Professor Sergio Cremaschi’s worthy, even heroic, effort to meticulously provide the moral philosophical treatise that Robert Malthus himself should have written opens with the debate between Malthus the Utilitarian and Malthus the Christian Moral Thinker (p. 1). Taking the latter side, Cremaschi casts Malthus as a non-Utilitarian, Christian moralist, who today would be considered a virtue ethicist. Yet, throughout, he explicitly places Malthus in the consequentialist camp of moral theorists, and he ends the book affirming the central role of Utility: “Or, if theology is tantamount to ‘Dogma’, we can safely conclude that, at the end of Malthus’s career, Dogma was still safely installed, holding hands with Utility, at the core of his system of ideas” (p. 198; emphasis added). This, to me, reflects the central problem with this book. The main line of the argument and the evidence cited from Malthus’s texts have a disturbing tendency to contradict each other.

There are two broad issues at play, which are not always clearly delineated. The first is placing Malthus into the context of a secular moral theory, and the second is establishing the status of Malthus’s Christianity in his moral and economic analysis and in his policy conclusions. The above suggests a strict dichotomy, which may be false, since Malthus has frequently been taken to be both a Christian and a Utilitarian (Waterman Reference Waterman1991, pp. 148–150; Winch Reference Winch1996, p. 377; Petersen Reference Petersen1999, p. 214). On the contrary, Cremaschi argues that neither William Paley nor Malthus were Utilitarians in the Benthamite mold. Alternatively, he describes them as voluntarist consequentialists, while somewhat incongruously also claiming Malthus as a virtue ethicist. On theology, Cremaschi agrees with scholars such as Donald Winch and Anthony Waterman that it is a mistake to try to separate Malthus the Christian moralist from Malthus the economist. The book seems to have had a rather long gestation period. The scholarship is deep and meticulous, and the issues raised are important. It deserves a much more thorough consideration than I can give it in a short review.

The book consists of eight chapters. The first and last are an introduction and conclusion, respectively. The six chapters in between are the heart of the book. They proceed in a more or less chronological order, with the second and third chapters setting the stage in eighteenth-century Anglican moral thought and what Cremaschi calls Malthus’s “meta-ethics.” Then follow three chapters that carefully and thoroughly trace the evolution of Malthus’s thought through the six editions of the Essay on the Principle of Population from its 1798 polemic against William Godwin and the Marquis (Nicolas) de Condorcet to its rebirth as a massive two-volume work on the principle. Others, of course, have done this, but Cremaschi has a revisionist story to tell along the way, so the influence of Paley and, later, the evangelicals, on the development of his thought is recounted now as evidence for an anti-Utilitarian, virtue ethics reading of Malthus. This is followed by a chapter that covers Malthus’s applied ethics in the specific policy debates and proposals he supported. The performance is brought together with a short concluding chapter that nicely summarizes the main argument of the book. Each chapter has its own bibliography, so the book appears to be an assembly of self-contained papers. The editorial task of weaving them together has not been altogether successful. Whole passages are repeated verbatim, which makes the book longer than it needs to be.

Having considered the evidence brought forward and rereading the unabridged Essay, I must conclude that ultimately the evidence does not support Cremaschi’s case, at least with respect to Utilitarianism. Granted that there will be significant differences between the Christian Malthus and the secular Utilitarians, Malthus consistently and repeatedly invokes Utilitarian standards as the test of morality, including virtue. I take up two lines of criticism as exemplars of what I find inadequate in the thesis and argumentation of the book.

First, was Malthus a virtue ethicist? Malthus is in fact quite clear that the test of virtue is utilitarian in nature:

That Jeremy Bentham’s maximand is “pleasure” while Malthus’s is “happiness” does not alter the fact that Malthus is stating a utilitarian ethic, and that virtue considered generally is derivative of its role in achieving maximum happiness. Now, Cremaschi actually quotes this passage, even italicizing the word “virtue,” without addressing—what seems obvious—that it contradicts the main thesis of the book. Rather, he places it in the context of how the passions are necessary, yet in need of governing in accomplishing God’s design (p. 67). Textual evidence cited in one place seems to contradict conclusions offered in another place in the book. Malthus certainly has virtues, such as chastity, prudence, and benevolence, but when he offers an account of virtue in general, it turns out that they are character traits, which are virtuous because of their tendency to increase happiness; they do not stand alone.

Second, was Malthus a Utilitarian? Quoting Malthus from Patricia James’s variorum edition of the Essay, Cremaschi has the following to say about Malthusian virtues:

Certainly, if we take Malthus himself out of the passage, the Aristotelian nature of the virtues follows. Given the above, plus its affirmation here, I must conclude that the evidence does not support the conclusion. The virtues are brought under the test of utility, and the Aristotelian mean is the point of virtue in exercising the passions, because it is the point which adds the most to happiness—i.e., maximizes it.

In reference to the same passage in the Essay, Cremaschi later places it into a discussion of Malthus’s changing views on benevolence, where it simply seems out of place (p. 145). However, summarizing changes between editions, he later affirms that utility is a criterion, but not the foundation, of ethics (p. 153; emphasis in original). Now, if we look at Malthus’s discussion of the test of utility, we find:

The distinction Cremaschi wishes to draw between “criterion” and “foundation” is a distinction without a difference. (This is not the only example of such in the book, but space precludes a complete accounting.) “Foundation” has been retained later in the paragraph, so I conclude that Malthus has not changed his meaning in any significant way. Utility is the criterion and foundation of all morality.

Regarding the Christian component of Malthus’s ethics, I will simply say, as an evangelical Christian myself, that certainly Malthus believes in Scripture, and he believes that ultimately his reasoning on morality must conform to Scripture. I would also say that he held certain positions on social issues because he was a Christian, and that the principle of population caused him so much mental anguish because he was a Christian. However, he does not cite Scripture or use Scripture in any direct way in his published reasonings. His explanation for the rightness of the virtue of chastity in women, for example, is wholly secular in nature, invoking only “natural reason” (Malthus [183?] Reference Malthus2006, vol. II, p. 19). And we have already seen him collecting moral truths from the “light of nature.” Samuel Hollander’s affirmation of Lionel Robbins’s conclusion that theology was “extraneous to analysis” seems about right (Hollander Reference Hollander1997, p. 918).

In the end, I am sorry that I cannot endorse this book. Cremaschi is to be commended for revisiting, even revitalizing, Malthus as a Christian moral scientist. He has also helped dispel the notion of Malthus as the ogre and enemy of the working class, and, in so doing, he has inadvertently shown that Malthus has almost nothing in common with contemporary Neo-Malthusianism. However, the argument is simply not convincing. Contrary evidence is not handled well, and passages quoted do not support the argument. They frequently contradict it.