Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its Past and

Thomas Robert Malthus: '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, printed for J. Johnson by T. Bensley, 1803, 2nd edition, the 'great quarto edition', the first to bear Malthus's name, substantially enlarged, rewritten, and re-titled, "In 1803 Malthus published a greatly expanded second edition of the Essay, incorporating details of the population checks that had been in operation in many different countries and periods. Although nominally a second edition, it was regarded by Malthus as a substantially new work. He did not claim originality for the idea that population tends to outrun the food supply. In the preface to the second edition he stated that in writing the first edition he had deduced the principle of population from the writings of David Hume, Robert Wallace, Adam Smith, and Richard Price, but that in the intervening period he had become aware that much more had been published on the subject. He nevertheless believed that even more remained to be done, especially in describing the means by which populations are checked and in drawing out the practical implications of the principle of population. In the second edition, he 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' (Essay on the Principle of Population, 1st edn, 1798, iv) and 'to soften some of the harshest conclusions of the first essay' (2nd edn, 1803, vii) by arguing that moral restraint, if supported by an education emphasizing the immorality of bringing children into the world without the means of supporting them, would tend to increase rather than diminish individual happiness" (ODNB). The first edition, published anonymously, is now a great rarity. This second was the result of much criticism, as well as the great success of the first; further correspondence with Godwin; and travels abroad, on the continent and in Scandinavia, along with reading of travel literature, which resulted in numerous new case studies being added (see Watkin Tench's copy, below). There are more comparisons with other countries and Malthus places a new emphasis on moral or 'natural restraint' (he is opposed to contraception and abortion); allowing that it is possible for such restraint to be practised, Malthus thus reviewed what was 'too gloomy a view of human nature in his first essay' (New Palgrave).The pessimist line, with its origins in Hume, Smith and Godwin, extended from Malthus to Ricardo, to James Mill and his son John Stuart, to Darwin and Wallace, even to Marx and Engels, the utopians who were driven to condemn Malthus, but were themselves prophets of doom and of the 'misery of the working classes', in what was arguably an age of remarkable economic and social development (Norman). viii,[4],610pp, title page and some leaves of preface and contents with tidemark to inner margin (not affecting printed text of title page), pp1/2 with small part loss at tope corner just affecting printed page numbers, pp42, the first word on line 12 "a" of "accounts" affected by small black mark, else some sporadic light spotting/foxing to some leaves throughout, mainly marginal, otherwise leaves generally clean/VGC. Quarto, professionally rebound paper covered boards, printed paper label to spine. Hugely influential work by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), the towering English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography