ECONOMIC EXPERTS 
743 
The means of subsistence could only be procured with a A.D.1776 
severer strain at that time; the obstacles, that had thus =185. 
to be overcome, are much less noticeable in our days, when 
the powers of purchasing food are freely used, and the skill 
in producing it has advanced beyond anything that Malthus 
could anticipate. In his days, and so far as the outlook 
could be forecast, he was justified in urging that the available 
means of subsistence were being increased but slowly, if at all. 
With population it was different. The rapid development and 
of cotton-spinning had called new towns into existence; and growth of 
the newly-expanding industries were, as Sir James Steuart PPH 
foresaw, stimulating the development of population. Besides 
this, there was an accidental and unwholesome stimulus 
given by the arrangements of the poor law. The allowances 
per head, per child, rendered it a distinctly profitable specu- 
lation for the ordinary labourer to marry, and claim parish 
assistance for his offspring; and there was every reason to 
fear that the eighteen-penny children would replenish the 
whole land with hereditary paupers. On every hand it was 
obvious that population was increasing ; and that the numbers, 
which were added, were brought into the world without any 
real attempt being made to provide, by additional effort, for 
their subsistence. 
The circumstances of the times conspired to render the wasa 
tendency, which Malthus noted, specially dominant; at his vn 
time and under the existing circumstances it was working in 
the fashion that he describes. He regarded the tendency for 
population to increase as a physical force, which could only 
be effectually controlled by a stronger sense of duty acting 
under better social conditions. He was a little apt to under- 
rate the contributory circumstances that might tend to 
modify? the recklessness he deplored; but he never forgot 
1 See above, pp. 494, 704. 
+ Malthus lies especially open to this charge in his controversy with Arthur 
Young in regard to pauperism. Malthus would have absolutely abolished the 
relief of the poor by the State; as he proposed that children born after a certain 
late should be excluded by statute from auy claim for relief. In this way he 
believed that pauperism would be gradually extinguished, and that self-reliance 
and better conceptions of parental responsibility would be formed, if the pressure 
of circumstances were brought to bear. Arthur Young, on the other hand, 
believed that his independence of spirit would be fostered by giving the labourer