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"By the principle of utility" Bentham said in 1789, "is meant the principal which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question." Virtue is, indeed must be, self-centered. While there were people with great good fortune and many more with great ill fortune, the social problem was solved as long as, again in Bentham's words, there was "the greatest good for the greatest number." Society did its best for the largest possible number of people; one accepted that the result might be sadly unpleasant for the many whose happiness was not served
“按照功利的原则，”边沁在1789年指出，“衡量某一行动可行与否，要依据它的趋势是会增加还是减少利害相关的人的幸福。”正确的行动是，确实也必须是以自我为中心的。尽管社会上有人拥有大量财富，同时有更多的人没有财富，用边沁的话来说，只要“最大的利益给最多的人”就能够解决社会问题。社会尽力满足尽可能多的人的利益，然而，对于那些利益没有被满足的人来说，人们承认这个结果是悲哀的。
In the 1830's a new formula, influential in no slight degree to this day, became available for getting the poor off the public conscience. This is associated with the names of David Ricardo, a stockbroker, and Thomas Robert Malthus, a divine. The essentials are familiar: the poverty of the poor was the fault of the poor. And it was so because it was a product of their excessive fecundity: their grievously uncontrolled lust caused them to breed up to the full limits of the available subsistence.
在19世纪30年代，出现了一种新的不为穷人的存在而内疚的方案。直至今日它的影响丝毫没有减弱。这个方案与股票经纪人大卫·李嘉图和汤姆斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯神父两个人的名字联系在一起。它的基本观点为人熟知：穷人的贫穷是他们咎由自取，贫穷是他们过度生育的结果。很遗憾，他们不能控制性欲，过度生育，把地球具有的养活人口的能力推向极限。
This was Malthusianism. Poverty being caused in the bed meant that the rich were not responsible for either its creation or its amelioration. However, Malthus was himself not without a certain feeling of responsibility: he urged that the marriage ceremony contain warning against undue and irresponsible sexual intercourse-a warning, it is fair to say, that has not been accepted as a fully effective method of birth control. In more recent times, Ronald Reagan has said that the best form of population control emerges from the market. (Couples in love should repair to R. H. Macy's, not their bedrooms.) Malthus, it must be said, was at least as relevant.
这就是马尔萨斯人口论。贫穷源于过度生育意味着富人不应该为产生贫穷和解决贫穷承担责任。然而，马尔萨斯本人并非缺乏责任心之人：他极力主张结婚仪式应该包括对过度或不负责任的性生活的警告——公正地说，作为一种完全有效的控制生育的方法，它并没有被人们所接受。在最近，罗纳德·里根曾经说过控制人口的最佳形式来自市场。（一对对热恋的新婚夫妇应该到梅西百货公司采购，而不是到他们的卧室去生孩子。）应该说，马尔萨斯的建议至少还沾点儿边。
