Thomas Robert Malthus

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The Reverend[1] Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 – 23 December 1834),[2] was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography.[3][4] Malthus popularised the economic theory of rent.[5]

Malthus has become widely known for his theories concerning population, and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. The six editions of his Principles of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality. He was writing against the popular view in 18th century Europe that saw society as improving, and in principle as perfectible.[6] William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, believed in the possibility of almost limitless improvement of society. So, in a more complex way, did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose notions centered on the goodness of man and the liberty of citizens bound only by the social contract, a form of popular sovereignty.

Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".[7] As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[8] Believing that one could not change human nature, Malthus wrote:

"Must it not then be acknowledged by an attentive examiner of the histories of mankind, that in every age and in every State in which man has existed, or does now exist

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."[9]

Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticised the Poor Laws,[10] and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat.[11] He thought these measures would encourage domestic production, and so promote long-term benefits.[12]

Malthus became hugely influential, and controversial, in economic, political, social and scientific thought. Many of those whom subsequent centuries sometimes term "evolutionary biologists" also read him,[13] notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection.[14][15] Malthus remains a writer of great significance and controversy.

Biography

The sixth of seven children of Daniel and Henrietta Malthus,[16] Thomas Robert Malthus grew up in The Rookery, a country house near Westcott in Surrey. Petersen describes Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means... [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau".[17] The young Malthus received his education at home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire, and then at the Dissenting Warrington Academy. He entered Jesus College, Cambridge in 1784. There he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics.[18] He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge two years later.[5] In 1797, he took orders[19] and in 1798[5] became an Anglican country curate at Okewood near Albury in Surrey.[20]

His portrait,[21] and descriptions by contemporaries, present him as tall and good-looking, but with a hare-lip and cleft palate.[22] The cleft palate affected his speech: such birth defects had occurred before amongst his relatives.[23] Malthus apparently refused to have his portrait painted until 1833 because of embarrassment over the hare-lip.

Malthus married his cousin, Harriet, on April 12, 1804, and had three children: Henry, Emily and Lucy. In 1805 he became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College (now known as Haileybury) in Hertfordshire.[24] His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop" or "Population" Malthus. In 1818 Malthus became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Bath Abbey in England hosts Malthus's tomb.

The Principle of Population

Between 1798 and 1826 Malthus published six editions of his famous treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population, updating each edition to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject. He wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates (notably Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. Malthus also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin (1756–1836) and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794).

Malthus regarded ideals of future improvement in the lot of humanity with scepticism, considering that throughout history a segment of every human population seemed relegated to poverty. He explained this phenomenon by arguing that population growth generally expanded in times and in regions of plenty until the size of the population relative to the primary resources caused distress:

"Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition".

—Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter II, p18 in Oxford World's Classics reprint.

"The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population... increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened, and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated".

—Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter II, p19 in Oxford World's Classics reprint.

Malthus also saw that societies through history had experienced at one time or another epidemics, famines, or wars: events that masked the fundamental problem of populations overstretching their resource limitations:

"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world".

—Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter VII, p61[25]

Proposed solutions

Malthus argued that population is held within resource limits by two types of checks: positive checks, which raise the death rate; and preventative ones, which lower the birth rate. The positive checks include hunger, disease and war; the preventative checks, abortion, birth control, prostitution, postponement of marriage and celibacy.[26] Regarding possibilities for freeing man from these limits, Malthus argued against a variety of imaginable solutions. For example, he satirically criticized the notion that agricultural improvements could expand without limit:

"We may be quite sure that among plants, as well as among animals, there is a limit to improvement, though we do not exactly know where it is. It is probable that the gardeners who contend for flower prizes have often applied stronger dressing without success. At the same time, it would be highly presumptuous in any man to say, that he had seen the finest carnation or anemone that could ever be made to grow. He might however assert without the smallest chance of being contradicted by a future fact, that no carnation or anemone could ever by cultivation be increased to the size of a large cabbage; and yet there are assignable quantities much greater than a cabbage. No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat, or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude, at which they would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined."

He also criticized the notion that Francis Galton later called eugenics: