240 REV. J. WHITE, M.A., ON DARWINISM AND MALTHUS. 
This interest in Malthus and the obligations to him of Darwin 
and Wallace are more than academic. It is of tne nature of a 
moral duty to do justice to a man who has been so ignored and 
misrepresented. Of all the essays and papers that the centenary of 
Darwin has drawn out the only one I have seen which refers to 
Malthus is that of Professor E. B. Poulton, F.R.S., of Oxford; 
and it is much to be regretted that in the Report of the Committee 
of Convocation on the diminishing birth-rate, it is implied that he is 
responsible for theories and practices which he abhorred and which 
he denounced. 
But further the teachings of Malthus are of the highest practical 
importance. When they entered, into the science of biology they 
produced greater fruits of thought than any or all other principles 
or discoveries have done. How much more fruitful might they be 
if applied to the subjects with which they are more directly 
connected, such as political economy and sociology. 
It is rather a strange suggestion that the title of the paper 
should be “ How to prevent the increase of population.” Except 
the reference to parental responsibility there is no mention or 
allusion to any means of checking population either in the paper or 
in the writings of Malthus himself. The question Malthus discusses 
is not whether any given country or the world itself could sustain a 
larger population, but this, that as population tends to increase in a 
geometrical progression and the supply of food in an arithmetical 
progression the former must overtake the latter, and a certain amount 
of misery and degradation must result. Malthus appears to have 
established the law that the right to live is not inherent, but is either 
imparted or acquired. The general and popular opinion is that the 
right to live is inherent, that is, if a man cannot or will not keep 
himself he has a right to make other people keep him. This is a right 
that could not be universally, or by a majority, or even by a large 
minority, exercised simultaneously. 
