As will be shown in Chapter V, poverty is generally the cause and not the
result of a high birth-rate. The Malthusian doctrine has been and is to-day
a barrier to social reform, because it implies that humane legislation,
by encouraging population, will of necessity defeat the aim of those who
desire to improve the conditions of the poor by methods other than the
practice of artificial birth control. To a very great extent Malthusian
teaching was responsible for the Poor Law of 1834, the most severe in
Europe, the demoralising laxity of the old Poor Law being replaced by
degrading severity. Again, as recently as 1899, a Secretary of State
reiterated the Malthusian doctrine by explaining that great poverty
throughout India was due to the increase of population under the _pax
Britannica_. Now the truth is that if the social conditions of the poor
were improved, we have every reason to believe that their birth-rate would
be reduced, because as civilisation in a community progresses there is a
natural decline in fertility. Hence:

(a) _Malthusianism is an Attack on the Poor_

Both the supporters and the opponents of Malthus are often mistaken in
considering his greatest achievement to be a policy of birth control.
Malthus did a greater and a more evil thing. He forged a law of nature,
namely, _that there is always a limited and insufficient supply of the
necessities of life in the world_. From this false law he argued that,
as population increases too rapidly, the newcomers cannot hope to find a
sufficiency of good things; that the poverty of the masses is not due to
conditions created by man, but to a natural law; and that consequently this
law cannot be altered by any change in political institutions. This new
doctrine was eagerly adopted by the rich, who were thus enabled to argue
that Nature intended that the masses should find no room at her feast; and