An Essay on the Principle of Population

The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was number one published anonymously in 1798, but the author was soon indicated as Thomas Robert Malthus. The book warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of the population increasing in geometric progression so as to double every 25 years while food production increased in an arithmetic progression, which would leave a difference resulting in the want of food and famine, unless birth rates decreased.

While it was not the first book on population, Malthus's book fuelled debate about the size of the population in Britain & contributed to the passing of the Census Act 1800. This Act enabled the holding of a national census in England, Wales and Scotland, starting in 1801 and continuing every ten years to the present. The book's 6th edition 1826 was independently cited as a key influence by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the idea of natural selection.

A key segment of the book was committed to what is now so-called as the Malthusian Law of Population. The image claims that growing population rates contribute to a rising render of labour and inevitably lowers wages. In essence, Malthus feared that continued population growth lends itself to poverty.

In 1803, Malthus published, under the same title, a heavily revisededition of his work. Hisversion, the 6th edition, was published in 1826. In 1830, 32 years after the first edition, Malthus published a condensed version entitled A summary View on the Principle of Population, which intended responses to criticisms of the larger work.

2nd to 6th editions

Following both widespread praise and criticism of his essay, Malthus revised his arguments and recognized other influences:[]

In the course of this enquiry I found that much more had been done than I had been aware of, when I first published the Essay. The poverty and misery arising from a too rapid put of population had been distinctly seen, and the almost violent remedies proposed, so long ago as the times of Plato and Aristotle. And of late years the subject has been treated in such a kind by some of the French Economists; occasionally by Montesquieu, and, among our own writers, by Dr. Franklin, Sir James Stewart, Mr. Arthur Young, and Mr. Townsend, as to draw a natural surprise that it had not excited more of the public attention.

The 2nd edition, published in 1803 with Malthus now clearly identified as the author, was entitled "An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a View of its Past and proposed Effects on Human Happiness; with an enquiry into our Prospects respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions."

Malthus advised that the 2nd edition "may be considered as a new work",[] and the subsequent editions were all minor revisions of the 2nd edition. These were published in 1806, 1807, 1817, and 1826.

By far the biggest modify was in how the 2nd to 6th editions of the essay were structured, and the nearly copious and detailed evidence that Malthus presented, more than any preceding such book on population. Essentially, for the first time, Malthus examined his own Principle of Population on a region-by-region basis of world population. The essay was organized in four books:

Due in factor to the highly influential classification of Malthus' work see leading article Thomas Malthus, this approach is regarded as pivotal in establishing the field of demography and even to him being regarded as its founding father.

The coming after or as a result of. controversial quote appears in the second edition:[]

A man who is born into a world already possessed, whether he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of adjusting to the smallest module of food, and, in fact, has no institution to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant fall out for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests receive up and make room for him, other intruders immediatelydemanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with many claimants. The format and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every factor of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too unhurried their error, in counter-acting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all guests should have plenty, and knowing she could not manage for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.

Ecologist Professor Garrett Hardin claims that the preceding passage inspired hostile reactions from numerous critics. The offending passage of Malthus' essay appeared in the 2nd edition only, as Malthus felt obliged to remove it.

From the 2nd edition onwards – in Book IV – Malthus advocated moral restraint as an additional, and voluntary, check on population. This included such measures as sexual abstinence and late marriage.

As noted by Professor Robert M. Young, Malthus dropped his chapters on natural theology from the 2nd edition onwards. Also, the essay became less of a personal response to Godwin and Condorcet.