Essay on the Principle of Population

In the twenty-two years before the appearance of "Essay on the Principle of Population" of Thomas Malthus, therapid development of the textile and other industries in England through the recent mechanical inventions had called new towns into existence, and greatly stimulated the increase of population. Increased production seemed to mean a disproportionate increase in population, and a decrease in the subsistence of the poor. The obvious objection that this condition was attributable to bad distribution rather than to insufficient production, had indeed come to the attention of Malthus.

In some degree his book was an answer to that very objection. William Godwin, a disciple of the French revolutionary philosophers, had been defending the theory that all the evils of society arose from defective social institutions, and that there was more than enough wealth for all, if it were only distributed equally. Malthus replied to this position with his "Essay on the Principle of Population. His thesis was that population constantly tends to outrun subsistence, but that it is held in check by vice — abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and by misery in the form of war, plague, famine, and unnecessary disease. If all persons were provided with sufficient sustenance, and these checks removed, the relief would be only temporary; for the increase of marriages and births would soon produce a population far in excess of the food supply.

As a popular refutation of the theories of Godwin, the book was a success, but its author soon began a deeper inquiry into the facts from which he had drawn his conclusions. The result of his labors was the appearance in 1803 of a second edition of the "Essay", which differed so much in size and content from the first as to constitute, in the words of Malthus himself, "a new work”. In the first chapter of the new edition he declared that "the constant tendency of all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it", had not hitherto received sufficient attention. Before attempting to prove the existence of this tendency, he inquired what would be "the natural increase of population if left to exert itself in perfect freedom... under the most favorable circumstances of human industry". On the basis of the history of North America during the century and a half preceding 1800, and from the opinions of some economists, he concluded that "population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every 25 years, or increases in a geometrical ratio".

In the second volume he discusses the means which have been proposed to prevent an undue increase of population, and, therefore, to render unnecessary the action of the positive checks. Some of the means that he recommended were abstention from public provision for the encouragement of population increase and for the relief of the poor, and abolition of existing laws of this kind, especially the Poor Law of England. But his chief recommendation was the practice of what he called "moral restraint". In the new edition of his work, consequently, Malthus not merely pointed out a new check to population, but advocated it, in order to prevent and forestall the operation of the cruel and immoral checks automatically set in motion by vice and misery.

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