Malthus, Thomas Robert

MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT

(b. near Guildford, Surrey, England, 13 February 1766; d. near Bath, England, 23 December 1834, political economy.

Malthus is known in the history of science almost exclusively for his influence on Charles Darwin, exerted almost accidentally. His life, work, and friends were mainly centered on social conditions and political economy, and his work on population was part of these. He did have early training in mathematics, however, and based his arguments on the careful analysis of observed data.

Robert Malthus (he appears never to have been called Thomas) was the sixth child of seven born to Daniel Malthus and his wife, the former Henrietta Catherine Graham. Daniel Malthus, a scholar and a friend and admirer of Rousseau, provided a stimulating home life and education for the boy, and later sent him to study with Richard Graves at Claverton and at the Dissenting Academy of Warrington under Gilbert Wakefield.

In 1784 Malthus went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Frend. He read for the mathematical tripos and graduated in 1788, being ninth wrangler; but he also read widely in French and English history and literature and in Newtonian physics. He had already shown his interest in the practical rather than the abstract. He played games and lived a full social life, apparently unaffected by his cleft palate and harelip. The friends he made at Cambridge influenced the rest of his life; the most important was William Otter (1768–1840), later bishop of Chichester. Malthus and Otter traveled extensively in Europe and maintained the relationship after their marriages. Malthus’ son, Henry, married Otter’s daughter Sophia. Otter probably wrote the memorial to Malthus in Bath Abbey, and he certainly wrote the “Memoir” published with the second edition of the Principles of Political Economy.

Malthus followed graduation with ordination, but more in the tradition of the younger sons of English gentry entering the Church than as a step consistent with his intellectual development. For some years he held a curacy at Okewood Chapel in Surrey, near the home of his parents at Albury, and was active in his pastoral functions from 1792 to 1794. He showed a genuine interest in and concern for the local people and an understanding of their problems, a sympathy which makes surprising his later references to the laboring class almost as though they were a community apart. From 1803 until his death he held a sinecure as rector of Walesbury in Lincolnshire.

In 1799 Malthus and Otter, together with friends from Jesus College, E. D. Clarke and J. M. Cripps, traveled through northern Germany and Norway. Afterward Malthus and Otter went on to Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Malthus’ detailed diaries of these journeys provided some of the evidence he needed to develop his theory of population growth. Clarke also published a record of his travels. In 1800 Malthus’ parents died; by 1802 he was traveling again, this time in France and Switzerland, in a party that included his cousin Harriet Eckersall.

Jesus College elected Malthus to a fellowship in 1793, and he was resident intermittently until he had to resign upon his marriage to Harriet Eckersall in 1804. They had one son, Henry, who followed his father into the ministry, and two daughters: Emily, who married, and Lucy, who died before her father. About the time of Malthus’ marriage, the East India Company founded a new college, first at Hertford and then at Haileybury, to give a general education to staff members before they went on service overseas. The first known professorship of history and political economy was established there, and Malthus was invited to fill the post. He took it up in 1805, and it gave him the security of a home and an income that enabled him to spend the rest of his life writing and lecturing.

In order to teach political economy, Malthus needed to extend his knowledge. He wrote two pamphlets on the Corn Laws (1814, 1815); a short, unexceptionable tract on rent (1815); statements on Haileybury (1813, 1817); and a major work, Principles of Political Economy (1820). This included an analogy of his population theory with the quantity of funds designed for the maintenance of labor and the prudential habits of the laboring classes.

In 1819 the Royal Society elected Malthus to a fellowship. He was also a member of the French Institute and the Berlin Academy, and a founding member of the Statistical Society (1834). In 1827 he was called upon to give evidence on emigration before a committee of the House of Commons.

Although their life was quiet, Robert and Henrietta Malthus traveled and entertained their many friends, including David Ricardo, Harriet Martineau, Otter, and William Empson, who was also at Haileybury. Malthus managed, in spite of the controversy flowing around him, to keep a reputation as a warm, charming, and lively companion.

Principle of Population . Malthus’ first writing was an unpublished pamphlet, The Crisis (extracts are quoted by Otter). Stimulated by Pitt’s Poor Law Bill of 1796, he supported the proposal for children’s allowances, but was already expressing unease at the current idea that an increases in population was desirable.

He was not the first to propound the theory that population tends to increase proportionately faster than the supply of food—and he freely acknowledged that he was not—nor was the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population, published anonymously in 1798, a fully worked-out thesis. He wrote: “I had for some time been aware that population and food increased in different ratios; and a vague opinion had been floating in my mind that they could only be kept equal by some species of misery or vice.”

Stimulated by doubts about Pitt’s policy and by publications of William Godwin, Condorect, and others, malthus hammered out the Essay in discussions with his father, who accepted Godwin’s belief in the potential immortality and perfectibility of man. Countering apparently rosy visions, Malthus swung to pessimism about the inevitability of poverty and the irresponsibility of the poor, an attitude which his opponents called inhuman. These observations were based at least partially on experience, for he had, as a curate, seen how in the country many births were registered but few deaths, yet, as he said, “sons of labourers are very apt to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving at maturity.”

The central argument of the Essay lies in two postulates:

“That food is necessary to the existence of man”;

“That the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state” [p.11]; and four conclusions:

…that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second.

By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of those two unequal powers must be kept equal.

This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence [p. 13].

The postulates are taken as self-evident; the deduced consequences are examined in more detail, including the various checks on population, such as postponed marriage, infant mortality, epidemics, and famine. He presented no numerical data to support either the tendency to geometrical rate of growth of the population or the arithmetical rate of growth of food supply; these suppositions are reasonable but largely intuitive.

Malthus seems also to have failed to realize that although the existence of checks is a firm deduction, there is no reason to suppose that they operate constantly.

The style of the essay—short paragraphs, pungent sentences, and an elegant but matter-of-fact air— undoubtedly contributed to the impact of the work on a community already deeply concerned with the social problems of the Industrial Revolution. It was also brief—only some 50,000 words—and the edition seems to have been small, since the work is now rare.

Malthus realized that he needed more evidence to support his views and that he had not taken sufficient account of the effects of rising standards of living. He therefore listened to criticisms and used information gathered on his travels in Europe, information which tended to be observational rather than numerical. For example, he correlated the poverty of fishermen in Drontheim with their earlier marriages and larger families—in contrast with the people of the interior parts of the country—without considering other possible variables.

Malthus’ next publication, The present High Price of Provisions (1800), again published anonymously, returned to the problems of poor relief. In it he made the case that linking poor relief to the cost of grain resulted in driving the price even higher. He also pointed out that whereas previously grain had been exported, there was no longer enough to go round; and therefore, assuming that agricultural production had increased or at least not declined, the population must have increased. The first census in Great Britain (1801) tended to confirm this assertion.

The second and greatly expanded edition of the Principle of Population was published in 1803 and carried the author’s name. It provided the theoretical framework to the conclusions of the first Essay, with several additional chapters, including information from China and Japan as well as from countries he had visited. The argument was rewritten in terms more academic if less immediate. He explained that “everything depends on the relative proportions between population and food, and not on the absolute number of people,” and that when the absolute quantity of provisions is increased, the number of consumers more than keeps up with it. If, therefore, he argued, it is not possible to maintain the production of food to satisfy the population, then the population must be kept down to the level of food; failure will result in deprivation and misery. He then went on to reexamine positive and preventive checks, introducing the new idea of voluntary “natural restraint” by late marriage and sexual abstinence before marriage. He does not seem to have considered abstinence after marriage and was strongly opposed to both abortion and contraception.

Later editions of the Essay were rewritten and included new appendixes of evidence, until the sixth edition (1826) required three volumes and contained some 250,000 words. Malthus’ last statement on population was his Summary View of the Principle of Population (1830), rewritten from an article he had done for the 1824 supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was condensed again to some 20,000 words, but by now it contained a greater element of social comment. There is not only the observation of tendencies but also reference to the bad structure of society and the unfavorable distribution of wealth. There have been numerous reprints and translations. Malthus has been widely read, but he has also been widely misquoted or quoted out of context. His observations have been interpreted by both his supposed followers and his enemies with overtones which suggest that his work is prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Influence on the Theory of Evolution . Malthus’ Essay was a crucial contribution to Darwin’s thinking about natural selection when he returned in 1836 from the Bealge voyage. In July 1837 Darwin began his “Note book on Transmutation of Species,” in which he wrote:

In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement “Malthus on Population,” and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence … it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species [Life and Letters,I, 83].

Later, in the Origin of Species, he wrote that the struggle for existence “is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage”[p.63].

Alfred Russel Wallace, who arrived at a worked-out formulation of the theory of evolution at almost precisely the same time as Darwin, acknowledged that “perhaps the most important book I read was Malthus’s Principles of Population” (My Life,p.232).

Although there were four decennial censuses before Malthus’ death, he did not himself analyze the data, although he did influence Lambert Quetelet and Pierre Verhulst, who made precise statistical studies on growth of populations in developed countries and showed how the early exponential growth changed to an S curve.

Influence on Social Theory . Notwithstanding the anonymity of the first Essay, the authorship soon became known. Godwin wrote to Malthus immediately, and the book loosed a storm of controversy that is still rumbling. It has influenced all demographers since, as well as many students of economic theory and genetic inheritance. The early controversy is described concisely by Leslie Stephen and more fully by Bonar and McCleary. Besides Godwin, Ricardo corresponded lengthily and critically but accepted much of his theory, as did Francis Place. Ricardo and Malthus did not meet until 1811 but formed a valuable friendship. Hazlitt, Cobbett, and Coleridge attacked him for real or supposed views.

The current attitude around the end of the eighteenth century, when need for industrial workers was increasing, was that population growth was desirable in itself and that welfare provisions should encourage large families. Malthus’ principle, that population tends to increase up to the limits of the means of subsistence, could be extended to suggest that if the level of subsistence were lowered by reducing state welfare provisions, then the population would naturally settle at a lower level and the working classes could avoid checks due to both misery and vice by planning and observing “prudential restraint.” Malthus himself believed that the effects of the Poor Laws were harmful, but he never recommended the withdrawal of benefits and believed it to be “the duty of every individual, to use his utmost efforts to remove evil from himself, and from as large a circle as he can influence.”

In 1807 Samuel Whitbread, M.P., introduced a bill to reform the Poor Laws, attempting to reduce misery and vice by a series of proposals which included a national system of education, encouragement of saving, and equalization of county taxes from which the welfare benefits were paid. Malthus wrote him an open letter, published as a pamphlet, in which he supported the plan for general education (he made it clear that the poor should be able to understand both the reason for their condition and the means of alleviating it), but he opposed vigorously the building of tenement cottages on the ground that the rents would increase the number of dependent poor except where there was a high demand for labor. If it were possible, the Poor Laws should be restricted to maintaining only the average number of children that might have been expected from each marriage, and he hoped that “the poor would be deterred from early and improvident marriages more by the fearof dependent poverty than by the contemplation of positive distress.”

Malthus appears to have ignored the point that any average must have many examples above the average. Visualizing a progressive increase in the proportion of the dependent population under the laws then in effect, he admitted to being “really unable to suggest any provision which would effectually secure us against an approach to the evils here contemplated, and not be open to the objection of violating our promises to the poor.” Probably this pamphlet was widely read and was a main source of the image of Malthus as a pessimist and supporter of laissez-faire political economy. He was an analyst, not a creator of imaginative legislation; and the problems he dealt with are still with us in one form or another. He was at least more clear than some politicians about “our promises to the poor.” Nothing came of whitebread’s bill in its original form, and Malthus had produced no constructive amendments, so the law remained unchanged until the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), which abolished relief outside the workhouses that were to be set up under boards of guardians for those qualified and willing to live there.

More cheerfully and positively, in his Principles of political Economy (1820) Malthus was proposing investment in public works and private luxury as a means of increasing effective demand, and hence as a palliative to economic distress. The nation, he thought, must balance the power to produce and the will to consume.

After all the accretions on Malthusian principles, it was perhaps natural that Marx and Engels should have seen Malthus as an advocate of repressive treatment of the working class, rather than appreciating his anticipation of their own belief that the demand for labor regulates population.

However bitter and distorted the controversy has been, Malthus’ achievement was to show that population studies, although overlaid with emotional and often irrational influences, can be examined and analyzed empirically, discussed on a rational basis, and ultimately can form the subject of positive policy making.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works, Malthus’ first major work, published anonymously, was An Essay on the Principle of population, as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, With Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other writers (London, 1798). The 2nd ed., An Essay on the Principle of Population, or a View of its past and Present Effects on Human Happiness, With an Enquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which It Occasions.… (London, 1803), was signed T. R. Malthus. There was a 3rd ed., with appendixes (1806); a 4th ed., (1807), reprinted with additions, 2 vols. (1817); a 5th ed., with appendixes, 3 vols. (1817); a 6th ed., with appendixes (1826); and the 7th and posthumous ed., (1872). There have been numerous other eds. and trans. It is worth mentioning the facs. repr. of the 1st ed., with notes comparing it with the 2nd, by J. Bonar (London, 1926), and a modern repr. of the 7th ed. (New York, 1969). Extracts from the 1798 and 1803 eds. were reprinted in Parallel Chapters From the First and Second Editions of “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” D. Ricardo, ed. (New York, 1895). The last statement was A Summary View of the Principle of population (London, 1830). There was also a repr. of the first Essay and Summary View, edited, with an intro., by A. Flew (London, 1970).

Malthus’ other major work is Principles of Political Economy Considered With a view to Thier Practical Applications (London, 1820); 2nd ed. (London, 1836), with considerable an original memoir by Otter that includes extracts from The Crisis; there is also a modern repr. (New York, 1964).

Malthus’ journal of his travels is P. James, ed., The Travel Daries of Thomas Robert Malthus (Cambridge, 1966).

Malthus’ library of 2,300 volumes is in Jesus College, Cambridge. There have clearly been many letters and other MSS available to students of Malthus, but few can be located now. The travel diaries are in Cambridge University Library. In her introduction James refers briefly to other manuscripts, including the unpublished Recollections of Malthus’niece, Louisa Bray.

II. Secondary Literature. The most comprehensive bibliography is Library of Congress, List of References on Malthus and Malthusianism (Washington, D.C., 1920). Later eds. of Malthus’ works, translations, and works on him may be traced through the national bibliographies, and particularly through the General Catalogue of Printed Books in the British Museum, CLI (1962), cols. 313–314, and supps. There is also an extensive bibliography for 1793–1880 in Glass (see below).

The best source for Malthus’ personal life is P. James, “Biographical Sketch,” in The Travel Diaries (see above), in which she gives full details of all her sources. Otter’s “Memoir”, added to the 2nd ed. of Principles of Political Economy,and W. Empson’s review of this ed. in Edinburgh Review, 64 (1837), 469–506, contain much personal information. The standard biography is J.Bonar, Malthus and His Work (London, 1885; 2nd ed., 1924). There are also C. R. Drysdale, The Life and Writings of Thomas R. Malthus, 2nd ed. (London, 1892); and a short biographical sketch by G. T. Bettany in his ed. of Principle of Population (London, 1890). L. Stephen’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography, XXXVI (1893), 886–890, summarizes the early controversy; and there is an evaluation by J. M. Keynes in his Essays in Biography, new ed. (London, 1951), 81–124.

The three works which provoked Malthus’ Essay are W. Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (London, 1793); and The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature (Dublin-London, 1797); and Condorcet, ed., Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (London, 1795) translated from the French.

Works on Malthus’ theories, their influence, and their place in theories of population are numerous. D. V. Glass, ed., Introduction to Malthus (London, 1953), contains three essays, reprs. of the Summary View, and the letter to Whitbread. A general and appreciative account is G. F. McCleary, The Malthusian Population Theory (London, 1953). Ricardo’s reactions are published in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, P. Staffa, ed., II (London, 1951). One of the most vigorous attacks was W. Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (London, 1825), 251–276. A detailed study of Malthus’ influence on social history is D. Eversley, Social Theories of Fertility and the Malthusian Debate (Oxford, 1959). There is an account of the relationship of Malthus’ and Darwin’s theories in M. T. Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (Berkeley-Los Angles, 1969), 46–77, which gives further references.

Diana M. Simpkins