s
are, properly speaking, nonsense, since they serve only to maintain, and
stimulate the increase of, the surplus population whose competition
crushes down wages for the employed; that the employment of the poor by
the Poor Law Guardians is equally unreasonable, since only a fixed
quantity of the products of labour can be consumed, and for every
unemployed labourer thus furnished employment, another hitherto employed
must be driven into enforced idleness, whence private undertakings suffer
at cost of Poor Law industry; that, in other words, the whole problem is
not how to support the surplus population, but how to restrain it as far
as possible. Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a
right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is
nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the
feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that "she bids
him begone," for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or
not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English
bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for
them, and has, moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing
conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the "surplus
population" useful, to transform it into available population, but merely
to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent
its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided
the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly
to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the violent exertions of
the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in
bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have
taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the
necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus
population.

Since, however, the rich hold all the power, the proletarians must
submit, if they will not good-temperedly perceive it for themselves, to
have the law actually declare them superfluous. This has been done by
the New Poor Law. The Old Poor Law which rested upon the Act of 1601
(the 43rd of Elizabeth), naively started from the notion that it is the
duty of the parish to provide for the maintenance of the poor. Whoever
had no work received relief, and the poor man regarded the parish as
pledged to protect him from starvation. He demand