“In the natural order of things, a scarcity must tend to lower, instead of to raise, the price of labour. Many men who would shrink at the proposal of a maximum would propose themselves that the price of labour should be proportioned to the price of provisions, and do not seem to be aware that the two proposals are very nearly of the same nature, and that both tend directly to famine. It matters not whether we enable the labourer to purchase the same quantity of provisions which he did before by fixing their price, or by raising in proportion the price of labour.” These arguments of Mr. Malthus were a death-blow to the frightful system of the rate in aid of wages which at the early part of the present century was fast turning England into the most pauper-ridden country in Europe. In Chapter VI. of Book iii., Malthus remarks that, independently of any considerations respecting a year of deficient crops, it is evident that an increase of population without a proportional increase of food must lower the value of each man’s earnings. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day’s labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions. An increase in the price of provisions will arise either from an increase of population faster than the means of subsistence, or from a different distribution of the money of the society. Speaking of the Poor Laws of 1805, he says: “The Poor Laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in two ways. 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 without parish assistance. They may be said, therefore, to create the poor which they maintain; and as the provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased population be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently many of them must be driven to apply for assistance. “Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses, upon a part of the society that cannot be considered the most valuable part, diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to the more industrious and more worthy members, and this, in the same manner, forces more to become dependent. If the poor in the workhouses were to live better than they do now, this new distribution of the money of the society would tend more conspicuously to depress the condition of those out of the workhouse, by occasioning an advance in the price of provisions.”