The subject of breeding, especially the process, fascinates people of all sorts. Some are more interested in the socio-cultural consequences of this issue than others. What appears from the outside to seem like a very simple, primitive, and mindless task was undertaken as the key to major reform in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Thomas Malthus. As a result of his conviction that social misery was a direct result of excess breeding, Malthus dedicated a majority of his life to suggesting “checks” that could be made on breeding policy in order to relieve the vices of mankind. Through his principle of population, its substinence, necessity, and positive and preventative checks that can be placed to maintain a sense of happiness in the people, Thomas Malthus teaches the importance of the poor in society. He shows additionally how certain institutions had a moral obligation to fulfill the needs of the nation as a whole through his ideas on welfare reform. Resulting from his explanation of the manner in which nature creates itself, his influence can be seen also in the popular concepts of evolution and natural selection that are known to today’s society.

Thomas Robert Malthus was born in 1766 just south of London, at Dorking. He celebrated life among six sisters as the youngest of two sons of Daniel Malthus. His father turns out to play a key role in our story, as he was an ardent Jacobin knowing celebrities such as Voltaire, Hume, and Rousseau who were brought frequently to stay at their house. Malthus’s education was privately carried out by his father and several tutors, until his enrollment in Jesus College at Cambridge at the age of eighteen. During his stay at Cambridge, Thomas Malthus took up parochial duties in the Church of England while living with his father, Daniel, and brought out his Essay on the Principle of Population(1) At the age of thirty-eight, he became happily married and produced three children. This led Malthus away from Cambridge to a professorship at Haileybury.

Not only by listening to the “talk of the town,”but through discussion with his father and his peers at Cambridge and abroad, Thomas Malthus became increasingly interested in the issue of poverty and misery in the lower classes, and how the higher classes failed to relieve these vices(3). Other talk of the day consisted of feverish obsession with feminist rights, resulting from William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Godwin argued for women to have equality with men, ideas which were put aside by Malthus as being foolish feminist ideals that have harmful social consequences. Godwin’s utopian dreams were a main cause of the “passion of the sexes” during this time period, which Malthus will later describe as a different sort of passion which is the kind of craze that leads to overpopulation(4). Malthus proposed a solution to overpopulation because of the convinction he aquired through the influences around him.

Malthus begins his plan with several main suggestions. The first is that population is severely limited by substinence. Substinence is the level at which happiness and quality of living can be maintained. He says “Population, when unchecked, increases at a geometrical ratio. Substinence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison with the second.” This idea founds the rest of his principle of population by saying that “population must always be kept down to the means of substinence” in order to relieve the misery and vice of the impoverished(5). In order to maintain such substinence, the population pressure must be reduced. Since these pressures increase productivity of food and resources and productivity in turn increases population growth, the numbers of individuals will appear to continue to rise to extraordinary highs. However, it is Malthus’s belief that productivity can never really keep up with the potential of population growth for long, so there must be powerful checks placed on population to keep it in line with its carrying capacity.

The most controversial aspect of Malthus’s principle’s essay were these recommended checks to be placed by an institution of the higher classes on the breeding manners of the impoverished. Thomas Malthus also said that the desire to avoid poverty is motivation enough to regulate one’s offspring. Hormones beg to differ, but when thinking of this topic, thinking is the important word. According to Malthus, the people were morally responsible to prevent overpopulation and to control their sexual behaviors. Two kinds of checks on overpopulation were proposed. The most unpleasant of these checks may be ironically referred to as “positive checks.”(1) These checks include natural measures of selection such as war, famine, and disease. These are nature’s steps taken against overpopulation according to Malthus. “Preventative checks” are the more popular and more changeable means that Malthus insinuates would improve the “happiness”(3) of society. These checks encompass measures more easily confronted by man such as celibacy, late marriages, contraception, and non-procreative sex. Malthus’ view here did not promote the use of contraception as it too was viewed as vice by the Church of England, but rather he said it was the least of evils required to control the population. Since this was the most appealing, it would be the most successful in controlling the rate of childbirth.

Now that the checks have been discussed, the welfare reform associated with them will also need development. Poor Law reform encouraged growth without provisions to support that growth. In lending welfare to the needy, the Poor Law reforms encouraged earlier marriages, which tended to exacerbate the problem of overpopulation. His ideas come from his desire for good for the largest number of people and his high value on human liberty as a whole(5). He believed that the working class was an essential part of society and the labor provided by this class is what keeps society at a level of subsistence. Unfortunately, though, as population exceeds the substinence level, the unfavorable “positive checks” will inevitably come into natural play. In Malthus’s opinion, those supervisions needed to be installed into the Poor Laws in order for the misery and vices of poverty to be reduced. Even though Malthus knew it was impossible to have a Utopia-like end to impoverished nations, he understood there was a manner by which poverty could be cut down(4). Thomas Malthus was very a significant figure in the abolition of the Poor Laws. Although it was not Malthus alone who inspired the Parliament enough to do so, he did have a large degree of influence in the matter.

The ideas and suggestions of Thomas Malthus have carried forth into the modern economic and demographic views of today. Not only have his plans to increase the quality in the growing duration of human life improved societies worldwide, but they have changed the thinking of many philosophers and scientists to come. His impact is known across various fields of study, and is attributed not only to the theories of overpopulation referred to in countries such as China today, but is also the source of insight by which evolutionary theories are based. From the autobiography of Charles Darwin comes this quote after he read the ideas of Malthus on natural selection: “ Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work.” So, henceforth come theories everyone in eras to come can apply to their popular crises.

Notes

1. Landry, Peter (2001), Thomas Robert Malthus(1766-1834) [Online], Available: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Malthus.htm [2003, February 10].

2. Plasmeijer, Henk W. (1999), History of Economics: HES List Guest Editorial- -Plasmeijer, The Talk of the Town in 1798 [Online}, Available: http://www.eh.net/HE/hes_list/Editorials/plasmeijer.php [2003, February 10].

3. Malthus, Thomas, An Essay on the Principle of Population, v.1 & 2, (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1826), v.1 iii-xvi; v.2 335-351.

4. Glass, D.V., Introduction to Malthus, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1953), 9-22.

5. Petersen, William, Malthus, (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1979), 46-48; 102-107; 11-122).