ith his Utilitarianism? The vices of the South Sea
Islanders, according to him, made famine less necessary; and, if they
gave pleasure at the moment, were they not on the whole beneficial?
Malthus again reckons among vices practices which limit the population
without causing 'misery' directly.[233] Could he logically call them
vicious? He wishes to avoid the imputation of sanctioning such
practices, and therefore condemns them by his moral check; but it
would be hard to prove that he was consistent in condemning them. Or,
again, there is another familiar difficulty. The Catholic church
encourages marriage as a remedy for vice; and thereby stimulates both
population and poverty. How would Malthus solve the problem: is it
better to encourage chastity and a superabundance of people, or to
restrict marriage at the cost of increasing temptation to vice? He
seems to evade the point by saying that he recommends both chastity
and abstinence from marriage. By 'moral restraint,' as he explains, he
means 'restraint from marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct
strictly moral during the period of this restraint.' 'I have never,'
he adds, 'intentionally deviated from this sense.'[234] A man, that
is, should postpone taking a wife, and should not console himself by
taking a mistress. He is to refrain from increasing the illegitimate
as well as from increasing the legitimate population. It is not
surprising that Malthus admits that this check has 'in past ages
operated with inconsiderable force.'[235] In fact Malthus, as a
thoroughly respectable and decent clergyman, manages by talking about
the 'moral restraint' rather to evade than to answer some awkward
problems of conduct; but at the cost of some inconsequence.

But another result of this mode of patching up his argument is more
important. The 'vices of mankind,' he says in an unusually rhetorical
summary of his historical inquiry,[236] 'are active and able ministers
of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of
destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should
they fail in the war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics,
pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their
thousands and ten thousands. Should success still be incomplete,
gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and at one mighty blow
levels the population with the food of the world.' The life of the
race, then, is a struggle with misery; its e