ABSTRACT
A RECENT writer on Population has suggested that the widespread acceptance of the Malthusian point of view was due to the fact that England wa" actually over-populated in the early part of the rgth century. Apart from anything else, this proposition seems to imply an unduly optimistic estimate of the power of truth. Moreover, if it were correct that England was over-populated . at the period in question, and that the fact was appreciated at the time, this might have caused some persons to agree with Malthus's practical proposals in regard to the Poor Laws, but could hardly have led to the acceptance of his theory of Population. Malthus's bogey was not over population but potential population. He found in this potential population the cause of all ills, economic and otherwise, since population was always being kept down to subsistence level by vice and misery, and that, therefore, Man's only remedy against poverty and its accompanying
ills was strictly to control and limit his procreative powers. Malthus accordingly was opposed to anything, from a lax Poor Law to Communism, which he thought was likely to diminish such degree of restraint as already existed. Strictly speaking, over-population was impossible according to Malthus's theory. He, however, was not a clear thinker, and there can be no doubt that he disliked and feared the phenomenon of a rapidly increasing population, without in the least realizing that it destroyed his main position. It is also true that this dislike and fear of a growing population was shared by his followers. This, however, was not due to any grasp of a scientific theory of " over population ", since such a theory had not at that date been enunciated. The Law of Diminishing Returns was enunciated in 1815, but it was not clearly related to the Theory oi Population until much later. At first sight it seems curious that this relationship was not at once established, since the two theories were being earnestly discussed by the same writers at the same period. History, however, supplies the explanation. The Law of Diminishing Returns was enunciated in connection with the Corn Law Controversy, which controversy was concerned with the question as to whether it was desirable to keep the less fertile land in cultivation by artificially raising the price of corn. At that time there were no signs that the growth of population was causing a resort to less and less fertile land ; on the contrary, agriculture was terribly depressed and arable was reverting to pasture or even to waste~ It is a curious fact that two, at least, of the opponents of
Malthus seem to have seen the relationship between Diminishing Returns and the problem of Population more clearly than did Malthus himself. Weyland,1 one of the writers to whom he thought it worth while to reply in the Appendix to the r8r7 edition of the Principle, admitted that in theory population might be checked by the necessity of resorting to ever poorer lands. He thought, however, that in practice population would not reach this point, since it would previously have b'een checked by the growth of towns with their high death rate. Gray2 said that, though in thickly populated countries the uncultivated lands are barren and obstinate, as the better are first chosen, yet, " the population from its greater wealth and capital, as well acs its higher improvement and a more abundant and regular supply of manure from these, is more capable of taking in and fertilizing waste and barren soil." Gray was writing in the light of the series of wonderful agricultural improvements of the preceding fifty years.
