As a “preventive check” on population growth, Malthus favoured the postponement of marriage and even permanent abstinence from sex.

He, however, unequivocally disapproved of birth control. “Indeed,” he said, “I should always particular reprobate any artificial and unnatural modes of checking population on account of immorality and their tendency to remove a necessary stimulus to industry.”

He was of the opinion that if it became possible for couples to limit the number of children according to their wishes, they would become too lazy to undertake any activity.

An echo of the same idea is heard in the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi, who told Colin Clark: “If Indians made the necessary efforts, they could grow all the food they need, but without the stimulus of population pressure and economic need, they will not make the effort.”

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(It is indeed ironical that the Malthusian League, later known as the Neo-Malthusian League, took several years to discover that the person after whom they had named their organisation had been totally against birth control, which the League advocated.)

Malthus presents a contradiction in his role as a scientist and as a moralist. He was fully entitled to his opinions against birth control. His role as a scientist, however, is vitiated by the fact that he attempts to justify his opposition to birth control on empirical grounds.

He, of course, could not produce any evidence to prove hat people would become indolent if they only had the number of children desired by them.

After the Second World War, however, there was a revival of interest in Malthus. The reasons are, of course, obvious; some of which are: the increased rate of population growth, greater awareness of the consequences of rapid population growth, and the realisation that certain natural resources are on the verge of exhaustion.

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The name of Malthus can never be scored off from the history of population thought. To him goes the credit for being the first thinker who thoroughly and systematically applied the inductive method to social science.

His contribution to the development of population theory took several different forms. It was his theory that made both his supporters as well as critics realise the importance of, and the need for, the collection of information for the study of population trends and for any investigation into the relationship between the size and growth of population and social and economic conditions.

The discussioh on Malthus may be aptly concluded with a quotation from Charles Emil Stangeland, who remarked: “Malthus’s work was a great one written in an opportune time, and though it cannot lay claim to any considerable originality as far as the theories presented are concerned.

It was successful in that it showed more fully, perhaps more clearly, and certainly more effectively than had any previous attempt, that population depends on subsistence and its increase is checked by want, vice and disease as well as by moral restraint or prudence.”