6."Let us," said Pitt, "make relief, in cases where there are a large number of children, a matter of right and an honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt.This will make a large family a blessing and not a curse, and this will draw a proper line of distinction between those who are able to provide for themselves by labour, and those who after having enriched their country with a number of children have a claim on its assistance for their support." Of course he desired "to discourage relief where it was not wanted." Napoleon the First had offered to take under his own charge one member of any family which contained seven male children; and Louis XIV his predecessor in the slaughter of men, had exempted from public taxes all those who married before the age of 20 or had more than ten legitimate children.A comparison of the rapid increase in the population of Germany with that of France was a chief motive of the order of the French Chamber in 1885 that education and board should be provided at the public expense for every seventh child in necessitous families: and in 1913 a law was passed giving bounties under certain conditions to parents of large families.The British Budget Bill of 1909 allowed a small abatement of income tax for fathers of families.
7.The Physiocratic doctrine with regard to the tendency of population to increase up to the margin of subsistence may be given in Turgot's words: -- the employer "since he always has his choice of a great number of working men, will choose that one who will work most cheaply.Thus then the workers are compelled by mutual competition to lower their price; and with regard to every kind of labour the result is bound to be reached and it is reached as a matter of fact -- that the wages of the worker are limited to that which is necessary to procure his subsistence."(Sur la formation et la distribution des richesses, VI) Similarly Sir James Steuart says (Inquiry, Bk.1, ch.III), "The generative faculty resembles a spring loaded with a weight, which always exerts itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance: when food has remained some time without augmentation or diminution, generation will carry numbers as high as possible; if then food comes to be diminished the spring is overpowered; the force of it becomes less than nothing, inhabitants will diminish at least in proportion to the overcharge.If, on the other hand, food be increased, the spring which stood at 0, will begin to exert itself in proportion as the resistance diminishes; people will begin to be better fed; they will multiply, and in proportion as they increase in numbers the food will become scarce again." Sir James Steuart was much under the influence of the Physiocrats, and was indeed in some respects imbued with Continental rather than English notions of government: and his artificial schemes for regulating population seem very far off from us now.See his Inquiry, Bk.I, ch.XII, "Of the great advantage of combining a well-digested Theory and a perfect Knowledge of Facts with the Practical Part of Government in order to make a People multiply."8.See Wealth of Nations, Bk.I, ch.VIII, and Bk.V, ch.II.See also supra, Bk.II, ch.III.
9.The average price of wheat in the decade 1771-80 in which Adam Smith wrote was 34s.7d.; in 1781-90 it was 37s.1d.; in 1791-1800 it was 63s.6d.; in 1801-10 it was 83s.11d.; and in 1811-20 it was 87s.6d.
10.Early in the last century the Imperial taxes for the greater part war taxes amounted to one-fifth of the whole income of the country; whereas now they are not much more than a twentieth, and even of this a great part is spent on education and other benefits which Government did not then afford.
11.See below section 7 and above Bk.I, ch.III, section 5.
12.Especially Godwin in his Inquiry concerning Political Justice (1792).It is interesting to compare Malthus' criticism of this Essay (Bk.III, ch.II) with Aristotle's comments on Plato's Republic (see especially Politics, II, 6).
13.But many of his critics suppose him to have stated his position much less unreservedly than he did; they have forgotten such passages as this: -- "From a review of the state of society in former periods compared with the present I should certainly say that the evils resulting from the principle of population have rather diminished than increased, even under the disadvantage of an almost total ignorance of their real cause.
And if we can indulge the hope that this ignorance will be gradually dissipated, it does not seem unreasonable to hope that they will be still further diminished.The increase of absolute population, which will of course take place, will evidently tend but little to weaken this expectation, as everything depends on the relative proportions between population and food, and not on the absolute number of the people.In the former part of this work it appeared that the countries which possessed the fewest people often suffered the most from the effects of the principle of population." Essay, Bk.IV, ch.XII.
