in essence a 'new work'
MALTHUS, Thomas.
An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. A new edition, very much enlarged.
London, T. Bensley for J. Johnson, 1803.
'The central idea of the essay — and the hub of Malthusian theory — was a simple one. The population of a community, Malthus, suggested, increases geometrically, while food supplies increased only arithmetically. If the natural increase in population occurs, the food supply becomes insufficient and the size of the population is checked by 'misery' — that is, the poorest sections of the community suffer disease and famine. The Essay was highly influential in the progress of thought in early nineteenth-century Europe' (PMM).
In this enlarged edition, Malthus made clear what was only implicit in the first, that prudential restraint should, if humanly possible, be 'moral restraint' — that is, delayed marriage accompanied by strictly moral pre-marital behaviour, although he admitted that moral restraint would not be easy and that there would be occasional failures. Whereas in the first edition he had said that all the checks to population would involve either misery or vice, in the second edition he attempted to lighten this 'melancholy hue' (first edition, p.iv) and 'to soften some of the harshest conclusions of the first essay' (second edition, p.vii) by arguing that moral restraint, if supported by an education emphasising the immorality of bringing children into the world without the means of supporting them, would tend to increase rather than diminish individual happiness.
'His work was an important influence on both Darwin and Wallace in their formulation of the concept of natural selection. It also had a profound influence on the decrease in size of families down to the present time' (Garrison-Morton).
Second edition, substantially revised; 4to (27.5 x 22 cm); a few pencil annotations, C4 cancelled and signed C3, title neatly tipped on to following leaf, small chip lower edge b2, occasional spotting; modern half brown morocco, gilt spine in 6 compartments, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece, very good; viii, [4], 610pp.
Cf.PMM 251; Garrison-Morton 1693; Goldsmiths 18640; Kress B.4701.
Stock code 112135
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An Essay on the Principle of Population;
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