted of a subdivision of the two heads, into which they had already been arranged: we should, by that means, be able to see at once how far he meant that the advance of population was restrained, by something that prevented, or something that corrected, a redundance; but, instead of this, he breaks up his former classification, and distributes the checks anew into moral restraint, vice, and misery. Moral restraint is, no doubt, a subdivision of the preventive check; but, in the sense in which it is used by Mr. Malthus, it is a very small part of it indeed: and as to vice and misery, as he employs those words, they each of them embrace matters, that belong to both the preventive and corrective checks. Actual vice and misery is a sub-denomination of the latter. The apprehension of misery, and the necessity of committing vice, are portions of the former. The consequence of this confused distribution of his checks has been, that it is difficult to see whether his doctrine is, that the effects of the tendency are corrected after or prevented before they are produced. He indeed says, that moral restraint has not exercised much influence in times past, but that it is quite consistent with other things included in the preventive check, having exercised the greatest. He also says, that vice and misery had been heretofore the most powerful in this operation; but he leaves us to guess whether they wrought these effects in their preventive capacity, or in their corrective; the consequence of this has been the misapprehension of Mr. Godwin, and the diffieulty we complain of.

But whether Mr. Malthus has or has not been guilty of obscurity, and whether Mr. Godwin, with a little industry, might have discovered his real meaning, and, by that means, have been enabled to refute him more effectually, are questions of no great importance to the public; but it is of the utmost importance to the public to ascertain, if it be true, that, where population adrances slowly, so many more infants perish, than where it ad

*Page 32, vol. I. octavo edition.

vances rapidly. The three following questions appear to us to include this, and all the other points involved in Mr. Malthus's fundamental proposition.

1st. Does the human race any where increase by procreation at the rate alleged by Mr. Malthus; or is it capable of doing so? 2d. Where this increase does take place, does a greater proportion of the born attain the age of reproduction, than where no increase, or a smaller increase, takes place?

3dly. Does the increase, that anywhere takes place in the human race, exceed the increase of subsistence; or can it be said to have any tendency to do so?

As to the first of these inquiries, Mr. Godwin says, "that there is, in the constitution of the human species, a power, absolutely speaking, of increasing its members, but that the power of increase is very small;" and in point of fact, he doubts if the world is more populous now, than it was two thousand years ago. On the other side, Mr. Malthus alleges, that the population of the northern provinces of America has doubled every twenty-five years by procreation. On this fact, he is at issue with Mr. Godwin, who attributes the increase in America to emigration. Certainly the onus probandi is upon Mr. Malthus: he asserts that to have happened in America which, as far as we know, has happened no where else; and it is for him satisfactorily to prove it. "Without intimating any opinion upon this point, which we suspend for want of evidence, we must say, that the authorities Mr. Malthus cites do not establish his assertion.

Still, however the fact of actual increase in America may be, we can not but think that there is, in the physical constitution of man, the same capacity for increase, which we know to exist among horses, cows, or sheep; and we incline to think, that if man fell into the hands of an animal, as much his superior in mind and body, as we are to those brutes, this animal might multiply our breed at his discretion, as we do the breed of the inferior animal at ours; but it is a truth, if truth it be, of no novelty and of less value; and it is only mentioned here for the sake of method, and to facilitate ulterior investigations. How man would increase, if he were to live without food, or were supplied with it like a horse, is an empty and bootless speculation, for which we have no manner of data, and upon which we may exercise our imagination as innocuously, and as vainly as upon the rate of increase among the inhabitants of the moon. It is only with reference to man in a condition when he can not dispense with food, and can not get food without producing it, that these inquiries have any capability of practical application, or any certain grounds on which to rest: we shall therefore pass at once to the second inquiry we proposed, namely: Where an increase

does take place in population by procreation, does a greater proportion of the born attain the age of reproduction, than where no increase, or a less increase, takes place?

This inquiry we can not hesitate to answer in the negative. We are satisfied that the same number of infants die out of the born, where population advances quickly, as where it advances slowly: Mr. Godwin's tables, which it is impossible either to condense or to give at full, are decisive upon this point against all the world; against Mr. Malthus himself, we think the following simple calculation, drawn from his own statement and tables, is conclusive.

According to him, in America there are five births and a half to a marriage*, and two hundred persons marry out of every three hundred and fifty-one that are born: and in England, he says, there are four births only to a marriage; and that, out of three hundred and eighty-one born, there are the same number of two hundred married-or, which comes to the same thing, that out of every three hundred and fifty-one born in England, there are one hundred and eighty-four married. Now, first, this difference in the fruitfulness of marriage in both countries, and in the number of marriages, will of itself account for the different rates, at which he alleges the population increases in both countries, without sup posing any difference of mortality among the born; and secondly, it is obvious from an inspection of the tables, by which the probabilities of life are ascertained, that between the ages, which Mr. Malthus considers the average ages of marriage in America and in Europe, the common casualties of life would take off nearly sixteen out of two hundred; which according to him is the difference in number of the born, who marry in the two places; so that, out of the two hundred who marry in America, or, in other words, of the three hundred and fifty-one who are born, there are not more than one hundred and eighty-four alive, when they reach the average age of marriages in Europe; that is to say, that at the age, which is the average of marriage in Europe, as many are alive out of a given number of born there, as in America.

Indeed, Dr. Franklin was so little of opinion that the population in Europe was kept back by a greater mortality among infants, than occurs on the other side of the Atlantic, that he accounted for the different rates of increase by supposing, that two marriages took place in America for every one in Europe, and

Mr. Godwin supposes that Malthus had alleged that there were eight births to a marriage in America; but that was a mistake into which he was betrayed, we suppose, by Mr. Malthus's statement of Franklin's opinion upon the subject, who erroneously allowed eight to a marriage. In page 522, vol. I. of the Essay, Malthus explicitly says, that five and a half, or, which is nearly the same 5-58th births is the average to a marriage in Ame rica. This mistake of Mr. Godwin is very singular.