of the checks to population among the ancient greeks and romans.
the more equal division of landed property among the greeks and romans in the earlier period of their history, must have tended greatly to encourage population, since agriculture, mr. malthus says, is the only kind of industry which permits of multitudes existing. when, as often occurred, the number of free citizens did not exceed ten or twenty thousand, every individual would naturally feel the value of his own exertions, and know that, if he left his lands idle, he would be wanting in his duty as a citizen. hence, a great attention was paid to agriculture in greece. population rapidly increased, and colonization was common, so that the legislators of greece had their attention frequently called to the question of over-population. mr. malthus had already shown that the practice of infanticide, as existing in china, tended rather to increase population, by tempting people into early marriage. solon permitted the exposition of infants, mr. malthus is inclined to think, partly for the purpose of tempting the citizens into early marriage, and thus increasing the population.
the great philosophers of greece, such as plato and aristotle, are the origin of all real civilisation in succeeding ages throughout europe: and have saved us from the deluge of crude theologies, such as those of palestine or less cultured tribes. the so-called divine law of “increase and multiply and replenish the earth,” and other equally vague and meaningless exclamations, are in strongest contrast with the scientific reasoning of these masters of all the learned. plato, in his “republic,” limits the number of free citizens in his ideal state to five thousand and forty. procreation, he maintains, when it proceeds too fast, may be checked, or when it goes on too slowly, may be encouraged, by the proper distribution of honors and marks of ignominy, and by the admonitions of the elders to prevent or promote it according to circumstances. mr. john stuart mill evidently was of a similar opinion, and his followers have advocated state intervention as a cure for poverty. plato also anticipated mr. darwin himself and the modern darwinians, who lay such great and just stress on the 20point of the rational selection of parents. in the fifth book of his “republic,” he proposes that the most healthy men should be joined in marriage to the finest specimens among the women, and the inferior citizens should be paired with each other. he next proposes that the children of the first class alone shall be brought up, the others not. it will doubtless be one of the results of the neo-malthusian movement of this day, that persons afflicted with hereditary disease will not so often desire to become parents as the healthy, whilst they may follow the advice of professor mantegazza, of florence, and “marry, but not procreate.”
from these and other passages it is clear that plato well saw the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. his expedients for checking it were not permissible, indeed, but the extent to which they were to be used shows how great he perceived the difficulty to be. how backward most modern nations are in speculation on such points may be judged of by the unwillingness in germany, england, and even in france to look the question fairly in the face. in plato’s time wars were nearly perpetual, and very destructive, and if, whilst knowing this, he could still contemplate the destruction of the children of the poorer and sicklier of the population, of all who were born when their parents were either too young or too old, the fixing of the date of marriage late, and the regulating the number of marriages, his reasonings and experience must have pointed out to him the terrible tendency of population to over-pass the means of subsistence.
the great writer, aristotle, seems to have seen the principle even more clearly than plato. he fixes the age of marriage for men in his republic actually at thirty-seven; and, even with this late marriage, he foresaw that there might be too many children, so that he proposed that the number allowed to each marriage should be regulated. aristotle accuses plato of not being sufficiently attentive to the population difficulty, and for proposing to equalise property without limiting the number of children (de repub. lib. ii. ch. vi.). this may be a hint to modern socialists, especially to those of germany, where socialism seems to be becoming the creed of the masses, in despair at ever hearing any good thing from the military despots now in power. aristotle justly observes that the laws require to be much more definite and precise in a state where property is equalised, than in others, since, in ordinary circumstances, an increase of population would only occasion a further sub-division of landed property, whereas, in a state of communism, 21the supernumeraries would be altogether destitute, because the lands, being reduced to equal elementary parts, would be incapable of further sub-division. he remarks that it is necessary in all cases to regulate the number of children, so that they may not exceed the proper number. in doing this, death and sterility are of course to be taken into account. but if, he says in chapter vii., every person be left free to have as many children as he pleases, the necessary consequence will be poverty: and poverty is the mother of crime and sedition. for these very reasons, an ancient writer on politics, pheidon of corinth, introduced a regulation to limit population without equalising wealth.
speaking again, in book ii. ch. vii., of schemes for the equalisation of wealth, aristotle says that, in order that such schemes should be successful, it would be imperative to regulate at the same time the size of families. for, if children multiply beyond the means of supporting them, the law will necessarily be broken, and families will be suddenly reduced from opulence to beggary, a revolution always dangerous to public tranquility. in sparta the landed property had passed into the hands of a very small number of the citizens: and aristotle remarks that in such a state the encouragement of large families by rewards could only have for its effect to cause an immense accumulation of indigence, so long as a better distribution of the land were not secured. it would have been well for european nations up to this time, had their rulers known even as much as aristotle and plato of this matter: they would have avoided those disastrous historical incentives to procreation, which must always have ended only in increasing indigence and premature death.
the positive checks to population in ancient greece and rome are palpable enough. incessant wars, plagues, and famines prevailed. livy expresses his surprise that the volci and ?qui, who were so often destroyed by the romans, should have been able to bring fresh armies into the field, but when the principle of population is understood, our astonishment ceases. such conquered tribes, like the ancient germans, doubtless gave full scope to the powers of procreation, and hence were soon as numerous as before their defeat. and yet it seems clear that the horrible practice of infanticide was very common in italy, for romulus was supposed already to have forbidden it, though the constant warfare of the romans must have lessened the necessity for this check. the roman population of italy soon fell off when the land passed into the 22hands of a few great proprietors, since the other classes, having no means of selling their labour, or competing with the numerous slaves of the wealthy, would have been entirely starved, had it not been for the curious custom which arose of distributing large quantities of corn gratis to the poorer or landless citizens. no less than two hundred thousand were thus fed in augustus’ reign, and probably had little else to depend upon. hence the poorer free citizens could not increase, and they are said to have been constantly in the habit of exposing their unfortunate children, since the quantity of food doled out was not enough for a family to subsist upon.
the jus trium liberorum (law for rewarding fathers of three children) could effect nothing in such circumstances, in making the poor give birth to large families, although it may occasionally have tempted the landed proprietors to increase their families. had the poor had large numbers of children in such a miserable state of society, they must have been born only to die of starvation, since the food doled out by the government was not sufficient to feed all.
positive laws to encourage marriage, says mr. malthus, enacted on the urgency of the occasion, and not mixed with religion, as in china and some other countries, are seldom calculated to answer the end they aim at, and therefore generally indicate ignorance in the legislator who proposes them; but the apparent necessity of them almost always indicates a very great degree of moral and political depravity in the state; and in the countries in which they are most strongly insisted on, not only vicious manners will be found to prevail, but political institutions extremely unfavourable to industry, and, consequently, to population.
on this account malthus entirely disagreed with hume, who supposed that the roman world was probably most populous during the long peace under trajan and the antonines. wars, he says, do not depopulate much while industry continues in vigour: and peace will not increase the number of people when they cannot find means of subsistence. “the renewal of the laws relating to marriage under trajan indicates the continued prevalence of vicious habits, and of a languishing industry, and seems to be inconsistent with the supposition of a great increase of population.”
hume also thought that the population of the ancient world was greater than in modern times, because, he said, there were hosts of domestic servants in modern states remaining unmarried. but the contrary inference, says malthus, seems to be 23the more probable. when the difficulties attending the rearing of a family are very great, and, consequently, many persons of both sexes remain single, we may naturally suppose that the population is stationary, but by no means that it is not absolutely great; because the difficulty of rearing a family may arise from the very circumstance of a very great absolute population, and the consequent fulness of all the channels to a livelihood; though the same difficulty may undoubtedly exist in a thinly peopled country, which is yet stationary in its population.
the number of unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, says malthus, may form some criterion by which we may judge whether population is increasing, stationary, or decreasing; but will not enable us to determine anything respecting absolute populousness. yet even in this point we may be deceived, since, in some southern countries early marriages are general, and very few women remain in a state of celibacy, yet the people not only do not increase, but the actual number is perhaps small. in this case the removal of the preventive check is made up by the excessive force of the positive check. the sum of all the positive and preventive checks taken together, forms, undoubtedly, the immediate cause which represses population; but we never can expect to obtain and estimate accurately this sum in any country; and we can certainly draw no safe conclusion from the contemplation of two or three of these checks taken by themselves, because it so frequently happens that the excess of one check is balanced by the defect of some other.
causes which affect the number of births or deaths may or may not affect the average population, according to circumstances; but causes which affect the production and distribution of the means of subsistence must necessarily affect population; and it is therefore on these causes, besides actual enumerations, on which we can with any certainty rely. “all the checks to population, which have been hitherto considered in the course of this review of human society, are clearly resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.”
with regard, then, to the checks to population in ancient rome, mr. malthus thinks that moral restraint acted but feebly in restraining the increase of numbers. and of the other branch of the preventive check, which comes under the denomination of “vice,” according to mr. malthus, though its effect seems to have been very considerable in the later periods of roman history and in some other countries; yet, on the 24whole, he thinks its operation was much inferior to the positive checks. a large portion of the procreative power was called into action among the romans, the redundancy being checked by violent causes, among which war was the most prominent and striking, and after which came famines and violent diseases.
in most of these ancient nations the population seems to have been seldom measured accurately according to the average and permanent means of subsistence, but generally to have vibrated between the two extremes, and therefore the contrasts between want and plenty were strongly marked, as might be expected in the earlier and less experienced ages of human society.
