MALTHUS’S ESSAY ON POPULATION. 
in revealed religion ; and as we have reason 
to think that the exercise of this virtue to a 
certain degree, would rather tend to increase 
than diminish individual happiness ; we can 
have no reason to impeach the justice of 
the Deity, because his general laws make 
this virtue necessary, and punish our offen- 
ces against it by the evils attendant upon 
vice, and the pains that accompany the ya- 
rious forms of premature death. A ron 
virtuous society, such as I have supposed, 
would avoid these evils. It is the apparent 
“4 lg of the Creator to deter us from vice by 
the pains which accompany it, and to lead us 
to virtue by the happiness that it produces. 
This object appears to our conceptions to be 
worthy of a benevolent Creator. The laws 
of nature respecting population, tend to pro- 
mote this object. No imputation, therefore, 
en the benevolence of the Deity, can be 
founded on these laws, which is not equally 
licable to any of the evils necessarily in- 
cidental to an imperiect state of existence.” 
Wherein then does Mr. Malthus differ 
from those who maintain the perfectibi- 
lity of man? that is, who believe a state 
of society to be possible, in which every 
man shall enjoy as much happiness as 
his physical and moral powers are capa- 
ble of enjoying; that happiness being 
regulated by and subservient to the 
general welfare? If man can retain his 
passions in a conceivable state of know- 
ledge, what is to stop his improve- 
ment ? 
therefore palpably confutes the former, 
and he perishes by a stupid suicide, like 
the scorpion who strikes his tail into his 
own head. 
We are now then to rank Mr. Mal- 
thus among the political reformers: he 
has discovered that moral restraint is 
practicable, and that it is a remedy equi- 
valent to the evil of a redundant popu- 
lation. Let us see how he applies this 
principle. 
«When the wages of labour are hardly 
sufficient to maintain two children, a man 
marries and has five or six. He of course 
finds himself miserably distressed. He ac- 
cuses the insufficiency of the price of labour 
to maintain a family. He accuses his parish 
for their tardy and sparing fulfilment of their 
obligation to assist him. He accuses the 
avarice of the rich, who suffer him to want 
what they can so well spare. He accuses 
the partial and unjust institutions of society, 
which have awarded him an inadequate 
share of the produce of the earth. He accu- 
ses perhaps the dispensations of Providence, 
which have assigned to him a place in society 
80 beset with unavoidable distress and depen- 
dance. In searching for objec.s of accusa- 
tion, he never adverts to the quarter from 
The ‘latter part of his book _ 
295 
which all his misfortunes originate. The last 
erson that he would-think of accusing is 
Pimself, on whom, in fact, the whole of the 
blame lies, except in as far as he has been 
deceived by the higher classes of society. 
He may perhaps wish that he had not mar- 
ried, because he now’ feels the inconvenien- 
ces of it; but it never enters into his head 
that he can have done any thing wrong 
He has alsvays been told that to raise up 
subjects for his king and country is a very 
meritorious act. He has done this act, and 
yet is suffering for it. He naturally thinks 
that he is suffering for righteousness sake ; 
and it cannot but strike him as most extreme- 
ly unjust and cruel in his king and country, 
to allow him thus to suffer, in return, for 
giving them what they are continually de- 
claring that they particularly want. 
«« Pill these erroneous ideas have been cor- 
rected, and the language of nature and rea~ 
son has been generally earl on the subject 
of population, instead of the language of 
error and prejudice, it cannot be said that 
any fair experiment has been made with the 
understandings of the common people; and 
we cannot justly accuse them of improvi- 
dence and want of industry, till they act as 
they do now, afier it has been brought home 
to their comprehensions, that they are them- 
selves the cause of their own poverty ; that 
the means of redress are in their own hands, 
and in the hands of no other persons what- 
ever ; that the society in which they live, 
and the government which presides over it, 
are totally without power in this respect ; 
and however ardently they may desire to re- 
lieve them, and whatever attempts they may 
make to do so, they are really and truly un- 
able to execute what they benevolently wish, 
but unjustly promise ; that when the wages 
of labour will not maintain a family, it is an 
incontrovertible sign that their ine and 
country do not want more subjects, or at 
least that they cannot support them ; that if 
they marry in this case, so far from fulfilling 
a duty to society, they are throwing a useless 
burden on it, at the same time that they 
are plunging themselves into distress; and 
that they are acting directly contrary to the 
will of God, and bringing down upon them- 
selves various diseases, which might all, or 
in a great part, have been avoided, if they 
had dteeded to the repeated admonitions 
which he gives, by the general laws of 
nature, to every being capable of reason.” 
«© T have reflected much on the subject of 
the poor laws, and hope, therefore, that I 
shall be excused, in venturing to suggest a 
mode of their gradual abolition, to which,- 
I confess, that at present I can see no mate- 
rial objection Of this, indeed, I feel nearly 
convinced, that, should we ever become suf- 
ficiently sensible of the wide-spreading ty- 
ranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappi- 
ness, which they create, as seriously to make 
an effort to abolish them, we shall be com- 
pelled to adopt the principle, if not tbe plan, 
