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Malthus and Utilitarianism with Special Reference to the Essay on Population*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Samuel Hollander
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Extract

Was Malthus a ‘Utilitarian’? This apparently simple-minded question is justified by on-going debate in the secondary literature. For example, in his study, The Classical Economists, D. P. O'Brien maintains that ‘only the two Mills, apart from Bentham himself, were really Utilitarians’. Against this we have the view of Lord Robbins that ‘We get the picture badly out of focus if we conceive that reliance on the principle of utility was confined to Bentham and his immediate circle.’ In this paper we shall demonstrate the justice of the Robbins perspective with specific reference to the population issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , October 1989 , pp. 170 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council of Canada for funding my researches on The Economics of T. R. Malthus and to Cigdem Kurdas and James Crimmins for their helpful comments.

References

1 O'Brien, D. P., The Classical Economists, Oxford, 1975, p. 25.Google Scholar

2 Robbins, L. C., The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, London, 1952, p. 177.Google Scholar

3 Winch, D., Malthus, Oxford, 1987, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 37. Cf. Winch, 's ‘Higher Maxims: Happiness versus Wealth in Malthus and Ricardo’Google Scholar, Collini, S., Winch, D., and Burrow, J., That Noble Science of Politics, Cambridge, 1983, p. 70:CrossRefGoogle Scholar

It is well known that Malthus modified his position in the second Essay by emphasizing the preventive check of moral restraint; he also withdrew some of his more heterodox theological speculations. Nevertheless, neither the natural theology nor the moral categories of vice and virtue disappears when the Essay became a more academic treatise in demography.

See also Pullen, J. M., ‘Malthus's Theological Ideas and their Influence on his Principle of Population’, History of Political Economy, xiii (1981), 53Google Scholar, on the theological basis for Malthus's approach to the population issue:

In all editions of the Essay there are aspects of Malthus's theory of population which are unintelligible or contradictory if they are divorced from his theological ideas…. For example, having argued that population pressure leads to misery and vice, it would seem illogical for him to state that population growth per se is desirable. One would have expected him to advocate zero population growth. But within his theological system there is no contradiction, because he believed that it is the will of the Creator that the earth should be filled and because he saw the constant and universal pressure of population as a necessary and desirable stimulus for growth of mind.

5 Robbins, , p. 28nGoogle Scholar. See also Rashid, S., ‘Malthus's Theology: an overlooked Letter and some comments’, History of Political Economy, xvi (1984), 137Google Scholar, who disputes Pullen's claim that Malthus's theodicy is integral to Malthus's thinking for ‘Malthus attached importance to his theory of mind, but only as a mode of reconciling us to the goodness of God and not because it added to the logical or factual acceptability of his theory’. See also Bonar, J., Malthus and His Work, London, 1924, pp. 38ff.Google Scholar, who considered the theodicy to be materially insignificant for the principle of population.

6 It is still common enough to read of Malthus's ‘conservatism’. See for example Sowell, T., ‘Malthus and the Utilitarians’, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, xxviii (1962), 268CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Classical Economics Reconsidered, Princeton, 1974, p. 28Google Scholar; Taylor, O. H., A History of Economic Thought, New York, 1960, p. 147.Google Scholar

This matter is treated ambiguously by Winch in ‘Higher Maxims’, pp. 70–1Google Scholar. He maintains that ‘neither the natural theology nor the moral categories of vice and virtue disappeared when the Essay became a more academic treatise on demography’, and that Malthus extended his criticism of Utopian planners to include Robert Owen. ‘It would seem, therefore, that Malthus takes his place in a long tradition of Anglican apologetics for inequality and poverty’, differentiating him ‘from more secular devotees of political economy’. But at the same time we are told not to exaggerate all this when it comes to political economy: ‘Malthus's population doctrine proved capable of being absorbed into political economy, with or without its natural theology overtones’. By thus using the passive voice—and alluding to the applications made of the doctrine by others (Dugald Stewart and J. S. Mill)—Winch seems to imply that Malthus himself in the Essay on Population falls into the apologetic school of divines.

7 Mill, J. S., Autobiography, eds. Robson, J. M. and Stillinger, J., Toronto, 1981Google Scholar (Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. i), i. 108.Google Scholar

8 Mill, , Principle of Political Economy, ed. Robson, J. M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1965Google Scholar (CW, vols. ii and iii), iii. 753Google Scholar. For Mill's reading of the first Essay as ‘pessimistic’ see also Essays on Economics and Society, ed. Robson, J. M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1967Google Scholar (CW, vols. iv and v), v. 728Google Scholar, and An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, ed. Robson, J. M., Toronto, 1979Google Scholar (CW, vol. ix), ix. 109–10Google Scholar. Mill in 1859 protested against Chadwick, Edwin's ‘slur on Malthus’: Later Letters, 1848–1873, ed. Mineka, F. E. and Lindley, O. N., 4 vols., Toronto, 1972Google Scholar (CW, vols. xiv–xvii), xv. 590.Google Scholar

Others outside the sphere of the Philosophic Radicals also pointed to the reformist orientation of the Essay on Population. Nassau Senior publicly apologized to Malthus for having lectured on population under a false impression of his position—a ‘caricature’— and hoped that the misconceptions ‘unsupported as they are by your authority—will gradually wear away’. Two Lectures on Population to which is added a Correspondence between the Author and the Rev. T. R. Malthus, London, 1829, pp. 55–7, 88–9, 81.Google Scholar

9 All reference to the 1798 first Essay are to the edition published at London in 1926. Malthus approached his problem from the standpoint of natural theology, rejecting reliance upon the supernatural, revelation or scriptural authority: ‘… it seems absolutely necessary, that we should reason from nature up to nature's God, and not presume to reason from God to nature’ (p. 350). Malthus does not always live up to this perspective, often identified with that of Paley. Paley, too, however, pointed in Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy to ‘two methods of coming at the will of God on any point: I. By his express declarations, when they are to be had; and which must be sought for in Scripture. II. By what we can discover of his designs and disposition from his works, or, as we usually call it, the light of nature’ (1st edn., 1785, p. 54). Moreover, the Principles is a work replete with scriptural reference. This is true inter alia of the case favouring retribution in the next world (p. 41). Paley also proceeded by assertion. Thus the affirmative answer to the question, ‘Will there be after this life, any distribution of rewards and punishments at all? … the foundation, upon which the whole fabric rests, must in this treatise be taken for granted’ (pp. 53–4).

10 Bonar, , pp. 35, 323 ff.Google Scholar, traces the influence of Tucker, Abraham's Light of Nature PursuedGoogle Scholar. (See too Waterman, A. W., ‘Malthus as a Theologian: The First Essay and the Relation between Political Economy and Christian Theology’, Dupâquier, J., ed., Malthus Past and Present, London, 1983, pp. 196–200.)Google Scholar Malthus himself made explicit reference to John Locke for the general emphasis on the ‘endeavour to avoid pain’ as stimulus to exertion, to which Malthus adds his theme that exertion is a prerequisite for creation of mind (pp. 359–60). For other possible sources—the English empirical school and English Neoplatonism—see Harvey-Phillips, M. B., ‘Malthus's Theodicy: the Intellectual Background to his Contribution to Political Economy’, History of Political Economy, xvi (1984), 598–99.Google Scholar

The notion of formation of mind is repeatedly restated in one form or other. There is in the first chapter, for example, reference to the impressions and excitements of this world acting to awaken man's ‘sluggish existence … into a capacity of superior enjoyment’ (pp. 353–54)Google Scholar, to increase ‘acuteness of intellect’ (p. 358)Google Scholar, to ‘rouse man into action and form his mind to reason’ (p. 361)Google Scholar. This is reiterated and applied in the second of the two chapters: ‘When the mind has been awakened into activity by the passions, and the wants of the body, intellectual wants arise; and the desire of knowledge, and the impatience under ignorance, form a new and important class of excitements’ (p. 377). Thus the apparently negative aspects of existence ‘furnish endless motives to intellectual activity and exertion’ (p. 380)Google Scholar; and the effort to understand ‘invigorates and improves the thinking faculty’ and provides ‘stimulants to mental exertion’ (p. 383)Google Scholar. Fully and effortlessly to understand God's plan would ‘tend to repress further exertion, and to dampen the soaring wings of intellect’ (p. 384).Google Scholar

11 The view that human life constitutes a state of probation or trial was advanced by Butler and Paley and was taken up later by Sumner in 1816 (see Waterman, , 198, 205–6)Google Scholar. There is no formal discussion of this perspective in Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. A convenient statement will be found in Paley, 's ‘Sermons on Several Subjects’ (1806), no. xxxiii, in Works, Philadelphia, 1831, pp. 599–601.Google Scholar

12 Pullen, , 48, 50Google Scholar. There is some indication to this effect in a letter dated 1 March 1799 to the Monthly Magazine touching on the projected rewriting of the Essay: ‘as the subject of the two last chapters is not necessarily connected with it, I shall, in deference to the opinion of some friends whose judgments I respect, omit them’ (cited in Rashid, , 137)Google Scholar. Moreover, in the ‘Preface’ to the 1803 edn.—though removed in 1806—Malthus wrote: ‘I should hope that there are some parts of it [the first Essay], not reprinted in this, which may still have their use; as they are rejected, not because I thought them all of less value than what has been inserted, but because they did not suit the different plan of treating the subject which I had adopted’ (The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, ed. Wrigley, E. A. and Souden, D., 8 vols., London, 1986, ii. p. ii).Google Scholar

13 Waterman, , 205–6Google Scholar; see also Harvey-Phillips.

14 The evidence includes the removal of the 1803 ‘Preface’ referring to continued adherence to the original theology; and (more positively) a statement in the 1806 Appendix that the difficulties arising from the principle of population are ‘most eminently and peculiarly suited to a state of probation’ (Works, iii. 601Google Scholar) and a passage in the 1817 Appendix, following favourable reference to J. B. Sumner's On the Records of Creation (1816) commencing ‘I have always considered the principle of population as a law peculiarly suited to a state of discipline and trial’ (Works, iii. 622Google Scholar). Taken literally this passage is a blatant untruth, for Malthus originally strongly denied the notion of life ‘as a state of discipline and trial’. (Malthus also alludes to a ‘competent tribunal’ which induced him to expunge materials, apart from the two theological chapters, ‘which have been thought too harsh, and not sufficiently indulgent to the weaknesses of human nature, and the feelings of Christian charity’.)

There is also the conclusion to the article ‘Population’ (1824)Google Scholar. Here Malthus raises the original issue of the 1798 theological chapters: ‘It has been thought that a tendency in mankind to increase, beyond the greatest possible increase of food which could be produced in a limited space, impeaches the goodness of the Deity, and is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Scriptures’ (Works, iv. 239)Google Scholar. In the brief defence of the Deity that follows there is not a whisper of the original 1798 position regarding creation of mind but rather the assertion that ‘it is almost universally acknowledged, that both the letter and the spirit of revelation represent this world as a state of moral discipline and probation’.

15 The categories may, however, have been breaking down for all parties. It is striking that the notion of life as a state of trial or probation as discussed by Paley, in Natural Theology, Albany, N.Y., 1803, p. 357Google Scholar—where it is attributed to Rousseau—seems to absorb Malthus's original theological position and put it to similar use. Thus the trials and tribulations of life ‘all serve for the formation of character: for, when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also and formed by circumstances’ (p. 355). Moreover, this is asserted with an eye to ‘a future state’: ‘a future state alone rectifies all disorders; and if it can be shewn that the appearance of disorder is consistent with the uses of life, as a preparatory state, or that in some respects it promotes these uses, then, so far as this hypothesis may be accepted, the ground of the difficulty is done away’.

16 Paley, , Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 61.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 53. On this see Stephen, L., The English Utilitarians, 3 vols., London, 1900, i. 161Google Scholar. Stephen observed that ‘Paley's conception of the Deity is, in fact, coincident with Bentham's conception of the sovereign. He is simply an invisible sovereign, operating by tremendous sanction’ (ibid., ii. 358; cf. iii. 309).

Jacob Viner points out that the later Cambridge revolt led by William Whewell against Paley, 's Principles ‘was in part due to the fact that except for its addition of pleasures and pains in the future life to the pleasure-pain calculus, it was a close counterpart of Bentham's completely irreligious hedonic utilitarianism’ (The Role of Providence in the Social Order, Philadelphia, 1972, p. 74)Google Scholar. In his early criticism of Bentham, Mill objected to the narrowness of Bentham's philosophy as implying a view of morality akin to ‘the doctrine of expediency as professed by Paley’ (Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, J. M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar (CW, vol. x), x. 7).Google Scholar

To be fair to Paley we must keep in mind a qualification to the generalization (Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 61n):Google Scholar

Actions in the abstract are right or wrong, according to their tendency; the agent is virtuous or vicious, according to his design. Thus, if the question be, Whether relieving common beggars be right or wrong? we inquire into the tendency of such a conduct to the public advantage or inconvenience. If the question be, Whether a man remarkable for this sort of bounty is to be esteemed virtuous for that reason? we inquire into his design, whether his liberality sprang from charity or from ostentation? It is evident that our concern is with actions in the abstract.

It is not wholly clear on this view how to classify charity undertaken from fear of ‘future’ consequences or expectation of ‘future’ reward, but apparently the agent's good design might be thus dictated without loss of virtue. It is this that Malthus disputed.

J. S. Mill came to Paley's defence against a misreading by Sedgwick: ‘Paley held, with other Christians, that our place hereafter would be determined by our degree of moral perfection; that is, by the balance, not of our good and evil deeds, which depend on opportunity and temptation, but of our good and evil dispositions; by the intensity and continuity of our will to do good’ (Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society (CW), x. 70)Google Scholar. However, Mill also emphasized the role for Paley of ‘simple self-interest as the motive, of virtue’ (ibid., x. 170).

18 Analytical Review, xxviii (12 1798), 124Google Scholar, cited in James, P., Population Malthus, London, 1979, p. 124Google Scholar. The same point has been made in the account by Flew, A., ‘Introduction to An Essay on Population’, Harmondsworth, 1970, p. 48Google Scholar, which refers to ‘embarrassing implication’ for Malthus of his original statement: ‘in so far as the sum of the (relevant sorts of) vice and misery provides a necessary check and in so far as such vice and misery are alternatives, it follows that to indulge in (any relevant form of) vice must be to reduce misery’.

19 Flew, , p. 48.Google Scholar

20 An Essay on the Principle of Population, 3rd edn., 2 vols., London, 1806, ii. 523nGoogle Scholar; Works, iii. 586.Google Scholar

21 Cited in Rashid, , 136.Google Scholar

22 The specific issue under discussion in 1799 is war not sex.

23 The theological chapters are unrepresentative in another respect. It is reported that as early as 1796 Malthus rejected, in opposition to Paley, the criterion of happiness in terms of population size; increasing population—clearly a reflection of good living standards—was the objective (see below, p. 34).

24 Works, ii. 16.Google Scholar

25 There is actually some allowance for moral restraint even in the 1st edn. Cf. the concession that delayed marriage produces vice but ‘not absolutely so’ (p. 29).Google Scholar

26 Works, iii. 465.Google Scholar

27 Cited in Works, iii. 479Google Scholar. Paley observed further that ‘this role proceeds upon the presumption, that God Almighty wills and wishes the happiness of his creatures; and consequently, that those actions, which promote that will and wish, must be agreeable to him; and the contrary’. This perspective, Malthus remarked, implied that the Christian religion was adaptable ‘to a more improved state of human society’ insofar as ‘it places our duties respecting marriage and the procreation of children in a different light from that in which they were before beheld’.

28 Works, iii. 531Google Scholar. The first phrase in parenthesis (‘independently of the revealed will of God’) was added in 1817Google Scholar. The second (‘criterion of moral rules’) replaces ‘foundation of all morality’ also in 1817Google Scholar. See An Essay, 5th edn., 3 vols., London, 1817, iii. 214–15.Google Scholar

James, , pp. 119–20Google Scholar, points out that a correspondent in the Christian Observer for 09 1805Google Scholar (‘Unus’, possibly Thomas Gisborne) objected to the principle of Expediency enunciated in this passage (as well as to the reason given, involving consequences, for defining an action as vicious). The modifications to the text may have been made by Malthus in response to this criticism, as suggested by James. But James is in error in dating the modification 1806.

29 ‘Criterion of moral rules’ replaces ‘foundation of morals’ in 1817Google Scholar. See An Essay, 5th edn., iii. 103.Google Scholar

The notion that the source of morality resides in social utility is applied also to the case of private charity in a warning against the exercise of ‘indiscriminate’ benevolence. For benevolence and sex are both ‘natural passions, which are excited by their appropriate objects, and to the gratification of which we are prompted by the pleasurable sensations which accompany them’ (Works, iii. 531).Google Scholar

30 Principles, pp. 592–93.Google Scholar

31 Works, iii. 485.Google Scholar

32 The references to this work (1st ed. 1802) given below will be to the American edn. of 1803.

33 Works, iii. 471.Google Scholar

34 Here again, his protagonist is Godwin, who played down the ‘attendant circumstances’ attached to physical sex.

35 That national strength required a large population he agreed, but it was ‘as to the mode of obtaining a vigorous and efficient population’ that he differed from others championing a large population. The military draft, moreover, would have to be filled by drawing labour from high-paying alternatives: ‘we may rest perfectly assured that while we have the efficient population, we shall never want men to fill our armies, if we propose to them adequate motives’ (pp. 581–82).

36 All of this points directly to a commonality of view shared by Malthus with Godwin, Paine and Cobbett, including a dislike of standing armies and of overbearing government measures against sedition. See Bonar, , p. 338.Google Scholar

37 A view of happiness which includes character or moral tone does not, of course, of itself imply a ‘theological’ perspective.

38 An Essay, 3rd edn., 2 vols., London, 1806, i. 19–20nGoogle Scholar; Works, ii. 16nGoogle Scholar. Bonar sees no problem here: ‘… the adjective “moral” does not imply that the motives are the highest possible. The adjective is applied not so much to the motive of the action as to the action itself, from whatever motives proceeding; and in the mouth of a Utilitarian this language is not unphilosophical. Moral restraint, in the pages of Malthus, means simply continence; it is an abstinence from marriage followed by no irregularities’ (p. 53). But it is the term ‘a conduct strictly moral’ before marriage that possibly suggests some extrautilitarian appeal.

39 Stephen, , ii. 158Google Scholar. Thus certain ‘Vicious’ practices of the South Sea Islanders result in a lesser need for other population checks (famine) and are pleasurable per se and ought on a neutral view to be considered beneficial; and the rejection of birth control, which would limit population without causing ‘misery’, seems not to be consistent. Malthus, Stephen opines, ‘wishes to avoid the imputation of sanctioning such practices, and therefore condemns them by his moral check; but it would be hard to prove that he was consistent in condemning them’.

40 2nd edn., Works, ii. 16–17nGoogle Scholar. Although Malthus neglected in the foregoing passage to define the ‘injury’ to the ‘happiness of society’, he presumably intended character degeneration and disease (as in other contexts discussed above, p. 182) since increased poverty cannot be the issue.

41 Contrast this with the statement of 1799 cited earlier. That statement, dealing with a refusal to legitimize war, creates a problem from a strictly utilitarian viewpoint; one could envisage circumstances where war might be justified as an alternative to poverty (see Rashid, , 137–38).Google Scholar

42 An Essay, 5th edn., i. 23–4n.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., i. 24n. J. S. Mill defended Paley along these lines against a charge by Sedgwick: ‘to say that if we adopt the principles of utility, we cannot admit religion as a sanction for it, or cannot attach importance to religious motives or feelings [is] simply false’ (Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society (CW), x. 69).Google Scholar

44 Levy, D., ‘Some Normative Aspects of the Malthusian Controversy’, History of Political Economy, x (1978), 271–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Works, iii. 482–83.Google Scholar

46 An Essay, 5th edn., iii. 391–92Google Scholar; Works, iii. 606.Google Scholar

47 Torrens, R., An Essay on the External Corn Trade, London, 1815, pp. viii–x.Google Scholar

48 2nd edn., Works, iii. 483.Google Scholar

49 The desirable political and military consequences ascribed to the widespread practice of moral restraint would follow from prudential control tout court. They must, therefore, be included in the utility calculus to be taken up now.

50 The reduction of the misery attached to poverty is itself defined as a moral problem: ‘And, with regard to the necessity of this celibacy in countries that have been long peopled, or our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being able to support our children it will appear to deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to this obligation is of more effect in the prevention of misery, than all the other virtues combined’ (p. 473). ‘Can any man of reflection … venture to state that there is no moral reason for repressing the inclination to early marriages; when it cannot be denied that the alternative of not repressing it must necessarily and unavoidably be premature mortality from excessive poverty?’ (5th edn., iii. 411; Works, iii. 615).Google Scholar

51 3rd edn., ii. 537–38; Works, iii. 593–94.Google Scholar

52 See above p. 182, regarding Works, ii. p. iiiGoogle Scholar. As J. S. Mill was to point out, the greatest happiness principle did not in itself yield rules of just behaviour, especially if allowance is made for the consequences of actions for character, i.e., the effects of action ‘upon [an individual's] susceptibilities of pleasures or pain, upon the general direction of his thoughts, feelings and imagination …’ (Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society (CW), x. 56)Google Scholar. All in all, there was ‘as much difference in the moral judgements of different persons, as there is in their views of human nature, and of the formation of character’ (ibid., x. 67), so that ‘clear and comprehensive views of education and human culture must … precede, and form the basis of, a philosophy of morals’ (ibid., x. 56). Thus a utilitarian perspective necessarily turns on some conception or other of ‘morality’ drawn from an external source defining ‘right’ or ‘true human feeling’. This had been Bentham's position as well, and one which Mill had in his early reaction from Bentham originally disputed (cf. Hollander, S., The Economics of John Stuart Mill, Toronto and Oxford, 1985, pp. 617ff.).Google Scholar

53 Our conclusion may be contrasted with that of Eversley, D. E. C., Social Theories of Fertility and the Malthusian Debate, Oxford, 1959, pp. 248–49Google Scholar: The preventive checks which reduce fertility ‘may be divided into good, bad and indifferent checks. The good one is moral restraint, i.e., restraint from marriage with virtuous conduct, and out of regard for the well-being of society, as well as one's own advantage. The bad one is selfseeking prudential restraint from marriage with loose sexual conduct. The indifferent one is prudential restraint mostly for selfish reasons, with an occasional human lapse presumably permitted’.

54 Malthus often reverted to this ideal. Thus moral restraint is represented in 1824 (and 1830) as ‘the only mode of keeping population on a level with the means of subsistence, which is perfectly consistent with virtue and happiness’, A Summary View of the Principle of Population (Works, iv. 203).Google Scholar

55 Works, iii. 497–98.Google Scholar

56 1st edn., p. 277.

57 Hollander, , ‘On Malthus's Population Principle and Social Reform’, History of Political Economy, xviii (1986), 187–236CrossRefGoogle Scholar. That treatment confirms Bonar, 's evaluation in his Philosophy and Political Economy, London, 1922, p. 208Google Scholar, that: ‘The details of his views on the State and government are those of an advanced Whig of the school of Fox and Grey. His adherence to Adam Smith did not prevent him from departing from “laissez faire” even more than his master’. Otter, W., ‘Memoir of Robert Malthus’Google Scholar, in Malthus, 's Principles of Political Economy, 2nd edn., London, 1836, p. liGoogle Scholar, referred to Malthus as ‘a firm, consistent, and decided Whig, the earnest advocate of salutary improvement and reforms, but strongly and sincerely attached to the institutions of his country, and fearful of all wanton experiment and innovations’.

On Malthus as a ‘Country’ or ‘old fashioned’ or ‘moderate’ Whig, with an eye to his condemnation of executive encroachments, hostility to excessively large standing armies and appeal to country gentlemen to resist corruption and defend liberty, see Winch, , ‘Higher Maxims’, pp. 75–7.Google Scholar

58 3rd edn., ii. 531; Works, iii. 590–91.Google Scholar

59 Works, iii. 535.Google Scholar

60 5th edn., iii. 258; Works, iii. 549Google Scholar. Italics in original.

61 3rd edn., ii. 530; Works, iii. 590.Google Scholar

62 2nd edn., Works, iii. 517.Google Scholar

63 Even in 1798 Malthus recognized the need for indoor relief in extreme cases and implied support for the principle of ‘lesser eligibility’ incorporated later in the 1834 legislation (p. 97).

64 3rd edn., ii. 541; Works, iii. 595Google Scholar. Malthus makes the point that if the decision were made to retain a system of poor laws, knowledge of the principle of population might allow the removal of the worse disadvantages (3rd edn., ii. 552; Works, iii. 601)Google Scholar. Here we have a further hint regarding his attitude to the kind of system introduced in 1834.

65 Ibid., ii. 169–70; Works, iii. 364.Google Scholar

66 5th edn., iii. 275; Works, iii. 555.Google Scholar

67 5th edn., iii. 273–74; Works, iii. 554Google Scholar. A further solution to unemployment where the excess labour supply reflects a lagged population response to a preceding stimulus that has proven temporary, was seen to lie in emigration; it was ‘the duty and interest of governments to facilitate emigration’, though they could not legitimately oblige it (3rd edn., ii. 535n; Works, iii. 592).Google Scholar

68 Senior, , p. 85.Google Scholar

69 2nd edn., Works, iii. 568.Google Scholar

70 5th edn., iii. 413; Works, iii. 616Google Scholar. See also ‘Population’, Works, iv. 199.Google Scholar

71 5th edn., ii. 285; Works, iii. 345.Google Scholar

72 5th edn., ii. 368–69; Works, iii. 381.Google Scholar

73 2nd edn., Works, iii. 516.Google Scholar

74 Cf. Bonar, , Philosophy and Political Economy, p. 213:Google Scholar

It has been said that Malthus was Utilitarian, but not Utilitarian enough; he should have kept more constantly before him the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number. But Malthus was a Utilitarian of the old school; the greatest happiness of the great body of the people seemed to him to be best secured by the devotion of the individual members of it, each to his own permanent and real happiness.

See also pp. 227–28, regarding the relation between the Greatest Happiness principle and individual happiness:

The simple statement of any individual, that he for his part did not find his happiness in the general good, would be unanswerable. It could only be answered on principles that go beyond the older Utilitarianism, with its principle of individual infallibility. It can only be answered when we recognize that the individual's pleasures or pains are no criterion even of his own good, and that there is an ideal of human life which is none of the individual's fixing.

75 1st edn., p. 287n.

76 2nd edn., Works, iii. 576.Google Scholar

77 Works, in. 567.Google Scholar

78 Ibid., iii. 566. Malthus refers in a note to an apparent change in Paley's position between Moral Philosophy and Natural Theology and draws a significant deduction regarding, so to speak, the optimal degree of luxury diffusion:

From a passage in Paley, 's Natural TheologyGoogle Scholar, I am inclined to think that subsequent reflection induced him to modify some of his former ideas on the subject of population. He states most justly that mankind will in every country breed up to a certain point of distress [Natural Theology, p. 339]Google Scholar. If this be allowed, that country will evidently be the happiest, where the degree of distress at this point is the least; and consequently, if the spread of luxury, by producing the check sooner, tend to diminish this degree of distress, it is certainly desirable.

The principle of population—Paley refers to Malthus's arithmetic and geometric rates— is, however, said by Paley to imply the impossibility ‘to people a country with inhabitants who shall be all in easy circumstances’, leading to a justification of ‘the distinctions of civil life’ (Natural Theology, pp. 340–41)Google Scholar. Paley scarcely drew the same conclusion regarding income distribution as Malthus. His message was to be taken up by Sumner in 1816 (see Waterman, , 205).Google Scholar

79 Mill's hostile comments on Paley's use of the utility rule in defence of ‘accredited doctrines’ is pertinent here (Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society (CW), x. 173).Google Scholar

80 The happiness of a people is made up of the happiness of single persons; and the quantity of it can only be augmented by encreasing the number of the percipients, or the pleasures of their perceptions… within certain limits… the quantity of happiness produced in any given district (the object of which all the endeavours of public wisdom should be directed,) so far depends upon the number of inhabitants, that, in comparing adjoining periods in the same country, the collective happiness will be nearly in the exact proportion of the numbers, that is, twice the number of inhabitants will produce double the quantity of happiness (Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 587–88Google Scholar).

Land scarcity is recognized but only as a sort of hypothetical limit: ‘The fertility of the ground, in temperate regions, is capable of being improved by cultivation to an extent which is unknown’ (ibid., p. 590). Bentham too was to qualify his utility-based case for population expansion: ‘Encrease of population is desirable, as being an encrease of—1. The beings susceptible of enjoyment’, 2. The beings capable of being employed as instruments of defence. It results of course from the encrease of the means of subsistence, and cannot be carried beyond them' (‘Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy’, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, ed. Stark, W., 3 vols., London, 1952–1954, iii. 361).Google Scholar

81 Cited by Empson, William, ‘Life, Writings and Character of Mr. Malthus’ in Occasional Papers of T. R. MalthusGoogle Scholar, ed. Semmel, B., 1963, p. 244Google Scholar. Empson reported that Malthus subsequently regarded Paley and Pitt as ‘the two converts of whom he was most proud’.

82 The often-quoted statement by Malthus that without poor laws ‘though there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been much greater than it is at present’ (2nd edn., Works, iii. 368)Google Scholar, implies that a smaller population at good average wages is preferable on utility grounds to a larger population at poor average wages. Thus it is not apparent that Malthus countenanced growth of population (and therefore higher population at any time) when accompanied by reduced standards. Bonar, 's evaluation (Malthus, p. 333)Google Scholar therefore goes too far: ‘Malthus desired the great numbers as well as the great happiness, and was indeed quite naturally led by his theological views to prefer a little happiness for each of many individuals to a great deal for each of a few’.

83 3rd edn., ii. 507–8; Works, iii. 578.Google Scholar

84 3rd edn., ii. 515–16; Works, iii. 583.Google Scholar

85 3rd edn., ii. 550; Works, iii. 600Google Scholar. In this context we find some fine examples of a utility calculus:

a young person saved from death is more likely to contribute to the creation of fresh resources than another birth. It is a great loss of labour and food to begin over again. And universally it is true, that under similar circumstances, that article will come the cheapest to market which is accompanied by fewest failures (3rd edn., ii. 514n; Works, iii. 582n).Google Scholar

Every loss of a child from the consequences of poverty must evidently be preceded and accompanied by great misery to individuals; and in a public view, every child that dies under ten years of age is a loss to the nation of all that had been expended in its subsistence till that period (2nd edn., Works, iii. 565).Google Scholar

86 3rd edn., ii. 509; Works, iii. 579.Google Scholar

87 Later Letters (CW), xiv. 88–9Google Scholar; Principles of Political Economy (CW), iii. 756Google Scholar. Mill did, however, recognize the case for a large population relative to that of neighbours from the perspective of defence (CW), iii. 755.Google Scholar

88 First introduced in 5th edn., iii. 12–13; Works, iii. 442.Google Scholar

89 5th edn., iii. 393–94; Works, iii. 607.Google Scholar

90 Cf. Levy, , 272Google Scholar: ‘Godwin and Malthus both follow Adam Smith in treating the childbearing decision as entailed by the marriage decision. In order to explain the decision to marry, the classics argued, we must explain the costs of children, since in a world without effective mechanical contraception children will regularly follow marriage.’ I doubt whether the issue turned on the effectiveness of mechanical contraception.

91 Place acknowledged the connection with Malthus: ‘Mr. Malthus seems to shrink from discussing the propriety of preventing conception, not so much it may be supposed from the abhorrence which he or any reasonable man can have to the practice, as from the possible fear of encountering the prejudices of others …’. Place, F., Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population, New York, 1967 edn. [1st edn., 1822], p. 173.Google Scholar

92 Ibid., pp. 176–77.

93 Senior, , pp. 71–2.Google Scholar

94 Ibid., pp. 61, 79.

95 See Hollander, , ‘On Malthus's Vision of the Population Problem’, Bulletin of the History of Economics Society (forthcoming).Google Scholar

96 2nd edn., Works, iii. 575Google Scholar. Even in 1798, it should be emphasized, the empirical problem in Britain is not represented as one of excess population growth. Rather, low real wages reflected remediable impediments to agricultural growth. Strictly, then, the theological chapters were unnecessary even in 1798.

97 Harvey-Phillips, , 603Google Scholar. This ‘mundane’ perspective Harvey-Phillips represents as Paley's view. This is fair enough for Paley seems to aver to a balance of happiness in this world (cf. Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Bk. III, ch. v: ‘The Divine Benevolence’). Yet we must not forget that for Paley moral behaviour allows for fear of punishment and hope of reward after death (see above, p. 178).

98 Rashid, , 138.Google Scholar

99 Nor does there emerge any new emphasis by Malthus upon that aspect of Paley's position entailing the sanction of future reward and punishment. Conversely, Paley himself sometimes deflected the argument to ‘abstract’ right or wrong, eschewing motive (see n. 17 above).

100 See especially Works, iii. 524–29.Google Scholar