This statement
reveals a couple of things about Scrooge. First, it reveals his cold-heart; he would rather see
the poor people die instead of helping them, and by dying, they would be doing a service to the
world by "decreas[ing]the surplus population;" You must keep in mind that when Dickens
wrote the Carol, London, England was inundated with people looking for
work; this was due to industrialization where machines were replacing people who worked on
farms, so as they were replaced by machines, they began to flock to the cities looking for work.
Thus the city was over populated, which caused many problems and became a huge financial
burden.
Secondly, it reveals that Scrooge is a follower of Thomas Malthus who
in 1803 published an essay titled "Essay on the Principles of Population." His essay
posed the argument that
"A man who is born into a
world possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on which he has a just demand,
and if society do not want his labour, has no claim of right of the
smallest portion of food, and in fact, has no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty
feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone . . ."
Men like Malthus and Scrooge believed that war, famine and
pestilence were necessary in order to keep the population down, especially the poor
people.
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