That population question greatly interests me even now, and I can
flatter myself that I know it fully. Well, it is evident that Malthus was
right. It is not allowable for people to have families without knowing
how they will be able to nourish them. If the poor die of starvation it
is their fault, and not ours."
Then he reverted to his usual lecture on the subject. The governing
classes alone were reasonable in keeping to small families. A country
could only produce a certain supply of food, and was therefore restricted
to a certain population. People talked of the faulty division of wealth;
but it was madness to dream of an Utopia, where there would be no more
masters but only so many brothers, equal workers and sharers, who would
apportion happiness among themselves like a birthday-cake. All the evil
then came from the lack of foresight among the poor, though with brutal
frankness he admitted that employers readily availed themselves of the
circumstance that there was a surplus of children to hire labor at
reduced rates.
Then, losing all recollection of the past, infatuated, intoxicated with
his own ideas, he went on talking of himself.
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