1. The Germans talk of ‘Smithianismus.’

2. Autobiogr., vol. i. p. 71.

3. Senior, Two Lectures on Population, 1829, Appendix, pp. 56, 57.

4. Senior, l. c., p. 56.

5. Macvey Napier’s Correspondence, p. 187. Cf. Pol. Econ., 2nd ed., pp. xxxv, liv.

6. “Why,” said I, “how many children do you reckon to have at last?” “I do not care how many,” said the man, “God never sends mouths without sending meat.” “Did you ever hear,” said I, “of one Parson Malthus? he wants an act of parliament to prevent poor people from marrying young, and from having such lots of children.” “Oh, the brute!” exclaimed the wife; while the husband laughed, thinking I was joking.—Cobbett’s Advice to Young Men, Letter 3, p. 83. The references to Cobbett in the Essay are probably, 7th ed., pp. 310 and 318, cf. p. 313; but his name is not mentioned.

7. Namely, in the Monthly Magazine for Jan. 1800. But see below, Book V.

8. Thoughts on Parr’s Sermon, p. 2, and Pol. Justice, Pref. p. x.

9. Preface to first edition of Essay, 1798.

10. Leyden, 1767, translated under the title Philosophical Survey of the Animal Creation, Lond., 1768. See especially chs. vii. and x.

11. Common Sense, p. 1, quoted in Pol. Justice, Bk. II. ch. i. p. 124 (3rd ed.).

12. Pol. Justice, Bk. VIII. ch. vi. p. 484. On the other hand, Franklin, in his Letter on Luxury, Idleness, and Industry (1784), had estimated the necessary labour more moderately at four hours. Sir Thos. More suggested nine. Owen recurred to the half-hour. New Moral World, 1836, pp. x, xi.

13. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 161–2, footnote.

14. Records of the Creation, vol. i. p. 54, note.

15. Life by Kegan Paul, vol. i. p. 80. Cf. a curious passage in the Edinburgh Review, about Godwin’s Population: “As the book was dear, and not likely to fall into the hands of the labouring classes, we had no thoughts of noticing it,” July 1821, p. 363.

16. Enquirer (1797), Pref., p. 7.

17. Part II., Essay II.

18. Part II., Essays I. and III.

19. Political Justice, Book VIII. ch. ix. pp. 515–19 (3rd ed.).

20. Cf. Rich. Jones, Pol. Econ. (1859), p. 596.

21. Quoted, Political Justice, Book VIII. ch. viii. pp. 503, 520, on the authority of Price.

22. l. c., Book VIII. ch. ix. p. 528.

23. Essay, 1st ed., p. 14.

24. 1st ed., pp. 20, 173, &c., 7th ed., Book III. ch. ii.

25. 1st ed., p. 128; cf. p. 210.

26. Ibid. p. 211.

27. Ibid. p. 215.

28. Ibid. p. 215.

29. 1st ed., p. 17; cf. pp. 47–8.

30. Even Comte, who reproves economists for saying that difficulties right themselves in the “long run,” thinks that this particular difficulty will only occur there. (Pos. Phil., ii. 128 (tr.); cf. p. 54.)

31. 1st ed., pp. 15, 16.

32. Ibid. pp. 19, 62–66.

33. Pol. Just., VIII. iii 466.

34. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 175–6, 193; 7th ed., pp. 272, 277. Cf. Gibbon, ch. L., quoted in Essay, 2nd ed., p. 94; 7th ed., p. 65: “The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence.”

35. Pol. Just., Book VIII. ch. ix. p. 520 n. (3rd ed.).

36. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 240–1.

37. Due to Coleridge. See Godwin’s Life, i. 357.

38. Ibid. i. 25.

39. Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (3rd ed., 1797), pp. 384 seq.

40. Political Justice, VIII. ix. 520 n.

41. Essay, 1st ed., p. 227.

42. Esquisse, pp. 362 seq.

43. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 146, 150.

44. Ibid. p. 154; Condorcet, Esquisse, pp. 364–373.

45. The locus classicus in Malthus is Essay, Append, (of 1817), p. 512; cf. III. iii. 286, IV. xiii. 474. The pages are those of the 7th edition (Reeves and Turner), a reprint of the 6th.

46. Malthus sometimes uses the word in the earlier sense, and Adam Smith seldom in the later.

47. Lecky, Hist. of Eighteenth Century, vol ii. p. 638.

48. Cf. Godwin, pref. to Pol. Just.

49. Hansard, Parl. Hist., vol. xxxiii, pp. 703 seq., Feb 12, 1796; cf. vol. xxxii. pp. 687 seq. The “Speenhamland Act of Parliament” was really an act of the Berkshire magistrates (1795), but had been widely imitated, and had certainly prepared the way for Pitt’s bill.

50. Cf. Essay, 7th ed., I. vii. p. 65; 1st ed., pp. 94, 95, &c.

51. Godwin, Pol. Just., VIII. viii. 508 (3rd ed.).

52. Preface to Essay, 2nd ed.

53. By implication. See below, Book I. ch. vii. p. 175.

54. Moral and Political Essays, Vol. I., Essay XI., Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations (ed. 1768), written in 1752.

55. So even Sir James Steuart, Vol. I. Pol. Econ., ch. iii. p. 22 (ed. 1805), might have helped him. Steuart wrote in 1767.

56. Essay, Book II. ch. vi.; 7th ed., p. 184.

57. Buckle would include Voltaire. See Civil. in Europe, ii. 304 n.

58. Wealth of Nations, I. viii. 36, 2 (MacCulloch’s ed.). These passages are said to have suggested to Malthus the idea of his essay. The article on Population in Edin. Review, Aug. 1810, possibly written by Malthus himself, bears out this view.

59. Compare Essay, Appendix (to 3rd ed., 1807), 7th ed., p. 507.

60. Records of Creation, 1816.

61. 1st ed., p. 395.

62. Ibid. p. 353. This and much else were probably suggested by Tucker, Light of Nature, Theology, ch. xix. (especially § 20). Cf. below, Book III.

63. Essay, 1st ed., p. 381.

64. Ibid. p. 371.

65. Cf. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 65; later editions, I. vi. (beginning), where he says that sloth is the natural state of man, and his activity is due in the first instance to the “strong goad of necessity,” though it may be kept up afterwards by habit, the spirit of enterprise, and the thirst for glory.

66. 1st ed., pp. 360–366. For the replenishment of the gap made by the Great Plague of 1348, see Prof. Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1884), p. 226.

67. 1st ed., p. 391.

68. 1st ed., pp. 394–6; cf. pp. 241–6. Compare Mr. Henry George’s epilogue to Progress and Poverty. It is right to remember that this passage of Malthus was written two years before Paley’s Natural Theology, though four years after his Evidences of Christianity, and many more after the Moral and Political Philosophy.

69. R. of Cr., vol. ii. 103.

70. Essay, 1st ed., p. 387.

71. See below, Book I. ch. v.

72. Ibid. p. 356 note.

73. l. c. He is ready with a similar excuse in the tract on the Measure of Value, p. 61. Where there is no will there is no way.

74. Part II. sect. ii. pp. 204–6.

75. MacCulloch (J. R.), editor of the Commercial Dictionary, and probably the original of Carlyle’s Macrowdy. No one could have a proper reverence for the Fathers of Political Economy who perpetually referred to the greatest of them without his distinctive prænomen.

76. Introduction to W. of N., p. lii. So the writer of Progress and Poverty tells us “the doctrine of Malthus did not originally and does not necessarily involve the idea of progression” (Bk. II. ch. i. p. 89, ed. 1881).

77. Bagehot (Econ. Studies, p. 136 seq.), W. R. Greg (Enigmas of Life), and Held (Sociale Geschichte Englands) may be acquitted, but they are not writers of text-books.

78. Wealth of Nations, Introduction, p. lii.

79. See e. g. the tract on the Measure of Value, p. 23, and cf. Pol. Ec. (2nd ed.), p. 234.

80. Godwin’s Thoughts on Parr’s Sermon, 1801, p. 54; cf. Godwin’s Population (1820), Bk. i. 27.

81. Godwin’s Life, by Kegan Paul, vol. i. 321.

82. Hansard, sub dato, p. 1429.

83. Empson in Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1837, p. 483; cf. Essay on Population, 7th ed. p. 473 n. Empson’s authorship of that article appears from Macvey Napier’s Correspondence, p. 187. See below, Book V.

84. Works, vol. viii. p. 440.

85. Thoughts on Parr’s Sermon, p. 56.

86. Essay, 1st ed., pp. 17, 47, 48; Origin of Species, ch. iii. p. 50. Hence Sir Chas. Lyell even denies the originality of Darwin and Wallace (Antiquity of Man, ch. xxi p. 456).

87. Cf. A. R. Wallace, Contributions to Theory of Natural Selection, and the discussions raised thereupon, 1868. See also Essays in Philosophical Criticism (1883), Essay VIII., The Struggle for Existence, in which some of the mixed motives are further described.

88. Appendix to 5th ed., 1817; 7th ed., p. 526. Cf. Bacon (Essay XXXVIII.), “to bend nature like a wand to a contrary extreme whereby to set it aright.” Adam Smith had used the simile of a bent stick to describe the reaction of the French Economists against the Mercantile theorists (Wealth of Nations, IV. ix. 300).

89. Essay, 1st ed., p. 367. Cf. Senior’s Lectures on Population, p. 79, and p. 75, where he compares such progress to the exploits of the snail which every day climbed up a wall four feet and fell back three.

90. Essay, 1st ed., p. 10.

91. Cf. St. Matth. xix. 12.

92. MS. notes on p. vii of S. T. Coleridge’s copy of the 2nd ed. of the Essay, in Brit. Museum (from the library of his executor, Dr. Joseph H. Green).

93. See Otter’s biographical preface to Malthus’ Pol. Ec. (1836), p. xxxvi, and Otter’s Life of Clarke (1825), i. 437, &c.

94. See below, Book II. chap. iv.

95. 2nd ed., Book IV. chap, xii.; 7th ed., p. 477.

96. 2nd ed., I. ii. 10, 11; cf. xiv. 180; 7th ed., pp. 8 note, 262, &c.

97. 2nd ed., p. 11.

98. 7th ed., p. 351; so I. ix. 82, “moral impossibility” of increase, in a case where there is plenty of food, but bad distribution makes it unattainable. The impossibility is due not to physical law but to human institutions (mores).

99. Malthus, Essay, 1st ed., p. 387.

100. In an unpublished MS. quoted in his Life, i. 76. His published writings contain nothing quite so strong.

101. See below, Book III.

102. Essay, 7th ed., B. IV. chap. vi. and ix.

103. Wealth of Nations, B. V. ch. i. Pt. iii. Art. 2.

104. Essay, Book IV. ch. ix. of 7th ed., esp. p. 439.

105. Cf. even Essay, 1st ed., pp. 33, 34, and 324. But see later, B. II. chaps. ii. and iii.

106. 7th ed., Append., p. 495. Cf. Miss Martineau’s Autob., vol. i. p. 211; cf. pp. 209, 210.

107. Life, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 233.

108. Ingloriously, because of the severe chapter he wrote in the Political Justice, ‘Of Pensions and Salaries’ (ch. ix. of Bk. VI.).

109. Cf. Essay, 7th ed., II. xiii. p. 259.

110. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 2.

111. 2nd ed., p. 3.

112. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 3.

113. 1st ed.; see p. 16, above. “Food” in such propositions includes all the outward conditions necessary to life.

114. 2nd ed., p. 4; 7th ed., p. 3.

115. l. c. Franklin’s Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, 1751.

116. Dissertation on the Poor Laws by a well-wisher to Mankind (1786), pp. 42–45, 53. He is quoting Dampier’s Voyages, vol. i. pt. ii p. 88.

117. It is fair to say that Ulloa, B. II. ch. iv., says “two or three goats.”

118. 2nd ed., p. 4; cf. 7th ed., p. 3.

119. Carey (H. C.) has certainly made a good case for the reverse. See Princ. of Social Science, vol. i. ch. iv. (1858).

120. Letter to Senior, Appendix to Senior’s Lectures on Population, pp. 60–72.

121. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 5.

122. He might have been warned from such by “οὐ γεωμετρικαῖς ἀλλ’ ἐρωτικαῖς ἀνάγκαις” (Plato, Republic, v. 458). But Bacon had applied the same figure still more widely: “Custom goes in arithmetical, Nature in geometrical progression” (Advancement of L., VI. iii. 259).

123. Cf. what is said of the cosmology of Malthus above, pp. 34 seq.

124. Or, keeping in view Mr. Carey’s exception, we should say not perhaps the first crop, but the earliest in which the farmer did justice to the known resources of the best land.

125. Political Arithmetic—Essay on the Multiplication of Mankind, 1682, pp. 7, 13 seq., especially p. 21 (ed. 1755).

126. Sir James Caird, Landed Interest, 4th ed., 1880, p. 177.

127. But see below, Bk. II. ch. i.

128. 2nd ed., I. i. p. 8; 7th ed., p. 6.

129. Essay, IV. iii., 7th ed., p. 407.

130. Encycl. Brit., art. Population. Cf. Essay, 7th ed., p. 236 n.

131. Sweden was a favourite with statisticians because Sweden alone at that time furnished sound statistics. For an account of the American population down to 1880, and its probable future, see Mr. Giffen’s Address on the Utility of Common Statistics (Stat. Soc., Dec. 1882).

132. 1804–24, or simply from the first census, 1801, to the third, 1821. The increase was such as would double the population of England in fifty-one years at the least (Essay, II. ix., 7th ed., p. 217).

133. Encycl. Brit., l. c.

134. Essay, III. xiv., 7th ed., p. 387.

135. Caird, Landed Interest, pp. 18, 46.

136. Encycl. Brit., l. c.

137. Apart, he ought to have said, from prudence in marriage, which would allow each man’s share to be much more than a bare living. But see below, Bk. II. ch. ii.

138. See below, Bk. II. ch. iii.

139. By the “law” of decreasing returns. See below, Bk. II. ch. i.

140. Mr. Giffen, in the Address above quoted, speaks as if Malthus considered the positive checks as the “natural checks” (p. 531). This, however, is against his distinct statement in Essay, 7th ed., App. p. 480.

141. This is probably the meaning of the author’s phrase, “alter the proportionate amount of the checks to population, or the degree in which they press upon the actual numbers” (Encyclop., l. c., p. 415).

142. See his letter of that date in Macvey Napier’s Correspondence, p. 29.

143. It was not published till 1824. It was certainly written after the results of the Census of 1821 had been published.

144. Pref. to 2nd ed., pp. iv, v; 7th ed., p. vi.

145. p. 52.

146. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 11 n.; 7th ed., p. 9 n.

147. 2nd ed., Pref. p. vii.

148. 2nd ed., Bk. I. ch. ii. p. 10.

149. Adds the 3rd ed.

150. 3rd ed., p. 21; 7th ed., p. 9.

151. 3rd ed. l. c.

152. 2nd ed., p. 13; 7th ed., p. 10. His own book has helped to make this less true.

153. 2nd ed., pp. 14, 15. With this description of the “cycle” compare the view of Marx as given below in Book IV.

154. Miss Martineau, Autob., vol. i. p. 210.

155. Reply to Malthus, p. 20. Cf. below, Book IV.

156. Pref. to 2nd ed., p. vi.

157. 2nd ed., Pref. p. vi. True even then, and much more afterwards.

158. Godwin, On Population, I. iv. 31, 32.

159. 2nd ed., p. 31; 7th ed., p. 23.

160. Démocratie en Amérique, Pt. II. ch. x. p. 278. The author is in thorough agreement with Malthus.

161. 2nd ed., p. 39; 7th ed., p. 28.

162. 2nd ed., p. 25; 7th ed., p. 18.

163. Ibid. p. 43; 7th ed., p. 31.

164. Ibid. p. 39; 7th ed., p. 28.

165. 2nd ed., p. 44; 7th ed., p. 32.

166. Malthus in Edin. Rev., July 1803, p. 345.

167. Essay, 2nd ed., p. 25; 7th ed., p. 18.

168. Ibid. p. 29; 7th ed., p. 21.

169. 2nd ed., pp. 37, 45; 7th ed., pp. 27, 32.