ROBERT MAL

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21324, 17 November 1934, Page 17

ROBERT MAL

(SSICIAU.Y WMJTSH *OB TH* MISS.) [By G. M. L. LESTER.] At the present time there are few questions more widely canvassed than that of birth control. The relation of the population of a country to its powers of production is now so important that most thinking men recognise the necessity of exploiting any means which science offers for its rational regulation. Not only is the problem of birth control one for the earnest consideration of statesmen, but there is an increasing feeling that within the bounds of the family, parents have a right, which is also a duty, to regulate the number of their children within limits which will give to each child the best possible chances for his future life. Few people nowadays realise that the importance of this muchdebated question was first recognised by a quiet Cambridge don, who devoted his life to the consideration of social problems, and left his mark for all time on the modern science of political economy. To-day the name of Robert Malthus is probably little known to the general reader; but it was not always so. In the mid-Victorian age the practical application of his theories in a book called "The Fruits of Philosophy," sponsored by Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant, earned for hLn an unenviable notoriety, and his name was associated in the popular mind with everything that was subversive and immoral. He shared, in those unenlightened days, with Charles Darwin the imputation of wickedness which stupidity levels at genius; and yet no two men were ever more absolutely blameless in every relation of life. The Perfect Gentleman This is how Malthus appeared to his contemporaries. Harriet Martineau, who would probably have thought it improper to take a country walk even with the immaculate John Stuart Mill, gives the man whom a later generation condemned as an enemy of morality her unqualified approval. She writes of him thus in her autobiography: "A more simpleminded, virtuous man, full of domestic affections, than Mr Malthus could not be found in all England." The stately "Athenaeum" in an obituary notice records that "his servants lived with him till their marriage or settlement in life." The "Gentleman's Magazine" on another note sings his praises thus: "In per-

son Mr Malthus was tall and elegantly formed; and his appearance, no less than his conduct, was that of a perfect gentleman." Finally, we learn that his students affectionately called him "Pop." After that we are not surprised to hear that as an undergraduate "he was distinguished by a degree of temperance and prudence, very rare at that period." and that his friends further found in him "the most unexceptional character, the sweetest manners, and the most sensible and kindest conduct." It may be thought that the life of such a paragon of virtue, outside the walls of his study, and apart from his special subject, must of necessity be rather uninteresting; and to a certain degree this is true. Nevertheless during his blameless Kie Robert Malthus not only attained fame, but also made many interesting contacts. Few children at the age of three weeks can have had two such distinguished visitors as David Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau, who each bestowed on little Robert the kiss of a quasi-god-father. The father, David Malthus, to whom Robert owed the friendship and favour of these .two distinguished men, was no ordinary individual. He was a county squire of independent means, who hunted and shot and did all those things which a county squire was expected to do; but, unlike many of his fortunate fellows, he used his brains. He read wisely and systematically; he even wrote a small book or two. He was the close friend of Hume, and an almost fanatical disciple of Rousseau, whose uneasy, restless sojourn in England he did his best to regulate, and whose library he inherited. In a word, he was one of the group of philosophic liberals who did so much to shape the thought of the early years of the nineteenth century. Supper with Coleridge By good fortune he selected as tutor for his son Gilbert Wakefield, who is described as "an heretical clergyman, wild, restless and paradoxical in many of his opinions, a prompt and hardy disputant." Wakefield's tutorship ended when in 1799 he was imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol; but the schoolboy letters of his pupil show how much the boy loved him. It was through the influence of Wakefield, one time Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, that Robert was entered at his old college and there met the group of remarkable men to whom in after years he owed so much. It was here through his tutor William Frend that he met Paley, a man now almost forgotten, but a great and imposing pei-sonage in his day, who in spire of his greatness submitted to be convinced by Malthus of the fallacy of his contention that "the quantity of happiness in any country is best measured by the number of its people." That queer mystagogue Coleridge was a freshman at Jesus when Malthus took his B.A. degree, and a contemporary gives a delightful account of little suppers prolonged into the small hours by libations of negus (!) at which Coleridge, with Malthus and others as audience, held forth on every conceivable subject. Later on, when Malthus was a Fellow, he had to sign an order that poor Coleridge, who in his erratic way had enlisted in the 15th Dragoons, "should not return to college within a month from this day, and should pay his debts to his tutor." It adds a delightful touch of comedy to this undergraduate tragedy that enlisted under the portentous name of Silas Tomkins Comberbacke. Influence on Pitt Malthus's college career was in accordance with the best traditions. He was elected a Fellow, was ordained, as the custom then was for Fellows, was presented to a small living, and finally married. Meanwhile he continued his study of political economy not only in his study, but also on a tour which he took in 1799 through Sweden, Norway, Finland, and part of Russia. A few years later the short peace of 1802 gave him the opportunity of adding France and Switzerland to the list of those countries in which he had gathered material for his economic studies. The publication of his Essay on Population brought him the undying enmity of Coleridge, but as a compensation introduced him to William Pitt. The great man, at a supper party at Jesus Lodge, amongst whom was Malthus, "was induced to unbend in a very easy conversation respecting Sir Sidney Smith, the massacre at Jaffa, and other matters." Pitt's interest in Malthus was not merely social; for he acknowledged in the House of Commons when he dropped his new Poor Bill that he did so in deference to opinions expressed by Bentham and Malthus. First Professor of Economics On leaving Cambridge Malthus was appointed to the chair of Modern History and Political Econony at the newly founded East India College at Haileybury. This professorship was the earliest chair of Political Economy to be established in England, and as such was a fitting preferment for the greatest of English economists. Malthus remained at Haileybury for 30 years, until he died. He was succeeded by a cleric known as "old Jones," whose sole memorial is the fact that he once preached a sermon containing this impassioned appeal: "And now, my brethren, let me ask you: which of you has not hatched a cockatrice egg?" On the death of "old Jones," the glory of this distinguished professorship was restored to it in the person of Sir James Stephen. It is not my purpose to chronicle the delightful life lived by Malthus and his wife in the "house under the clock turret" at Haileybury, but before I close this article I must briefly refer to the remarkable friendship with David Ricardo, which gave these two doughty economists the greatest happiness of their lives. From the time when Malthus shyly introduced himself to Ricardo down to the year in which Ricardo died, their intimacy was never broken. Ricardo stayed for week-ends at Haileybury; Malthus, whenever he was in London, stayed with Ricardo. Stout volumes contain their correspondence, and now that the letters of Malthus, long mislaid, are to be added to those of Ricardo, form most valuable material for the student of what in their day was misnamed "the dismal science." They fought many a wordy battle, for Ricardo was an abstract and a priori theorist, Malthus an inductive and intuitive investigator; and they differed perhaps more often than they agreed. Still, these differences never endangered their friendship. Malthus writes of Ricardo: I never loved anybody out of my own family so much. Our interchange of opinions was so unreserved, and the object after which we were both enquiring was so entirely the truth, and nothing else, that I cannot but think that we sooner or later must have agreed. Ricardo in his last letter to Malthus ends thus:

And now, my dear Malthus, I have done. Like other disputants, after much discussion, we each retain our own opinions. These discussions, however, never influence our friendship; I should not like you more than I do if you agreed in opinion with mc. A Deal in Stocks Maria Edgeworth, who knew them both well, wrote of them: "They hunted together in search of Truth, and huzzaed when they found her, without caring who found her first." And here perhaps I might take leave of these two delightful old gentleman searching after truth and huzzaing when they found her; but before I do so I will mote a curious little incident which takes us back to the days when the Rothschilds made a fortune out of the battle of Waterloo. Ricardo was a member of a syndicate which dealt in Government stocks, and his position gave him the chance of acquiring from the Treasury certain stocks at less than market price. These he held until it paid him to sell them; meanwhile he always put a few pounds on his venture for his friend Malthus. A few days before the battle of Waterloo they both had government stock in hand: Ricardo held his, and after the victory of Waterloo realised large sums of money. Malthus, intimidated by the fame of Napoleon, sold out before the battle was decided and made no profit at all. I regret to relate that Ricardo reported his success triumphantly to Malthus, without a word of sympathy for his friend's loss.