LAISSEZ FAIRE 
They did not attempt to investigate the conditions which 
tend to render the wages fund steady for a time, and preclude 
the increase of the labourers’ wages during that period. The 
labourers were poorly paid, not because the wages fund was 
invariable, but because the introduction of machinery was 
restricting it at the time; this was precisely the view taken 
by the labourers, though they gave it less cumbrous and 
more forcible expression. 
While economists denounced the ineptitude of all efforts 
on the part of labourers to raise the rates of wages, they were 
equally scornful of all philanthropic proposals for ameliorating 
the condition of the poor. All poverty was said to be due 
to the increase of population at a more rapid rate than the 
increase of the means of subsistence; and it seemed to follow 
that any charity, which gave the opportunity for more rapid 
multiplication, would increase the evil it professed to relieve. 
This was the position of the followers of Malthus, and his 
mode of statement gave some excuse for the exaggeration; 
he based his doctrine on a very careful inductive argument. 
He cites instances from every age, from every climate, and 
from every soil, to show that there is everywhere a tendency 
for population to increase faster than the means of sub- 
sistence ; and he draws from it the inevitable conclusion that 
the anxiety which politicians displayed, to provide conditions 
for the growth of population as an element in national power, 
was quite illusory. The difficulty lay, not in the birth-rate, 
but in the raising of children to be efficient men and 
women; a low rate of infant mortality seemed to him to be 
on the whole the best guarantee for a sound and well 
nourished population. 
FEA of The conditions of society, at the time when Malthus 
procuring wrote, were such as to render the truth of his principle 
subsistence. . . . 
obvious when once it was stated. On the one side there was 
the greatest difficulty in procuring additional means of sub- 
sistence; the war imposed hindrances to the purchase of 
supplies from abroad; and though agriculturists were busy 
in ploughing up waste ground and taking in a larger area 
for the cultivation of wheat, they were finding that the task 
of adding to the regular produce became harder and harder. 
74.2