6768. POPULATION, Theories of Malthus.—
Malthus's work on Population is a work of sound logic, in which some of the
opinions of Adam Smith, as well as of the
Economists, are ably examined. * * * The
differences of circumstances between this and
the old countries of Europe, furnish differences
of fact whereon to reason in
questions of political economy, and will consequently
produce sometimes a difference of result.
There, for example, the quantity of food
is fixed, or increasing in a slow and only arithmetical
ratio, and the proportion is limited by
the same ratio. Supernumerary births consequently
add only to your mortality. Here the
immense extent of uncultivated and fertile
lands enables every one who will labor to marry
young, and to raise a family of any size. Our
food, then, may increase geometrically with our
laborers, and our births, however multiplied,
become effective. Again, there the best distri
bution of labor is supposed to be that which
places the manufacturing hands alongside of the
agricultural; so that the one part shall feed
both, and the other part furnish both with
clothes and other comforts. Would that be
best here? Egoism and first appearances say
“yes”. Or would it be better that all our
laborers should be employed in agriculture?
In this case a double or treble portion of fertile
lands would be brought into culture; a double or
treble creation of food be produced, and its surplus
go to nourish the now perishing births of
Europe, who in return would manufacture and
send us in exchange our clothes and other comforts.
Morality listens to this, and so invariably
do the laws of nature create our duties and
interests, that when they seem to be at variance,
we ought to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings.
In solving this question, too, we
should allow just weight to the moral and physical
preference of the agricultural, over the
manufacturing, man.—
To M. Say, Washington ed. iv, 526.
(W.
Feb. 1804)
See Malthus.
