French Predecessors of Malthus

Joseph J. Spengler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136236488
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First Published in 1966. This volume is study of the population and wage theories prevalent in the eighteenth century France. Designed to fill a gap in previous volumes in the history of economic doctrine; and to better accomplish this purpose, population and wage theory has been given a broader denotation and connotation than is customary today.

Chapter I

Pre-Eighteenth-Century Population Theory

WHILE population theory (in the fuller meaning of the term) in France cannot be said to antedate the latter part of the seventeenth century, there did appear, prior to this time, many expressions of opinion and occasional legislative acts which reflect the attitude of the authors toward demographic factors. This pre-eighteenth-century opinion is roughly divisible into two categories, the scholastic and the mercantilistic; the latter gradually superseded the former after the fourteenth century, only to be disintegrated in turn by new doctrines which began to come to the fore in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

The approach of the scholastic writers to wage and population questions differed markedly from that of later writers, irrespective of school. The scholastic writers, as became spokesmen for a universal church, were internationalist in outlook. Moreover, they emphasized otherworldly rather than this-worldly ends and values,¹ and taught that the social and the economic life of the individual is subject to religio-moral prescript. Accordingly, while they expressed occasional opinions with respect to matters pertaining to population, and discussed what constitutes “justice” in interindividual economic relations, they did not concern themselves especially with wage formation, or with the causes and consequences of population growth.

I

The scholastics surrounded the behavior of individuals and groups with restrictions, the removal of which gave distinctive character to post-scholastic social theory. Economic practice, they said, must consist with such religious and moral principles as man is required to observe if he would gain eternal salvation. While they vested labor, manual and otherwise, with dignity, they also stipulated that each person must accept, as part of the divine plan, the station in life in which he finds himself, and the duties and the rights and privileges associated with it; and that each must perform his allotted task in order that all concerned (i.e., the individual, the family, the state, and the church) may live. Under this arrangement each individual was assured his “proportionate share in the bonum commune in things secular and sacred” in accordance with his position in the social organism: thus the worker was entitled to a “just” wage—enough to satisfy his spiritual needs and supply temporal wants consistent with the requirements of his class and station. The scholastics sanctioned private ownership of property, but stipulated that the owner was essentially a steward, and that he must subordinate the use of his property to the general welfare and to the claim of all members of the community to a minimum share in social well-being. They enjoined the individual to consume temperately, and to be generous to others, especially the poor, whose lot (it was assumed) generally was the result of misfortune rather than of personal shortcomings. While lavish expenditure was considered permissible when made for the good of the group or cult (e.g., cathedrals; ecclesiastical rituals, garb, and statuary), luxurious personal consumption was condemned as endangering salvation and as departing from the level of life consistent with moral prescript. In military matters, too, the scholastics circumscribed individual freedom: generally, princes and individuals were obligated not to engage in unjust wars. In later centuries mercantilist writers substituted etatism for medieval particularism, and, with respect to control of individual economic activity, state-oriented sanctions for medieval moral prescripts.

The medieval writers were not dominated by reasons of state and race, and they did not concern themselves with population theory as such, but they did comment upon certain moral matters related to population growth. In general, they looked upon population growth as a sign of God’s favor, and subscribed to doctrines and practices definitely conducive to such growth; for they held human life to be sacred, and marriage to be a sacrament, and they inferred from Holy Scripture that large families are good for the individual and the community, and in accord with the divine plan. Accordingly, they held that the marriage-act, while lawful, must not be sought merely for its own sake, and they condemned as sinful voluntary limitation of family size by means other than continence. While they approved sacerdotal celibacy, and described laws against celibacy as in contravention of the obligation of a minority of the population to live in a state of detachment from earthly pleasures, the scholastics² implied that religious celibacy did not interfere with population growth; for the sanctioning of celibacy did not remove the general obligation incumbent upon men to multiply, inasmuch as this obligation was collective rather than individual in character, and was naturally fulfilled by the great noncelibate majority of the population. A number of the monastic orders, some of whose views the scholastic writers reflected, participated in the great internal colonization program, which, by the middle of the fourteenth century, had reclaimed much of Western Europe from swamp and waste, and made possible its repeopling.³

The period which witnessed the rise of an urban commercial civilization, the Renaissance, and the beginning of the Reformation and modern nationalism, saw no immediate and marked change in the attitude of the articulate classes toward populationgrowth. Scholasticism and the otherworldly scheme of values went into partial decay, the claims of religio-asceticism were weakened, and the advantages of population growth and urban agglomeration apparently became obvious to the classes which stood to profit therefrom; but a new appraisal of demographic factors did not yet appear. However, as Brants notes, celibacy at times was condemned because it checked population growth;⁴ and at least one writer went so far as to inquire into the circumstances when celibacy is not to be justified. When men are lacking, said this author (probably the fourteenth-century legist, Raoul de Prelles) in his Songe du Vergier, celibacy is not justifiable, but when population is sufficient to permit perfect social life, celibacy is not to be condemned, for the nonmarriage of some cannot imperil the race; finally, when the earth is no longer capable of nourishing further increments of population, both reason and nature counsel and impose celibacy.⁵ Although De Prelles was perhaps the first French writer to posit clearly a portion of the population problem, his comments exercised no subsequent influence.⁶ With the coming of the Reformation, celibacy and the ideal of virginity lost approval in areas where Protestantism became dominant, the monastic and clerical view of the conjugal relation was abolished, divorce and remarriage were sanctioned, and early marriage and the begetting of a numerous progeny were recommended; but the dangers of overpopulation and the need for the emotional refinement of the sexual relation were lost sight of.⁷ Inasmuch as Protestantism did not come to predominate in France, the doctrines of its exponents do not appear to have exercised much specific influence upon articulate French population theory even though some writers were Huguenots.

Pre-seventeenth-century French rulers sometimes inaugurated measures to attract immigrants and to stimulate natural increase—some because they believed governmental revenues to be dependent upon the size of the population, and others because they looked upon population growth as an index of the goodness of government and the dignity of the ruler. Already in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries tax exemptions, permission to transmit property, and assurance of security in time of war, were granted to Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish merchants and tradesmen who settled in France. In later centuries and until the close of the ancien régime, offers of freedom, privileges, and naturalization were employed to attract artisans, businessmen, and soldiers to France. Various measures (tax exemptions, safe-conducts to and from fairs and markets, privileges to cities, etc.) were employed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to attract migrants, to favor heads of families, and to facilitate reparation of losses occasioned by the Black Death (1348) and the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). In 1566 a law designed to prevent abortion and infanticide went into effect.⁸

II

In the late fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries the cultural and economic changes under way served to intensify interest in population problems. The development of printing enkindled new interests. Worldly objectives gradually superseded the otherworldly ends which had dominated the medieval scheme of values. Laymen with lay points of view began to put on paper their opinions with respect to population and related questions. The discovery of America and its colonial possibilities, the growth of nationalism, the consolidation of states, continuous commercial and industrial expansion, changes in military organization and methods, and the series of struggles between the rival commercial empires of Western Europe, operated in combination to alter political perspectives and to intensify the seeming importance of demographic expansion. In France, pari passu with the expansion and consolidation of the state and the centralization of power, there developed an absolutistic political philosophy which made of strengthening the state the supreme end, to the attainment of which all economic and social policies must be made subservient. This philosophy, commonly known as mercantilism, proceeded upon the assumption that the interests of nations are antithetical, and that therefore the economic and military resources of France must be mobilized in such wise as to weaken her actual and potential enemies; it emphasized the importance of precious metals and, in consequence, the means whereby such metals might be obtained, namely, manufactures and foreign commerce. In the eyes of some exponents of this philosophy the individual was a mere breeder and worker for the state—a tool whose sole function it was to implement the state and make it strong; and the strength of the state turned ultimately upon the number of such tools at its disposal. Occasionally, however, mercantilists defended religious tolerance because they believed that it would attract immigrants, and sought some improvement in the well-being of workers on the ground that it would swell the power of the state.⁹

The mercantilistic philosophy which we have outlined, and which reached its highest development under Colbert, did not come into being at once; for while many commentators and writers accepted the view that increase in number is advantageous, and while some accepted other doctrinal elements of mercantilism, it required the writings of Bodin, Laffemas, and Montchrétien, together with the organizational efforts of Mazarin and Richelieu, to give form to Colbertism. At all times, apparently, some commentators were content merely to express approval of numbers, some rejected the bellicoseness and expansionism of mercantilism, and some, following the ancients, stressed the importance of agriculture to the exclusion of industry and commerce: none of these, therefore, felt the need for numbers as did the more Faustian mercantilists.

The comment that population growth is desirable, or the stereotyped observation that the glory of the king consists in the multitude of his subjects, occurs a number of times in and after the fifteenth century—in cahiers, in remonstrances, in decrees, and in books of advice to princes¹⁰—but it is not accompanied by analysis of the causes and effects of population growth. That the dignity (and sometimes the strength) of kings consists in the number (and sometimes the opulence) of their subjects was subscribed to, for example, by Louis XI and Henry IV;¹¹ by G. Budé (1467–1540), the humanist and jurist who helped to develop the theory of monarchical absolutism;¹² by the Huguenot leader, H. Languet (1518–1581).¹³ The general advantage of populousness is noted by other advisers of princes. For example, E. Colonna, a scholastic and disciple of Aquinas, Aristotle, and Vegetius, dwelt upon the advantages of large families, both for the members of such families and for the nation; but he opposed premature marriage on the ground that it was likely “to be injurious to the children to be born and to impair the mutual happiness of the married.”¹⁴ He also preached continence in sexual relations, and moderation in the desire for wealth. P. Boaistuau favored peace because population and cities grow in times of tranquility.¹⁵ Gentillet, who believed a large population to be the real source of a nation’s wealth, looked upon strife and bad laws as checks to population growth; he also condemned luxury as inimical to national welfare.¹⁶

Among the writers who did not accept the mercantilist scheme of values, and whose writings may have contributed in some measure to keeping ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Chapter I. Pre-Eighteenth-Century Population Theory
• Chapter II. The Neomercantilists and the Agrarians
• Chapter III. The Repopulationists
• Chapter IV. Cantillon and the Theory of Luxury
• Chapter V. Quesnay and the Physiocrats
• Chapter VI. The Philosophes
• Chapter VII. The Nonphysiocratic Economists
• Chapter VIII. The Extreme Antiphysiocrats
• Chapter IX. Conclusions and Interpretation
• Name Index
• Subject Index