f
excessive pressure, and, in his general phrases at least, to overlook
its reciprocal tendency to cause pressure. The 'moral check' is only
preventive or negative, not a positive cause of superior vigour. A
similar defect appears in his theory of the _vis medicatrix_. He was,
I hold, perfectly right in emphasising the importance of individual
responsibility. No reform can be permanent which does not raise the
morality of the individual. His insistence upon this truth was of the
highest importance, and it is to be wished that its importance might
be more fully recognised to-day. The one-sidedness appears in his
proposal to abolish the poor-law simply. That became the most
conspicuous and widely accepted doctrine. All men of 'sense,' said
Sydney Smith--certainly a qualified representative of the class--in
1820, agree, first, that the poor-law must be abolished; and secondly,
that it must be abolished very gradually.[280] That is really to
assume that by refusing to help people at all, you will force them to
help themselves. There is another alternative, namely, that they may,
as Malthus himself often recognises, become demoralised by excessive
poverty. To do simply nothing may lead to degeneration instead of
increased energy. The possibility of an improved law, which might act
as a moral discipline instead of a simply corrupting agency, is simply
left out of account; and the tendency to stimulate reckless population
is regarded not only as one probable consequence, but as the very
essence of all poor-laws. Upon Malthus's assumptions, the statement
that sound political and social theories must be based upon systematic
inquiry into facts, meant that the individual was the ultimate
unalterable unit, whose interest in his own welfare gave the one
fulcrum for all possible changes. The ideal 'state of nature' was a
fiction. The true basis of our inquiries is the actual man known to us
by observation. The main fault of this being was the excess of the
instinct of multiplication, and the way to improve him was to show how
it might conflict with the instinct of self-preservation. In this
shape the doctrine expressed the most characteristic tendency of the
Utilitarians, and divided them from the Socialists or believers in
abstract rights of man.

VI. RENT

Here, then, we are at a central point of the Utilitarian creed. The
expansive force of population is, in a sense, the great motive power
which moulds the whole social struc