Ironically, Malthus was against the use of birth control methods. He believed that there are several forms of voluntary restraints to human population which are oscillatory in nature. They change depending on the cycles of material conditions. Restraints increase when the population is more and food is less and decrease when population is less and food is plenty.

Malthus accepts that population growth is not the only factor that influences development. There are many other factors. Yet he maintains that in all animated life there is a constant tendency to increase beyond the nourishment, and this is the most important cause of human misery. The institutional changes alone – without preventing the growth of population – cannot solve the problem of poverty and destitution on a permanent basis.

To Malthus the natural inequality of the two powers – one of population, and another of production in the earth – and the great law of nature which must constantly keep their effects equal form the great difficulty that appears to be insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. He says that all other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in comparison with this. He sees no way by which man can escape from the weight of this law which pervades all animated nature. “No fancied equality, no agrarian regulations in their utmost extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single century.”

Malthus accepts that temporarily a number of other factors such as introduction or failure of certain manufacturers, greater or less prevalent spirit of agricultural enterprise, invention of processes for shortening labour without proportional extension of market, difference between nominal and real wages, and conspiracy of the rich class do affect the conditions of labourers, but their influence is temporary. The action of misery is constant.

To quote:

Human institutions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind; yet, in reality, they are light and superficial, they are mere feathers that float on the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated causes of impurity that corrupt the springs, and render turbid the whole stream of human life.