Thomas Robert Malthus
Malthus’s idea was that the potential growth of population exceeds that of food production, but the actual rate of population growth is regulated by the actual rate of increase of food production.
He recommended control of population growth by postponing the marriage age. In his view, by containing population growth, the average standard of living of common people could be raised and poverty could be diminished (Essay on Population, 1798). In the second edition of the Essay on Population (1803), Malthus introduced the moral restraint as a check to the increase of population; he regarded it as the only effective way to contain population growth in the long run.He never recommended any artificial methods of birth control. In his view, the only efficient way to keep low the population increase and to improve the living conditions of labourers in the long run was the spread of moral constraint among the lower classes. Elementary education of common people, protection of private property, institution of laws which treat equally the lower classes and the higher classes, and some participation of labourers in politics were regarded necessary to spread moral constraint among the labouring classes.
In England there were the Poor Laws that had been established mainly in order to relieve the extreme poverty (indigence) in the time of Elizabeth I and were in force until 1948 when the establishment of the welfare state was proclaimed. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Frederic Morton Eden made his inquiry into the state of the poor and the labouring classes under the Poor Laws (The State of the Poor, 1797). From the point of view of population growth, Malthus examined the effects of the Poor Laws. He argued that the Poor Laws had a tendency to increase population growth by weakening the preventive checks and that at the same time they would weaken the incentive of people to work by removing their fear of hunger. He concluded that the Poor Laws had a strong tendency to increase poverty in spite of their proclaimed intention to reduce it, and he proposed to abolish the Poor Laws and the Law of Settlement.
In his view, poverty cannot be eradicated completely, because it has its fundamental cause in a law of nature (the principle of population). Therefore, even if the labouring classes acquired the moral restraint, some poverty would remain. The remaining poverty should be relieved by charity, but charity should not be something that the labourers can rely on.
Malthus did not regard emigration as a good solution to excessive population and poverty. If population increases after emigrants leave the country, the excess of population will soon emerge again. For Malthus, population control by postponing the marriage age was essential in order to reduce poverty among the lower classes.
His abolitionist arguments of the Poor Laws had a big impact on the controversies around the Poor Laws in nineteenth-century England. His view of the Poor Laws, in fact, gave an important influence on the Poor Law reform in 1834, by which outdoor relief was, in principle, abolished. In 1909 the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws
and Relief of Distress (1905-09), after investigations into poverty among labourers, published two reports: the majority report and the minority report. The majority report proposed to improve the existing system of Poor Laws, while the minority report edited by Beatrice Webb argued in favour of abolition of the Poor Laws for their failure of relieving poverty.