THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 133 



the public settled down to the belief that the theory, 

 not being disproved, must be founded upon an irre- 

 futable basis. 



Macaulay voiced forth the general conviction of his 

 contemporaries when he wrote, " The question is not, 

 is the doctrine immoral, but is the doctrine true ? " 



It is an evidence of the materialistic tendencies of 

 the times, as well as their punishment, that the 

 public can be so influenced as to believe that a 

 doctrine that is immoral can be true. 



If it were indeed true doctrine that the miseries 

 and evils that wait upon, or have found their way 

 into, human life, form the ordinance of Nature by 

 which alone mankind has in the past been preserved 

 from the fell results of its tendency to increase 

 numerically beyond the measure of its food supply, 

 and to which we must mainly look in the future for 

 such preservation, then would the lot of humanity be 

 most deplorable, being deprived of all hope of a 

 brighter and happier future. 



If it were true doctrine, then the man who should 

 endeavour to ameliorate the conditions of human life 

 by arresting the progress of disease and pestilence, or 

 by putting an end to the horrors of war, or by puri- 

 fying the drains or cleansing the atmosphere in the 

 great centres of population, or by engaging in the 

 promotion of any form of sanitation, would be a 

 traitor to humanity and a criminal of the deepest dye, 

 in thus attempting to counteract and neutralise the 

 beneficent and necessary ordinances of Nature. 



