Law of Population 75 



causes ; the relation of the death-rate to the birth-rate, 

 which makes a high mortality in a community to be 

 accompanied by a high birth-rate, and a low mortality 

 by a low birth-rate. He perceived misery and miserable 

 conditions of life everywhere, and causes hostile to 

 human existence, and he concluded that by these con- 

 ditions alone was mankind prevented from over- 

 population and outgrowth of the means of subsistence. 

 The immorality of this theory drew many fierce attacks, 

 but the writers of these, like the clergy in their original 

 denunciation of the Darwinian theory of natural 

 selection, wanted the scientific data with which to 

 support their statements, and thus it was that ere long 

 the public settled down to the belief that it was founded 

 on an irrefutable basis. Thus it was that Macaulay, 

 voicing the opinion of his contemporaries, wrote : 

 " The question is not, is the doctrine immoral, but, is 

 the doctrine true ? " If it were indeed true that by 

 only " vice and misery " can the population be kept 

 in check, and that this constitutes the ordinance of 

 nature by which alone the human race can keep 

 within the limits of the means of subsistence, and to 

 which alone we must look for its preservation, then 

 would the lot of humanity be most deplorable, deprived 

 as it would be of all hope of a brighter and happier 

 future ; and the man who has endeavoured to 

 ameliorate the conditions of human life, in the way of 

 improved sanitation and building, supply of open 

 spaces, creation of garden cities, shorter hours of 

 labour, the removal of all conditions noxious to life in 

 many trades, the arrest of disease and pestilence, 

 could not be considered to be a benefactor of the 

 race. Lord Lister, whom all the world honours as the 

 greatest saviour of the race from disease and suffer- 

 ing and death — if the Malthusian theory were true — 

 could only be considered a traitor to humanity in 



