134 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



The theory of Malthus has already wrought 

 sufficient barm in the domain of practical legalisation ; 

 for it is a matter of history that the younger Pitt had 

 prepared a scheme to be submitted to Parliament 

 similar to that of our present Poor Law system, and 

 that he was dissuaded by the authority of Malthus 

 from carrying out his intention, and induced to let 

 the matter drop. Thus one of the most beneficent 

 measures, in view of national well-being, was deferred 

 through a long course of years by the influence of 

 this wretched theory upon the mind of a great 

 statesman. 



Few people are aware to how great an extent 

 throughout the civilised world the operation of what 

 Malthus called the positive checks have been curtailed 

 or wholly eliminated, and how great has been the 

 consequent lengthening of the average life of man. 



We have every reason to believe that in the 

 sixteenth century the average length of life both 

 in this country and on the continent of Europe was 

 somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years. 



In several of the provinces of European Eussia it 

 is to-day not a whit higher. There are few European 

 countries in which the average life has not been 

 doubled in the past century. 



In some the life-term has been extended nearly in 

 a threefold degree. In Sweden the average of life 

 has, since Malthus wrote, been lengthened twofold, so 

 that while in a given population two hundred people 

 died annually a century ago, only one hundred die 



