ters had had recourse to the
miraculous. One of Malthus's early authorities was Suessmilch, who had
published his _Goettliche Ordnung_ in 1761, to show how Providence had
taken care that the trees should not grow into the sky. The
antediluvians had been made long-lived in order that they might have
large families and people an empty earth, while life was divinely
shortened as the world filled up. Suessmilch, however, regarded
population as still in need of stimulus. Kings might help Providence.
A new Trajan would deserve to be called the father of his people, if
he increased the marriage-rate. Malthus replies that the statistics
which the worthy man himself produced showed conclusively that the
marriages depended upon the deaths. The births fill up the vacancies,
and the prince who increased the population before vacancies arose
would simply increase the rate of mortality.[262] If you want to
increase your birth-rate without absolutely producing famine, as he
remarks afterwards,[263] make your towns unhealthy, and encourage
settlement by marshes. You might thus double the mortality, and we
might all marry prematurely without being absolutely starved. His own
aim is not to secure the greatest number of births, but to be sure
that the greatest number of those born may be supported.[264] The
ingenious M. Muret, again, had found a Swiss parish in which the mean
life was the highest and the fecundity smallest known. He piously
conjectures that it may be a law of God that 'the force of life in
each country should be in the inverse ratio of its fecundity.' He
needs not betake himself to a miracle, says Malthus.[265] The case is
simply that in a small and healthy village, where people had become
aware of the importance of the 'preventive check,' the young people
put off marriage till there was room for them, and consequently both
lowered the birth-rate and raised the average duration of life.

Nothing, says Malthus very forcibly, has caused more errors than the
confusion between 'relative and positive, and between cause and
effect.'[266] He is here answering the argument that because the poor
who had cows were the most industrious, the way to make them
industrious was to give them cows. Malthus thinks it more probable
that industry got the cow than that the cow produced industry. This is
a trifling instance of a very general truth. People had been content
to notice the deaths caused by war and disease, and to infer at once
tha