Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/389

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY 373 popular enlightenment and more serious habits of moral reflexion ought indeed to be encouraged. But it is the duty of the individual to his possible offspring, and not any vague notions as to the pressure of the national popu lation on subsistence, that will be adequate to influence conduct. The only obligation on which Malthus insists is that of abstinence from marriage so long as the necessary provision for a family has not been acquired or cannot be reasonably anticipated. The idea of post-nuptial continence, which has since been put forward by J. S. Mill and others, is foreign to his view. He even suggests that an allowance might be made from the public funds for every child in a family beyond the number of six, on the ground that, when a man marries, he cannot tell how many children he shall have, and that the relief from an unlooked-for distress afforded by such a grant would not operate as an encouragement to marriage. The duty of economic prudence in entering on the married state is plain ; but in the case of working men the idea of a secured pro vision must not be unduly pressed, and it must also be remembered that the proper age for marriage in any class depends on the dura tion of life in that class. Too early marriages, however, are certainly not unfrequent, and they are attended with other than material evils, so that possibly even legal measures might with advantage be resorted to for preventing them in all ranks by some what postponing the age of full civil competence. On the other hand, however, the Malthusians often speak too lightly of involun tary celibacy, not recognizing sufficiently that it is a deplorable necessity. They do not adequately estimate the value of domestic life as a school of the civic virtues, and the social importance (even apart from personal happiness) of the mutual affective education arising from the relations of the sexes in a well-constituted union. Malthus further infers from his principles that states should not artificially stimulate population, and in particular that poor-laws should not be established, and, where they exist, should be abolished. The iirst part of this proposition cannot be accepted as applying to every social phase, for it is evident that in a case like that of ancient Rome, where continuous conquest was the chief occupation of the national activity, or in other periods when protracted wars threatened the independence or security of nations, statesmen might wisely take special action of the kind deprecated by Malthus. In relation to modern industrial communities he is doubtless in general right, though the promotion of immigration in new states is similar in principle to the encouragement of population. The question of poor-laws involves other considerations. The English system of his day was certainly a vicious one, though acting in some degree as a corrective of other evils in our social institutions ; and efforts for its amendment tended to the public good. But the pro posal of abolition is one from which statesmen have recoiled, and which general opinion has never adopted. It is difficult to believe that the present system will be permanent ; it is too mechanical and undiscriminating; on some sides too lax, it is often unduly rigorous in the treatment of the worthy poor who are the victims of misfortune ; and, in its ordinary modes of dealing with the young, it is open to grave objection. But it would certainly be rash to abolish it; it is one of several institutions which will more wisely be retained until the whole subject of the life of the working classes lias been more thoroughly, and also more sympathetically, studied. The position of Malthus with respect to the relief of destitution is subject to this general criticism that, first proving too much, he then shrinks from the consequences of his own logic. It follows from his arguments, and is indeed explicitly stated in a celebrated passage of his original essay, that he who has brought children into the world without adequate provision for them should be left to the punishment of Nature, that &quot; it is a miserable ambition to wish to snatch the rod from her hand,&quot; and to defeat the action of her laws, which are the laws of God, and which &quot; have doomed him and his family to suffer.&quot; Though his theory leads him to this conclusion, he could not, as a Christian clergyman, maintain the doctrine that, seeing our brother in need, we ought to shut up our bowels of compassion from him ; and thus he is involved in the radical incon sequence of admitting the lawfulness, if not the duty, of relieving distress, whilst he yet must regard the act as doing mischief to society. Buckle, who was imposed on by more than one of the exaggerations of the economists, accepts the logical inference which Malthus evaded. He alleges that the only ground on which we are justified in relieving destitution is the essentially self-regarding one, that by remaining deaf to the appeal of the sufferer we should probably blunt the edge of our own liner sensibilities. It can scarcely be doubted that the favour which was at once accorded to the views of Malthus in certain circles was due in part to an impression, very welcome to the higher ranks of society, that they tended to relieve the rich and powerful of responsibility for the condition of the working classes, by showing that the latter had chiefly themselves to blame, and not either the negligence of their superiors or the institutions of the country. The applica tion of his doctrines, too, made by some of his successors had the effect of discouraging all active effort for social improvement. Thus Chalmers &quot; reviews seriatim and gravely sets aside all the schemes usually proposed for the amelioration of the economic condition of the people &quot; on the ground that an increase of comfort will lead to an increase of numbers, and so the last state of things will be worse than the first. Malthus has in more recent times derived a certain degree of reflected lustre from the rise and wide acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis. Its author himself, in tracing its filiation, points to the phrase &quot; struggle for existence &quot; used by Malthus in relation to the social com petition. Darwin believes that man has advanced to his present high condition through such a struggle, consequent on his rapid multiplication. He regards, it is true, the agency of this cause for the improvement of our race as largely superseded by moral influences in the more advanced social stages. Yet he considers it, even in these stages, of so much importance towards that end that, not withstanding the individual suffering arising from the struggle for life, he deprecates any great reduction in the natural, by which he seems to mean the ordinary, rate of increase. There has been of late exhibited in some quarters a tendency to apply the doctrine of the &quot; survival of the fittest &quot; to human society in such a way as to intensify the harsher features of Malthus s exposition by encouraging the idea that whatever cannot sustain itself is fated, and must be allowed, to disappear. But what is repellent in this conception is removed by a wider view of the influence of Humanity, as the presiding race, alike on vital and on social conditions. As in the general animal domain the supremacy of man introduces a new force consciously con trolling and ultimately determining the destinies of the subordinate species, so human providence in the social sphere can intervene for the protection of the Aveak, modi fying by its deliberate action what would otherwise be a mere contest of comparative strengths inspired by selfish instincts. David Ricardo (1772-1823) is essentially of the school Kicardo. of Smith, whose doctrines he in the main accepts, whilst he seeks to develop them, and to correct them in certain particulars. But his mode of treatment is very different from Smith s. The latter aims at keeping close to the realities of life as he finds them, at representing the con ditions and relations of men and things as they are ; and, as Hume remarked on first reading his great work, his principles are everywhere exemplified and illustrated with curious facts. Quite unlike this is the way in which Eicardo proceeds. He moves in a world of abstractions. He sets out from more or less arbitrary assumptions, reasons deductively from these, and announces his conclu sions as true, without allowing for the partial unreality of the conditions assumed or confronting his results with experience. When he seeks to illustrate his doctrines, it is from hypothetical cases, his favourite device being that of imagining two contracting savages, and considering how they would be likely to act. He does not explain prob ably he had not systematically examined, perhaps was not competent to examine the appropriate method of political economy ; and the theoretic defence of his mode of proceeding was left to be elaborated by J. S. Mill and Cairnes. But his example had a great effect in determin ing the practice of his successors. There was something highly attractive to the ambitious theorist in the sweeping march of logic which seemed in Ricardo s hands to emulate the certainty and comprehensiveness of mathematical