Access to the full content is only available to members of institutions that have purchased access. If you belong to such an institution, please log in or find out more about how to order.


Cover of Malthus and the Population Controversy 1803-1830

Malthus and the Population Controversy 1803-1830

  • Published: 1994
  • DOI: 10.4324/9780415105033
  • Set ISBN: 9780415105033

No book in the history of British economic thought has caused a more heated and lasting controversy than Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population. So provocative was it deemed upon publication in 1798, that Malthus dramatically altered its tone for the second edition of 1803. The impact of his orignal ideas was, however, still so strong that the controversy continued to rage for the next thirty years and beyond.

This set contains the wide breadth of responses that met Malthus' work, focusing on several aspects of the debate: from the claim that Malthus was exagerratedly gloomy and pessimistic, to the accusation that his theory denied the goodness of God.

Set Contents

‘It [Malthus’s theory] pronounces that there exists an evil in the principle of population; an evil, not accidental, but inherent; not of occasional occurrence, but in perpetual operation; not light, transient, or mitigated, but productive of miseries, compared with which all those inflicted by human institutions, that is to say, by the weakness and wickedness of man, however instigated, are light: an evil, finally, for which there is no remedy save one, which has been long overlooked, and which is now enunciated in terms which evince any thing rather than confidence. It is a principle, moreover, preeminently bold, as well as ‘clear’. With a presumption, to call it by no fitter name, of which it may be doubted whether literature, heathen or Christian, furnishes a parallel, it professes to trace this supposed evil to its source, ‘the laws of nature, which are those of God’; thereby implying, and indeed asserting, that the law by which the Deity multiplies his offspring, and that by which he makes provision for their sustenance, are different, and, indeed, irreconcilable.’

Michael Thomas Sadler

View Volume I Contents

The Law Of Population: A Treatise, In Six Books.Prelims, Of the Theory of the Supercundity of Human Beings : Its Numerical Errors Stated and Disproved.: Introductory., Of the Possible Periods of Human Duplication., Of The Possible Periods Of Human Duplication, Continued., Of the Possible Periods of Human Duplication, Concluded., Of the impossibility of the geometrical duplication of human beings; demonstrated by the law of mortality., Of The Effects Of Emigration On The Increase Of Population., Of The Possible Proportion Of Marriages In Different Communities., Of the Method of Calculating the Prevalence of the Preventive Check., Of The Method Of Calculating The Comparative Prevalence Of The Preventive Check In Different Times And Countries., Of The Proportion Of Second And Third Marriages And Of Illegitimate Children In Different Countries, And Of Their Effects On Population., Of The Prolificness Of Marriages, And Of The Proportion Of The Born Who Live To Marry; As Deducible From Registers., Of The Effects Of Mortalities On The Number Of Marriages., Of the Effect of Mortalities on the Number of Marriages., Of The Effect Of Scarcities On Human Prolificxess., Of The Effect Of Scarcities On Human Prolificness., Of the Effect of Scarcities on Human Prolificness., Of the Effect of the Preventive Check, or the Postponement of Marriages, on Their Prolificness., Of the comparative correctness of registers, and on the continuation of that increase in population which they at present indicate., Of the Law of Population: Its Principle Stated and Proved.Introductory., Of the law of population: anticipatory computations of nature in reference thereto., Of The Law Of Population: Anticipatory Computations Of Nature, Especially In Reference To The Proportion Of The Sexes., Of The Law Of Population: The Principle Defined., Of the Law of Population: Its Proofs Enumerated., Of the Law of Population, as Proved by the Varying Prolificness of Different Countries., Of The Law Of Population: Its Apparent Exceptions Stated, And Proved To Be Conformable To Its Primary Principle And Design., Of the Law of Population, as Proved by the Censuses of England., Of The Law Of Population; As Proved By The Censuses Of France., Of the Law of Population, as Proved by the Censuses of Prussia., Of The Law Of Population, As Proved By The Census Of Ireland., Of The Law Of Population, As Proved By The Censuses Of The United States Of America., Of The Law Of Population, As Proved By The Censuses Of The Kingdom Of The Netherlands., Of the Law of Population: As Proved by the Censuses of the Towns of England and Ireland., Of the Law of Population. Proved by the Effects of an Increase of Inhabitants on human Prolificness in different Countries., Of the Law of Population; As Proved by the Effects of the Increase of Inhabitants Upon Human Prolificness in Ireland and in the United States., Of The Law Of Population, As Proved By The Effects Upon Human Prolificness Of An Increase Of The Inhabitants Of Towns., Of The Law Of Population: Objection Grounded On What Is Called “The Preventive Check,” As Applied To The Foregoing Demonstrations, Stated And Refuted., Of The Law of Population; as Proved by the Effect upon Human Prolificness of any Considerable Diminution of Inhabitants., Of the Law of Population; As Proved by the Effect Upon Human Prolificness of General Variations in the Law of Mortality., Of The Law Of Population; As Proved And Illustrated By The Established Principles Of Human Physiology., Of the Law of Population; As Proved and Illustrated by the Analogies of Animal and Vegetable Reproduction., Of the Law of Population; As Proved by an Appeal to the Registers of Distinct Classes of Society in this and Other Countries, and Especially to Those of the British Peerage., Of the law of population. concluding observations on its proofs., Appendix to Book IV

View Volume II Contents

‘We beg our readers’ permission to appropriate the title of Humbug School of Political Economy to those writers and orators who maintain the coexistence of excess of population and overproduction.’

‘John McIniscon’

‘Although Mr Malthus has perhaps fallen into the exaggeration which is natural to a discoverer, his error, if it be one, does not affect the practical conclusions which place him, as a benefactor to mankind, on a level with Adam Smith.’

Nassau William Senior

View Volume III Contents

‘If, above all, it were once clearly understood, that it was not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent, might be removed from society, and the object of Mr Malthus, Mr Godwin, and of every philanthropic person, be promoted, by the increase of comfort, of intelligence, and of moral conduct, in the mass of the population.’

Francis Place

View Volume IV Contents

‘The first idea of the following pages was suggested by a passage in Mr Godwin’s Essay on Population. He has supposed it possible to refute Mr Malthus’s system from the facts adduced in its support. It has been my aim to shew, that, admitting all his premises, they by no means justify the conclusion he has drawn from them.’

‘Human institutions are the real cause of all the misery with which we are surrounded, and he who in the arrogance of his folly would trace them to any other source, as he renders hopeless all improvement of our condition, is equally an enemy to man whom he oppresses, and to God whom he maligns.’

Piercy Ravenstone

View Volume V Contents

‘These contradictions and repugnances of Mr Malthus I here mention to justify for the present a passing observation on his defects… Finding on consideration that his original doctrine was narrow and false and hideous – for what could be more false and monstrous than that population was only controlled by vice and misery? – he attempted to restore its credit by adding moral restraint to the insolvent firm of his philosophy. And in order to keep these partners in tolerable society, he laboured to reconcile antipathies and harmonize discord. Thus his contradictions have increased with every new edition;…’

George Ensor

View Volume VI Contents

‘There is established near the threshold of life an ordeal…which every candidate for admission into every human community is compelled to undergo… naturally severer to the poor than to the rich; and it is proper that it should be so. It is, to every individual, a faithful rehearsal of his probable part in the great drama of after life.’

James Grahame

View Volume VII Contents

‘In the mean time I venture to suggest, as a further preparation of the reader’s mind for the fair discussion of them [Malthus’s doctrines], that the origin of what are conceived to be the mistakes and false reasonings, with respect to the principle of population, appears to be the assumption of a tendency to increase in the human species, the quickest that can be proved possible in any particular state of society, as that which is natural and theoretically possible in all; and the characterizing of every cause which tends to prevent such quickest possible rate, as checks to the natural and spontaneous tendency to increase; but as checks evidently insufficient to stem the progress of an overwhelming torrent.’

John Weyland

View Volume VIII Contents

‘Mr Malthus has “admirably reconciled the old quarrel between speculation and practice”, by shewing (I suppose in humble imitation of Mandeville) that our duty and our vices both lean the same way, and that the ends of public virtue and benevolence are best answered by the meanness, pride, extravagance, and insensibility of individuals. This is certainly a very convenient doctrine; and it is not to be wondered at, that it should have become so fashionable as it has.’

William Hazlitt

View Volume IX Contents

‘I am very far from agreeing with him [Malthus] in opinion, that the poor in a flourishing, and more especially in a commercial country, should be left altogether to nature and chance for subsistence in all the vicissitudes of life and fortune.’

From the Remarks

‘Trade or traffic consists in buying and selling articles produced by the poor, and gaining a profit by them. These articles are all the products of the hands of the labourers…from whom they are obtained for less than their full value; a profit otherwise could not be made. The tradesman, therefore, shares or takes part of the fruits of the labour of the poor.’

Charles Hall

View Volume X Contents