Essays on Political Economy

Unlike his work on population, many of Malthus’s most important ideas in the realm of political economy were first outlined in pamphlets or occasional pieces. A series of reviews and articles about prices and the controversy over bullion during the wars with France made Malthus’s name as a political economist; the publication in 1815 of his essay on rent (in the same year as Sir Edward West’s work on the same subject) laid the foundations for David Ricardo’s better-known and more finely-honed discussion of the subject; and various aspects of the long-gestating revisions to his Principles of political economy were discussed or prefigured in articles and lectures.