In Chapter VI. of Book IV. Mr. Malthus treats of the effects of the knowledge of the principal cause of poverty on Civil Liberty, observing at the outset that it may appear to some that a doctrine which attributes the greatest part of the sufferings of the lower classes of society exclusively to themselves, is unfavorable to the cause of liberty, affording, it may be said, a tempting opportunity to governments of oppressing their subjects at pleasure, and laying all the blame on the improvident habits of the poor. Our author contends that, on the other hand, the pressure of distress on the lower classes of people, with the habit of attributing the distress to their rulers, appears to him to be the rock of defence, the castle and the guardian spirit of despotism, affording as it does to the tyrant the unanswerable plea of necessity. “The patriot who might be called upon by the love of his country to join with heart and hand in a rising of the people for some specific attainable object or reform, if he knew that they were enlightened respecting their own situation, and would stop short when they had attained their demand, would be called upon by the same motion to submit to very great opposition rather than give the slightest countenance to a popular tumult, the members of which, at least the greatest number of them, were persuaded that the destruction of the Parliament, the Lord Mayor, and the monopoly would make bread cheap, and that a revolution would enable them all to support their families. In this case it is more the ignorance and delusion of the lower classes of people that occasions the oppression, than the actual disposition of the government to tyranny.”
Mr. Malthus observes that the circulation of Paine’s Rights of Man was said to have done great mischief among the lower 107and middle classes in this country: and that might be true; but that was because Mr. Paine in many important points had shown himself totally unacquainted with the structure of society, and the different moral effects to be expected from the physical difference between this country and America. Mobs of the same description as those collections of people known by that name in Europe could not at that day exist in America. The number of people without property was, then, at that time, from the physical state of the country, comparatively small: and therefore the civil power which was needed to protect property, did not require to be so large. Mr. Paine argued that the real cause of riots was always want of happiness, and maintained that such was always due to something being wrong in the system of Government. But this is evidently not always the case. The redundant population of an old state furnishes materials for unhappiness, unknown to such a state of that of America.
Nothing would so effectually counteract the mischief caused by Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (says our author), as a general knowledge of our true rights. “What these rights are, it is not now my business to explain: but there is one right which man has generally been thought to possess, which I am confident he neither does nor can possess, a right to subsistence when his labor will not fairly purchase it. Our laws (in 1806) indeed say that he has this right, and bind the society to furnish employment and food to them who cannot get them in the regular market; but in so doing they attempt to reverse the laws of nature; and it is in consequence to be expected, not only that they should fail in their object, but that the poor who were intended to be benefited should suffer most cruelly from this inhuman deceit which is practised upon them.”
Malthus adds that the Abbé Raynal had said that before all other social laws, man has a right to subsistence. “He might just as well have said that every man had a right to live 100 years. Yes! He has a right to do so, if he can. Good social laws enable truly a greater number of people to exist than could without them; but neither before nor since the institution of social laws can an unlimited number exist. Consequently, as it is impossible to feed all that might be born, it is disgraceful to promise to do so.
“If the great truths on these subjects were more generally circulated, and the lower classes could be convinced that by the laws of nature, independently of any particular institution, 108except the great one of property, which is absolutely necessary in order to attain any considerable produce, no person has any claim or right on society for subsistence, if his labor will not purchase it, the greatest part of the mischievous declamation on the unjust institutions of society would fall powerless to the ground. If the real causes of their misery were shown to the poor, and they were taught to know how small a part of their present distress was attributable to government, discontent would be far less common.
“Again—Remove all fear from the tyranny or folly of the people, and the tyranny of government could not stand a moment. It would then appear in its proper deformity, without palliation, without pretext, without protection.
“Good governments are chiefly useful to the poorer classes, by giving them a clearer view of the necessity of some preventive check to population. And in despotic governments it is usually found that the checks to population arise more from the sickness and mortality consequent on poverty, than from any such preventive check.”
Mr. Malthus contends that “the most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all the evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments. The falsity of these accusations, and the dreadful consequences that would result from their being generally admitted and acted upon, make it absolutely necessary that they should at all events be resisted: not only on account of the immediate revolutionary horrors to be expected from a movement of the people acting under such impressions, a consideration which must at all times have very great weight, but on account of the extreme probability that such a revolution would soon terminate in a much worse despotism than that which it had destroyed. Whatever may be, therefore, the intention of those indiscriminate accusations against governments, their real effect undoubtedly is to add a weight of talents and principles to the prevailing power which it would never have received otherwise.”
“Under a government constructed upon the best and purest principles, and executed by men of the highest talents and integrity, the most squalid poverty and wretchedness might universally prevail from an inattention to the prudential check to population, and as this cause of unhappiness has hitherto been so little understood, that the efforts of society have always tended rather to aggravate than to lessen it, we have 109the strongest reason for supposing that in all the governments with which we are acquainted, a great part of the misery to be observed among the lower classes of the people arises from this cause.”
The inference, therefore, which Mr. Godwin, and in latter days Mr. Hyndman and the Democratic Federation, have drawn against governments from the unhappiness of the people is palpably unfair, and before we give a sanction to such accusations, it is a debt we owe to truth and justice, to ascertain how much of this unhappiness arises from the principle of population, and how much is fairly to be attributed to government. When this distinction has been properly made, and all the vague, indefinite, and false accusations removed, government would remain, as it ought to be, clearly responsible for the rest, and the amount of this would still be such as to make the responsibility very considerable. “Though government has but little power in the direct relief of poverty, yet its indirect influences on the prosperity of its subjects is striking and incontestible. And the reason is, that though it is comparatively impotent in its efforts to make the food of a country keep pace with an unrestricted increase of population, yet its influence is great in giving the best direction to those checks, which in some form or other must necessarily take place.”
The first great requisite, says Mr. Malthus, to the growth of prudential habits is the perfect security of property, and the next perhaps is that respectability and importance which is given to the lower classes by equal laws, and the possession of some influence in the framing of them. The more excellent, then, is the government, the more does it tend to generate that prudence and elevation of sentiment by which alone in the present state of our being can poverty be avoided.
Mr. Malthus was greatly opposed to despotic government; and he remarks that it has been sometimes asserted, that the only reason why it is advantageous that the people should have some share in the government, is that a representation of the people tends best to secure the framing of good and equal laws; but that if the same object could be obtained under a despotism, the same advantage would accrue to the community. If, however, the representative system, by securing to the lower classes of society a more equal and liberal mode of treatment from their superiors, gives to each individual a greater personal respectability and a greater fear of personal degradation, it is evident that it will powerfully co-operate 110with the security of property in animating the exertions of industry, and in generating habits of prudence, and thus more powerfully tend to increase the riches and prosperity of the lower classes of the community, than if the same laws had existed under a despotism.
But, says our author, though the tendency of a free constitution and a good government to diminish poverty is certain, yet its effect in this way must necessarily be indirect and slow, and very different from the immediate and direct relief which the lower classes of people are too frequently in the habit of looking forward to as the consequences of a revolution. This habit of expecting too much, and the irritation occasioned by disappointment, continually give a wrong direction to their efforts in favor of liberty, and continually tend to defeat the accomplishment of those gradual reforms in government, and that slow amelioration of the lowest classes of society, which are really attainable.
The following passage might be well studied in these days of proposed schemes for land confiscation and communism. “It is of the very highest importance, therefore, to know distinctly what government cannot do, as well as what it can do. If I were called upon to name the cause which, in my conception, had more than any other contributed to the very slow progress of freedom, so disheartening to every liberal mind, I should say that it was the confusion that had existed respecting the causes of the unhappiness and discontent which prevail in society; and the advantage which governments had been able to take, and indeed had been compelled to take, of this confusion, to confirm and strengthen their power. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that a knowledge generally circulated, that the principal cause of want and unhappiness is only indirectly connected with government, and totally beyond its power to remove; and that it depends upon the conduct of the poor themselves, would, instead of giving any advantage to government, give a great additional weight to the popular side of the quest............