for a
family. The instinct which leads to increasing the population would
thus be intrinsically as powerful as it now is; but when regulated by
prudence it would impel mankind to begin at the right end. Food would
be ready before mouths to eat it.

IV. SOCIAL REMEDIES

This final solution appears in Malthus's proposed remedies for the
evils of the time. Malthus[244] declares that 'an increase of
population when it follows in its natural order is both a great
positive good in itself, and absolutely necessary' to an increase of
wealth. This natural order falls in, as he observes, with the view to
which Mirabeau had been converted, that 'revenue was the source of
population,' and not population of revenue.[245] Malthus holds
specifically that, 'in the course of some centuries,' the population
of England might be doubled or trebled, and yet every man be 'much
better fed and clothed than he is at present.'[246] He parts company
with Paley, who had considered the ideal state to be 'that of a
laborious frugal people ministering to the demands of an opulent
luxurious nation.'[247] That, says Malthus, is 'not an inviting
prospect.' Nothing but a conviction of absolute necessity could
reconcile us to the 'thought of ten millions of people condemned to
incessant toil, and to the privation of everything but absolute
necessaries, in order to minister to the excessive luxuries of the
other million.' But he denies that any such necessity exists. He
wishes precisely to see luxury spread among the poorer classes. A
desire for such luxury is the best of all checks to population, and
one of the best means of raising the standard. It would, in fact,
contribute to his 'moral restraint.' So, too, he heartily condemns
the hypocrisy of the rich, who professed a benevolent desire to
better the poor, and yet complained of high wages.[248] If, he says
elsewhere,[249] a country can 'only be rich by running a successful
race for low wages, I should be disposed to say, Perish such riches!'
No one, in fact, could see more distinctly than Malthus the
demoralising influence of poverty, and the surpassing importance of
raising the people from the terrible gulf of pauperism. He refers to
Colquhoun's account of the twenty thousand people who rose every
morning in London without knowing how they were to be supported; and
observes that 'when indigence does not produce overt acts of vice, it
palsies every virtue.'[250] The temptations to which the poor