Malthus's survey of different countries showed how various are the 'checks'by which population is limited in various countries.We take a glance at all nations through all epochs of history.In the South Sea we find a delicious climate and a fertile soil,where population is mainly limited by vice,infanticide,and war;and where,in spite of these influences,the population multiplies at intervals till it is killed off by famine.In China,a vast and fertile territory,inhabited by an industrious race,in which agriculture has always been encouraged,marriage stimulated,and property widely diffused,has facilitated the production of a vast population in the most abject state of poverty,driven to expose children by want,and liable at intervals to destructive famines.In modern Europe,the checks appear in the most various forms;in Switzerland and Norway a frugal population in small villages sometimes instinctively understands the principle of population,and exhibits the,moral restraint,'while in England the poor-laws are producing a mass of hopeless and inert pauperism.Consideration of these various cases,and a comparison of such records as are obtainable of the old savage races,of the classical states of antiquity,of the Northern barbarians and of the modern European nations,suggests a natural doubt.Malthus abundantly proves what can hardly be denied,that population has everywhere been found to press upon the means of subsistence,and that vice and misery are painfully abundant.But does he establish or abandon his main proposition?He now asserts the 'tendency'of population to outrun the means of subsistence.
Yet he holds unequivocally that the increase of population has been accompanied by an increased comfort;that want has diminished although population has increased;and that the 'preventive'check is stronger than of old in proportion to the positive check.Scotland,he says,23is 'still overpeopled,but not so much as when it contained fewer inhabitants.'Many nations,as he points out in general terms,have been most prosperous when most populous.24They could export food when crowded,and have ceased to import it when thinned.This,indeed,expresses his permanent views,though the facts were often alleged by his critics as a disproof of them.
Was not the disproof real?Does not a real evasion lurk under the phrase 'tendency'?You may say that the earth has a tendency to fall into the sun,and another 'tendency'to move away from the sun.But it would be absurd to argue that we were therefore in danger of being burnt or of being frozen.To explain the law of a vital process,we may have to analyse it,and therefore to regard it as due to conflicting forces;but the forces do not really exist separately,and in considering the whole concrete phenomenon we must take them as mutually implied.A man has a 'tendency'to grow too fat;and another 'tendency'to grow too thin.That surely means that on the whole he has a 'tendency'to preserve the desirable mean.The phrase,then,can only have a distinct meaning when the conflicting forces represent two independent or really separable forces.To use an illustration given by Malthus,we might say that a man had a 'tendency'to grow upwards;but was restrained by a weight on his head.The man has the 'tendency,'because we may regard the weight as a separable accident.When both forces are of the essence,the separate,tendencies,correspond merely to our way of analysing the fact.But if one can be properly regarded as relatively accidental,the 'tendency'means the way in which the other will manifest itself in actual cases.
In 1829,Senior put this point to Malthus.25What,he asked,do you understand by a 'tendency'when you admit that the tendency is normally overbalanced by others?Malthus explains his meaning to be that every nation suffers from evils 'specifically arising from the pressure of population against food.'The wages of the labourer in old countries have never been sufficient to enable him to maintain a large family at ease.There is overcrowding,we may say,in England now as there was in England at the Conquest;though food has increased in a greater proportion than population;and the pressure has therefore taken a milder form.This,again,is proved by the fact that,whenever a relaxation of the pressure has occurred,when plagues have diminished population,or improvements in agriculture increased their supply of food,the gap has been at once filled up.The people have not taken advantage of the temporary relaxation of the check to preserve the new equilibrium,but have taken out the improvement by a multiplication of numbers.The statement then appears to be that at any given time the population is in excess.
Men would be better off if they were less numerous.But,on the other hand,the tendency to multiply does not represent a constant force,an irresistible instinct which will always bring men down to the same level,but something which,in fact,may vary materially.Malthus admits,in fact,that the 'elasticity'is continually changing;and therefore repudiates the interpretation which seemed to make all improvement hopeless.Why,then,distinguish the 'check'as something apart from the instinct?If,in any case,we accept this explanation,does not the theory become a 'truism,'or at least a commonplace,inoffensive but hardly instructive?Does it amount to more than the obvious statement that prudence and foresight are desirable and are unfortunately scarce?