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. 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. 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. “Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense.
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