xpansion is constantly
forcing it upon this array of evils; and in proportion to the
elasticity is the severity of the evils which follow. This is not only
a 'gloomy view,' but again seems to suggest that 'vice' is an
alternative to 'misery.' Vices are bad, it would seem, but at least
they obviate the necessity for disease and famine. Malthus probably
suppressed the passage because he thought it liable to this
interpretation. It indicates, however, a real awkwardness, if not
something more, in his exposition. He here speaks as if there was room
for a fixed number of guests at his banquet. Whatever, therefore,
keeps the population to that limit must be so far good. If he had
considered his 'moral check' more thoroughly, he might have seen that
this does not correspond to his real meaning. The 'moral' and the
prudential checks are not really to be contrasted as alternative, but
co-operative. Every population, vicious or virtuous, must of course
proportion its numbers to its means of support. That gives the
prudential check. But the moral check operates by altering the
character of the population itself. From the purely economic point of
view, vice is bad because it lowers efficiency. A lazy, drunken, and
profligate people would starve where an industrious, sober, and honest
people would thrive. The check of vice thus brings the check of misery
into play at an earlier stage. It limits by lowering the vitality and
substituting degeneration for progress. The check, therefore, is
essentially mischievous. Though it does not make the fields barren, it
lowers the power of cultivation. Malthus had recognised this when he
pointed out, as we have seen, that emergence from the savage state
meant the institution of marriage and property and, we may infer, the
correlative virtues of chastity, industry, and honesty. If men can
form large societies, and millions can be supported where once a few
thousands were at starvation point, it is due to the civilisation
which at every stage implies 'moral restraint' in a wider sense than
Malthus used the phrase. An increase of population by such means was,
of course, to be desired. If Malthus emphasises this inadequately, it
is partly, no doubt, because the Utilitarian view of morality tended
to emphasise the external consequences rather than the alteration of
the man himself. Yet the wider and sounder view is logically implied
in his reasoning--so much so that he might have expressed his real aim