Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 1 (2007), p. 135

We either love him or hate him, but rarely do we ignore him. More than any other of his contemporary or near-contemporary political economists, Malthus has aroused emotions both in his lifetime and subsequently. The free market ways of Adam Smith of course attract political supporters and detractors on both sides of the political divide. Ricardo and Ricardian thought perhaps enjoys less the political and more the intellectual attention. Rent theory, whether Ricardian or not, is a theoretical approach to the contractual interactions between peoples that is concluded every day of their working lives. Malthusianism is altogether more brutal. How often is it depicted with the grim reaper in the background ready to scythe down peoples? Our news broadcasts almost daily remind us that the three great Malthusian people purges of the past – war, pestilence, and famine – live on in the twenty-first century. Yes it is as much a modern story of pessimism as it is historical, and it starkly divides the haves from the have-nots in this world, both within societies, but also between societies. The ‘Live Aid’, ‘Band Aid’, ‘Africa Aid’ conscience of western society has reached almost industrial proportions.

War, pestilence and famine were the positive checks on population growth, Malthus also had much to say on the preventive check of sexual restraint, and that of course is also a major debating point in modern society, not only in sub-Saharan Africa but also in modern British society with the teenage pregnancy explosion of recent times. Malthus linked the issue of sexual restraint directly to the operation of the contemporary Poor Law. He observed that it worked against his preventive check because it encouraged people to entertain early marriage and to multiply household size in the sure knowledge that a social safety net was in place. As he put it, with the encouragement of parish relief, ‘men are thus allured to marry with little or no prospect of being able to maintain a family in independence’ (p.21).

But how was the Malthusian spectre received in his own time? The burning issue then, and the recurring issue for subsequent generations of historians, is the influence that Malthusianism, and in particular the preventive check of the control of family size, had on the state management of poverty. In the British case this culminated in the New Poor Law and the ending of outdoor relief in 1834. This book describes how the Malthusian message about the rise of population and the attendant social and economic dislocations that ensued were received by Malthus’ contemporaries.

The author claims that his approach is the first serious attempt to investigate how contemporaries tried to broadcast the Malthusian message, both negatively as well as positively, especially among the working class. He concludes that Malthusian thought shaped public opinion more widely than was hitherto imagined because it reached below the purely intellectual and public policy level where perhaps historians have otherwise concluded that it resided. The sub-title of this book – Martineau, Cobbett and the pauper press – sets up the lines of engagement. Harriett Martineau is depicted as a Malthus champion in the early 1830s, with William Cobbett in the opposing corner representing the single most determined adversary of Malthus of that generation. And what of the pauper press? This really refers to the attempted wider circulation of what Martineau, Cobbett and others wrote and thought, through the popular circulation of comment in the working-class press. All three means of communication were intended to reach a similar and wide audience, the middle class and especially the working class, Martineau through her 25 fictional stories in Illustrations of political economy and her Poor laws and paupers illustrated (published in four volumes) and Cobbett through the reprints, extracts, and tracts taken from his Political register.

James Huzel tells his story in four parts. The first is about Malthus and seeks to engage not only the experts but also an audience that is not wholly conversant with Malthus, what he said and believed, and how those beliefs changed over time. The second part offers the Martineau position, and the third the Cobbett position. The final part is a consideration of what the radical working-class press said. The whole is topped and tailed by an introduction and a chapter of conclusions. What does Huzel conclude? Martineau made huge mistakes in her representation, not least in her espousal of moral restraint both in delaying marriage but also of restraining carnal knowledge within marriage, though Huzel believes that the invective against her for this was a contemporary misinterpretation of what she was really saying. Cobbett attracted a wide audience, and indeed Huzel claims that the wider readership enjoyed by Cobbett is itself evidence of the animosity to Malthus by the working class, and this was reinforced by the invective from the pauper press. But history is about winners and losers, sometimes regardless of the weight of public opinion. Do we conclude that the triumph of the New Poor Law makes Malthus the winner? James Huzel thinks that this is too simplistic, but if he is correct in thinking that hitherto there has been a neglect of Malthus in writing the history of this important aspect of public policy, then perhaps he has sent a hare running that will be pursued for some time to come.