第57章 Malthus(15)

Malthus was not a thoroughgoing supporter of the 'do-nothing'doctrine.He approved of a national system of education,and of the early factory acts,though only as applied to infant labour.So,as we shall see,did all the Utilitarians.The 'individualism,'however,is not less decided;and leads him to speak as though the elasticity of population were not merely an essential factor in the social problem,but the sole principle from which all solutions must be deduced.He is thus led,as I have tried to show,to a narrow interpretation of his 'moral check.'He is apt to take 'vice'simply as a product of excessive pressure,and,in his general phrases at least,to overlook its reciprocal tendency to cause pressure.The 'moral check'is only preventive or negative,not a positive cause of superior vigour.A similar defect appears in his theory of the vis medicatrix.He was,I hold,perfectly right in emphasising the importance of individual responsibility.No reform can be permanent which does not raise the morality of the individual.His insistence upon this truth was of the highest importance,and it is to be wished that its importance might be more fully recognised to-day.The one-sidedness appears in his proposal to abolish the poor-law simply.That became the most conspicuous and widely accepted doctrine.All men of 'sense,'said Sydney Smith --certainly a qualified representative of the class --in 1820,agree,first,that the poor-law must be abolished;and secondly,that it must be abolished very gradually.78That is really to assume that by refusing to help people at all,you will force them to help themselves.There is another alternative,namely,that they may,as Malthus himself often recognises,become demoralised by excessive poverty.To do simply nothing may lead to degeneration instead of increased energy.The possibility of an improved law,which might act as a moral discipline instead of a simply corrupting agency,is simply left out of account;and the tendency to stimulate reckless population is regarded not only as one probable consequence,but as the very essence of all poor-laws.Upon Malthus's assumptions,the statement that sound political and social theories must be based upon systematic inquiry into facts,meant that the individual was the ultimate unalterable unit,whose interest in his own welfare gave the one fulcrum for all possible changes.The ideal 'state of nature'was a fiction.The true basis of our inquiries is the actual man known to us by observation.The main fault of this being was the excess of the instinct of multiplication,and the way to improve him was to show how it might conflict with the instinct of self-preservation.In this shape the doctrine expressed the most characteristic tendency of the Utilitarians,and divided them from the Socialists or believers in abstract rights of man.

VI.RENT

Here,then,we are at a central point of the Utilitarian creed.The expansive force of population is,in a sense,the great motive power which moulds the whole social structure;or,rather,it forces together the independent units,and welds them into an aggregate.The influence of this doctrine upon other economical speculations is of the highest importance.One critical stage in the process is marked by the enunciation of the theory of rent,which was to become another essential article of the true faith.The introduction of this doctrine is characteristic,and marks the point at which Ricardo superseded Malthus as chief expositor of the doctrine.

Malthus's views were first fully given in his Inquiry into Rent,the second of three pamphlets which he published during the corn-law controversy of 1814-15.79The opinions now stated had,he says,been formed in the course of his lecturing at Haileybury;and he made them public on account of their bearing upon the most absorbing questions of the time.The connection of the theory with Malthus's speculations and with the contemporary difficulties is indeed obvious.The landlord had clearly one of the reserved seats at the banquet of nature.He was the most obvious embodiment of 'security'as opposed to equality.Malthus,again,had been influenced by the French economists and their theory of the 'surplus fund,'provided by agriculture.According to them,as he says,80this fund or rent constitutes the whole national wealth.In his first edition he had defended the economists against some of Adam Smith's criticisms;and though he altered his views and thought that they had been led into preposterous errors,he retained a certain sympathy for them.Agriculture has still a certain 'pre-eminence.'God has bestowed upon the soil the 'inestimable quality of being able to maintain more persons than are necessary to work it.'81It has the special virtue that the supply of necessaries generates the demand.Make more luxuries and the price may fall;but grow more food and there will be more people to eat it.This,however,seems to be only another way of stating an unpleasant fact.The blessing of 'fertility'counteracts itself.As he argues in the essay,82an equal division of land might produce such an increase of population as would exhaust any conceivable increase of food.These views --not,I think,very clear or consistently worked out --lead apparently to the conclusion that the fertility is indeed a blessing,but on condition of being confined to a few.The result,in any case,is the orthodox theory of rent.The labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed.Both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent,and that this actually happens,he says,with unusual positiveness,is an 'incontrovertible truth'83the fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated,and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile.