maintain a large
family at ease. There is overcrowding, we may say, in England now as
there was in England at the Conquest; though food has increased in a
greater proportion than population; and the pressure has therefore
taken a milder form. This, again, is proved by the fact that, whenever
a relaxation of the pressure has occurred, when plagues have
diminished population, or improvements in agriculture increased their
supply of food, the gap has been at once filled up. The people have
not taken advantage of the temporary relaxation of the check to
preserve the new equilibrium, but have taken out the improvement by a
multiplication of numbers. The statement then appears to be that at
any given time the population is in excess. Men would be better off if
they were less numerous. But, on the other hand, the tendency to
multiply does not represent a constant force, an irresistible instinct
which will always bring men down to the same level, but something
which, in fact, may vary materially. Malthus admits, in fact, that
the 'elasticity' is continually changing; and therefore repudiates the
interpretation which seemed to make all improvement hopeless. Why,
then, distinguish the 'check' as something apart from the instinct?
If, in any case, we accept this explanation, does not the theory
become a 'truism,' or at least a commonplace, inoffensive but hardly
instructive? Does it amount to more than the obvious statement that
prudence and foresight are desirable and are unfortunately scarce?

III. MORAL RESTRAINT

The change in the theory of 'checks' raises another important
question. Malthus now introduced a modification upon which his
supporters laid great stress. In the new version the 'checks' which
proportion population to means of subsistence are not simply 'vice and
misery,' but 'moral restraint, vice, and misery.'[228] How, precisely,
does this modify the theory? How are the different 'checks' related?
What especially is meant by 'moral' in this connection? Malthus takes
his ethical philosophy pretty much for granted, but is clearly a
Utilitarian according to the version of Paley.[229] He agrees with
Paley that 'virtue evidently consists in educing from the materials
which the Creator has placed under our guidance the greatest sum of
human happiness.'[230] He adds to this that our 'natural impulses are,
abstractedly considered, good, and only to be distinguished by their
consequences.' Hunger, he says, as Bentham h