Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:09:39.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Robert Malthus: Christian Moral Scientist, Arch-Demoralizer or Implicit Secular Utilitarian?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Donald Winch
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

John Maynard Keynes, in a biographical essay that is as remarkable for the insight it provides into his own thinking as for what it says about its subject, described the trajectory of Malthus's intellectual career as follows: ‘from being a caterpillar of a moral scientist and chrysalis of an historian, he could at last spread the wings of his thought and survey the world as an economist’. Malthus himself had resisted this conclusion in the introduction to his Principles of Political Economy — meant as a riposte to David Ricardo's way of proceeding — when he stated that ‘the science of political economy bears a nearer resemblance to the science of morals and politics than to that of mathematics’. For understandable reasons, however, some modern economists find Keynes's characterization more attractive, particularly when it also allows them to regret the fact that the free flight of the positive economist in Malthus was often impeded by historical and moral residues left over from earlier existences. By adopting this position they are able to discount awkward problems relating to the historical origins and professional identity of their discipline — those problems connected with Malthus's religious beliefs and theological standpoint that have to be confronted when his explicit claims as a Christian moral scientist are taken seriously. Lack of sympathy on the part of economists when faced with the moral and theological dimensions of Malthus's writings has a long history that goes back to Ricardo, who criticized his friend's confusion, as he saw it, of moral and economic considerations. James Mill, as always, was more outspoken in regretting the intellectual fetters that inevitably went with Malthus's clerical status. Some economic demographers, in modern times, have also criticized Malthus for intermingling ‘moralistic and scientific aims almost inextricably’, thereby imparting what they regard as an untestable or tautological air to his exposition of the population principle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 239 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful for the comments on an earlier version of this article by Stefan Collini, John Burrow, and R. D. C. Black.

References

1 Essays in Biography as published in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, 30 vols., London, 1971–1989, x. 107.Google Scholar

2 See the variorum edition of Malthus, 's Principles of Political Economy, ed. Pullen, J. M., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1989, i. 2.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Lionel Robbins's statement (The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, London, 1953, p. 28nGoogle Scholar) that when Malthus resorts to Divine wisdom to explain disharmonies, such reflections are ‘extraneous to analysis’ (meaning economic analysis). This footnote obiter dictum has recently been the subject of a lengthy defence by Hollander, Samuel, ‘Malthus and Utilitarianism with special reference to the Essay on Population, Utilitas, i (1989), 170–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Faced with Malthus's Principles, Ricardo stated that his ‘great complaint against Mr Malthus is that he is constantly departing from the question in dispute. He first begins by disputing the position whether certain measures will make corn cheap, but before the end of the argument, he is endeavoring to prove that it would not be expedient that it should be cheap, on account of the moral effects which it would have on the people. These are two very distinct propositions.’ See The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Sraffa, P., 10 vols., Cambridge, 1952–1973, ii. 337–8; see also p. 210.Google Scholar

5 Apropos what he took to be Malthus's way of solving the problem of the existence of evil, Mill said: ‘What a misfortune—what a cruel misfortune, it is, for a man to be obliged to believe a certain set of opinions, whether they be fit or not, to be believed.’ Ricardo, , Works, vii. 212–13.Google Scholar

6 See Davis, K., ‘Malthus and the Theory of Population’, The Language of Social Research, ed. Lazarsfeld, P. F. and Rosenberg, M., New York, 1955, pp. 540–53Google Scholar. The same position underlies Blaug, Mark's exposition of Malthus's theory in Economic Theory in Retrospect, London, 1976, ch. 3.Google Scholar

7 See The Great Transformation, New York, 1944, p. 126 and ch. 10 generally.Google Scholar

8 See ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, originally published in 1971Google Scholar, but reprinted with an additional treatment of the subject responding to critics in Customs in Common, London, 1991, pp. 185–351CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thompson concedes that de-moralization does not connote immorality, but regards ‘intention’ as ‘a bad measure of ideological interest and of historical consequences’; see pp. 201–2 and note, amplified on pp. 268–72. The burden of Thompson's criticism of Smith rests on a belief that Smith, in dealing with the corn trade, was theorising ‘a state of perfect competition’, advancing a ‘model that is empirically unproven; inherently unlikely’; see pp. 277–8. For an alternative view that sees Smith as dealing with an imperfect world in which second-best choices have to be made, see my ‘Science and the Legislator: Adam Smith and After’, Economic Journal, xciii (1983), 501–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Himmelfarb, G., The Idea of Poverty; England in the Early Industrial Age, New York, 1984, ch. 4.Google Scholar

10 See Dean, M., The Constitution of Poverty; Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance, London, 1991, pp. 16, 76, 84, 111, 120, 136, 146–7.Google Scholar

11 Among the recent work that has done most to re-establish the theological dimension of Malthus's writings is the following: Santurri, E. N., ‘Theodicy and Social Policy in Malthus's Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xliii (1982), 315–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pullen, J. M., ‘Malthus's Theological Ideas and their Influence on his Principle of Population’, History of Political Economy, xiii (1983), 39–54Google Scholar; and Waterman, A. M. C., ‘Malthus as Theologian; The First Essay and the Relation between Political Economy and Christian Theology’, Malthus: Past and Present, ed. Dupacquier, J. et al. , London, 1983, pp. 195–209Google Scholar. For broader studies of Christian political economy in this period see Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement; The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865, Oxford, 1988, especially chs. 2 and 5Google Scholar; and Waterman, A. M. C., Revolution, Economics and Religion; Christian Political Economy, 1798–1833, Cambridge, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For my earlier work on Malthus as political moralist see ‘Higher Maxims: Happiness versus Wealth in Malthus and Ricardo’, Collini, S., Winch, D., and Burrow, J., That Noble Science of Politics; A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 63–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malthus, Past Masters series, Oxford, 1987, pp. 4, 16–35, 48–53, 98–103, 107–9Google Scholar; and the introduction to An Essay on the Principle of Population in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar (referred to hereafter as Winch, ed., EssayGoogle Scholar.) This edition is based on Patricia James's variorum edition of the Essay, originally published by Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society in two volumes in 1989.

13 The position adopted by Hollander in the article mentioned in note 3 above.

14 See Waterman, , Revolution, Economics and Religion, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

15 For Godwin's criticisms of Smith, Hume and other ‘commercial writers’ who argued that the division of labour in society was the ‘offspring of avarice’ see Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. Kramnick, I., London, 1976, pp. 766–7Google Scholar. Malthus invokes Smith's system of natural liberty in the first Essay, 1798Google Scholar as reprinted in facsimile under the title, First Essay on Population, London, 1926, p. 288n.Google Scholar

16 See his letter to Godwin, , 20 08 1798Google Scholar as reprinted in the end-notes to the First Essay, p. vGoogle Scholar. The same point is made in the text on pp. 207, 287–8; it is repeated in much the same words in later editions; see Winch, ed., Essay, p. 67.Google Scholar

17 See First Essay, pp. 282–4.Google Scholar

18 See my ‘Malthus versus Condorcet Revisited’, Economie Appliqué, forthcoming issue.

19 Malthus's reliance on the Wealth of Nations in his teaching at the East India College is revealed in student notes and examination papers; see Pullen, J. M., ‘Notes from Malthus: The Inverarity Manuscript’, History of Political Economy, xiii (1981), 794–811CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hashimoto, H., ‘Malthus and the Wealth of Nations; His Examination Papers and the Inverarity Manuscript’, Kyoto Sangyo University Economic and Business Review, xv 1988), 19–95Google Scholar. See also Pullen's introduction to the variorum edition of Malthus, 's Principles of Political Economy, i. xxvii–ix, xxxv.Google Scholar

20 See First Essay, chs. 16 and 17; and Himmelfarb, , Idea of Poverty, pp. 108–9.Google Scholar

21 For more detailed argument on this see Winch, , ‘Higher Maxims’, pp. 72–5Google Scholar; Malthus, pp. 23–4, 54–68Google Scholar; and introduction to edition of Essay, p. xx.Google Scholar

22 See Sraffa, ed., Works, II, p. 338.Google Scholar

23 See Black, R. D. C., ‘Le Teorie della Popolazione prima di Malthus in Inghilterra ed in Irlanda’, Le Teorie della Popolazione prima di Malthus, ed. Gioli, G., Milan, 1987, pp. 64–5Google Scholar. A shorter unrevised English version can be found in Quaderni di Storia dell'Economia, iv (1985)Google Scholar, where the equivalent treatment of Smith can be found on pp. 14–15.

24 See The Idea of Poverty, ch. 2.

25 For some reasons for thinking that two hands are better than one, see my ‘Adam Smith: Moral Philosopher as Political Economist’, Historical Journal, xxxv (1992), 91–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See Constitution of Poverty, p. 90Google Scholar. Himmelfarb's reluctance to engage with Malthus's Christianity could be due to the fact that she describes him in the footnote that mentions his religious commitments merely as a ‘former curate’; see Idea of Poverty p. 107nGoogle Scholar. Malthus did give up his first curacy when he was appointed professor at the East India College, but he retained two livings and remained a clergyman for the whole of his life.

27 See Southey's review in Annual Review, ii (1804)Google Scholar, much of which was based on ammunition supplied by Coleridge.

28 See also his statement that: ‘I can easily conceive that this country, with a proper direction of the national industry, might, in the course of some centuries, contain two or three times its present population, and yet, every man in the kingdom be much better fed and clothed than he is at present.’ See Winch, ed., Essay, p. 232.Google Scholar

29 Winch, ed., Essay, p. 331Google Scholar. Himmelfarb cites this statement, but sees it only as ‘an oblique, equivocal, tentative admission’ on Malthus's part ‘that Smith may have been, after all, correct’. Dean acknowledges that in his later work Malthus ‘thought that the population increase of contemporary Britain was fundamentally sound’, but does not see how this must qualify or undermine his bleaker conclusion that the ‘liberal discourse on poverty’ created by Malthus was based on ‘the unalterable imbalance between the growth of poverty and the growth of subsistence’; compare Constitution of Poverty, p. 102 with p. 147.Google Scholar

30 On these aspects of Smith see the article mentioned in note 25 above and Haakonssen, K., The Science of a Legislator; Natural Jurisprudence in Hume and Smith, Cambridge, 1981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 For example, when Malthus argues why ‘the great author of nature’ has made ‘the passion of self-love beyond comparison stronger than the passion of benevolence’ in order to impel us ‘to that line of conduct which is essential to the preservation of the human race’; see Winch, ed., Essay, p. 343.Google Scholar

32 On Smith's probable religious beliefs, see Raphael, D. D., ‘Adam Smith and “The Infection of Hume's Society”’, Journal of the History of Ideas, xxx (1969), 225–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Contrast Malthus's outright rejection of Mandeville (Winch, ed., Essay, p. 344Google Scholar) with Smith on the same subject in Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Raphael, D. D. and Macfie, A. L., Oxford, 1976, pp. 308–13.Google Scholar

34 See Winch, ed., Essay, pp. 213, 223, 228, 321Google Scholar. One of the peculiarities of Dean's interpretation is that he allows Paley to hold a ‘foundational’ position while denying this privilege to Malthus; see Dean, , Constitution of Poverty, pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

35 At one point Hollander suggests (p. 174n) that Malthus rejected ‘reliance upon the supernatural revelation or scriptural authority’. But he also cites A Summary View of the Principle of Population (1830)Google Scholar, Malthus's last word on the subject, where Malthus explicitly denies that the population principle is ‘inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the scriptures’, claiming that ‘instead of being inconsistent with revelation, [it] must be considered as affording strong additional proofs of its truth’; see An Essay on the Principle of Population, ed. Flew, A., London, 1970, pp. 271–2.Google Scholar

36 Most of the evidence of Malthus's views on birth control can be found in First Essay, p. 154Google Scholar, and in Winch, ed., Essay, pp. 23–4, 49, 218, 368–9.Google Scholar

37 See Winch, ed., Essay, p. 369.Google Scholar

38 The pervasiveness of this concern has been fully documented by Pullen, J. M., ‘Malthus on the Doctrine of Proportions and the Concept of the Optimum’, Australian Economic Papers, xxi (1982), 270–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Gilbert, G., ‘Why Did Malthus Oppose Birth Control?’, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, (forthcoming).Google Scholar

40 For an earlier attempt to treat the transition from Smith, to Malthus, and Ricardo, see the article on ‘Science and the Legislator: Adam Smith and After’ cited in note 8 above.Google Scholar

41 Malthus's respect for experience—which is, of course, entirely compatible with fallibility in interpreting it—has been thoroughly treated by Wrigley, E. A., ‘Elegance and Experience: Malthus at the Bar of History’, The State of Population Theory, ed. Coleman, D. and Schofield, R., Oxford, 1986, pp. 46–64.Google Scholar

42 Robinson, Thomas to Robinson, Henry Crabbe, 27 12 1803Google Scholar, Dr. Williams's Library.

43 See de Marchi, N. B. and Sturges, R. P., ‘Malthus and Ricardo's Inductivist Critics; Four Letters to William Whewell’, Economica, xxxvii (1970), 257–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Whewell, to Jones, , 16 08 1822Google Scholar, ed. Todhunter, I., William Whewell; An Account of his Writings with Selections from his Literary and Scientific Correspondence, 2 vols., London, 1970, ii. 48.Google Scholar