Thomas Malthus starts his Essay on the Principle of Population with two indisputable facts. “First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.” The famous British vicar is realistic in assessing the consequences of these observations for the human species. Population will grow faster than the production of resources to feed it. More precisely, Malthus attributes to population the capacity to grow in a geometrical way, whereas food production only increases arithmetically. The combination of the two observations spells disaster. What mankind needs, therefore, is a constant check to balance these two unequal powers.

In the European demographic arena, Malthus informs his readers, the balance between population and resources is maintained in two ways. “An intimate view of the state of society in any one country in Europe, which may serve equally for all, will enable us to answer this question, and to say that a foresight of the difficulties attending the rearing of a family acts as a preventive check, and the actual distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled from giving the proper food and attention to their children, act as a positive check to the natural increase of population.” (our italics, Th.E/HYh). Many authors cite Malthus selectively, emphasizing only the preventive check or the restriction on marriage, which, according to the vicar “operates, though with varied force, through all the classes of the community”. He nevertheless also points at the effects of positive checks, “the check that represses an increase which is already begun”. This makes Malthus into a vehement opponent of the Poor Laws, because “Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they maintain”. As a result especially the lower classes suffer from the want of proper and sufficient food, from hard labor and from unwholesome housing. Next to the preventive check, this situation operates as a constant check to increasing population.