But even Pitt, though he now ignored the need of reform, could not overlook the existence of distress. In 1795 there had been a serious scarcity; war prices had become famine prices. It was the year when “the lower orders” were held down by special coercion acts;[48] it was the year when the king’s carriage was stopped by a mob crying “Bread, bread!” Mr. Whitbread and the rest thought Parliament ought to “do something”; and Pitt proposed (1796) to meet the difficulty by amending the Poor Laws. His bill proposed “to restore the original purity of the Poor Laws” by modifying the law of settlement in the direction of greater freedom, and by assisting the working man in other ways. One of these other ways was an attempt of a harmless kind to found schools of industry, another to attach every labourer to a friendly society. But another less innocently proposed to encourage the growth of population by making the poor relief greater where the family was larger. “Let us make relief,” in such cases, “a matter of right and honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt. This will make a large family a blessing and not a curse; and this will draw a proper line of distinction between those who are to provide for themselves by their labour, and those who, after enriching their country with a number of children, have a claim upon its assistance for their support.”[49] Malthus in 1796 did not doubt the infallibility of Pitt in such a matter; _The Crisis_ gives no hint of objection. But in 1798, with his new light, he could no longer take the recruiting officer’s view of population. If he had had a good case against Godwin and Condorcet, who had simply failed to show how population could be kept from growing too fast, he had still a better case against Pitt, who proposed to make it grow faster. Besides, their schemes were merely on paper; they had no chance of realizing them, whereas Pitt’s majority would carry any measure on which he had set his heart. The danger from this third quarter was therefore the most imminent. But Malthus needed no new argument for it; he needed simply to shift round his old argument, and point the muzzle of it at his new enemy. There is no need, he said, to encourage marriage; there is no need for Government to make population grow faster. Wherever Providence has sent meat, He will soon send mouths to eat it; and, if by your artificial encouragements you increase the mouths without increasing the meat, you will only bring the people one step nearer starvation, you will only multiply the nation without increasing the joy. If stalwart numbers are strength, starving numbers are weakness.[50]