The world’s population is now 7.4 billion people, placing ever greater demands on our natural resources. As we stand witness to a possible reversal of modernity’s positive trends, Malthus’s pessimism is worth full reconsideration. This Norton Critical Edition includes: · An introduction and explanatory annotations by Joyce E. Chaplin. · Malthus’s Essay in its first published version (1798) along with selections from the expanded version (1803), which he considered definitive, as well as his Appendix (1806). · An unusually rich selection of supporting materials thematically arranged to promote classroom discussion. Topics include “Influences on Malthus,” “Economics, Population, and Ethics after Malthus,” “Malthus and Global Challenges,” and “Malthusianism in Fiction.” · A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

This book, first published in 1951, focuses on the hitherto ignored contemporary critics of Malthus, giving them the attention they so rightly deserve. Dr Smith traces the Malthusian controversy step by step, from 1798, the date of the First Essay, to the death of Malthus in 1834. Investigating the precursors of Malthus and the genesis of the Malthusian Theory of Population, the book subjects the theory to a searching analysis in the light of not only contemporary criticism, but also subsequent developments and modern ideas. In addition, the book examines the application of the theory to the doctrine of perfectibility, to wages, to the poor laws, to emigration, and to the birth control movement. Fully annotated and written in an easy style, this work is indispensable to serious students of both population problems and the development of economic thought. Broad in scope, The Malthusian Controversy presents a new perspective on the most urgent of modern issues, the problem of world population.

This is a fascinating insight into the work of one of our greatest thinkers. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) is best remembered today for his theories on the menace of over-population; this first ever full-length biography shows him also in his role as one of the founders of classical political economy, still a controversial figure in the history of economic thought. Based on exhaustive research among contemporary sources, it gives an account of Malthus’s two careers, as an economist and as a professor at the East India College. Patricia James describes how, at the East India College, Malthus was influential in the establishment of an incorruptible Civil Service and the modern system of written examinations, in circumstances which seem almost farcical today. She gives an account of his family and social life, which was full of warmth and variety, with an abundance of ‘characters’ as well as many famous men. People nowadays are inclined to argue in a vacuum whether Malthus is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about population outrunning subsistence, and about the adequacy of aggregate demand in a capitalist society. Patricia James shows him in his historical setting, so that the book is a study both of the man and of the age in which he lived. She believes that, paradoxically, if we view Malthus’s works as the period pieces they are, it becomes more and not less easy to see their relevance to our own problems. Although Malthus’s search for basic principles in a changing world was confused and erratic, his ideas are still illuminating to those who prefer investigation and reappraisal to the mere reiteration of dogma. This text was first published in 1975.

The world’s population is now 7.4 billion people, placing ever greater demands on our natural resources. As we stand witness to a possible reversal of modernity’s positive trends, Malthus’s pessimism is worth full reconsideration. This Norton Critical Edition includes: · An introduction and explanatory annotations by Joyce E. Chaplin. · Malthus’s Essay in its first published version (1798) along with selections from the expanded version (1803), which he considered definitive, as well as his Appendix (1806). · An unusually rich selection of supporting materials thematically arranged to promote classroom discussion. Topics include “Influences on Malthus,” “Economics, Population, and Ethics after Malthus,” “Malthus and Global Challenges,” and “Malthusianism in Fiction.” · A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

'To a rational being there can be but one rule of conduct, justice, and one mode of ascertaining that rule, the exercise of his understanding.' Godwin's Political Justice is the founding text of philosophical anarchism. Written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, it exemplifies the political optimism felt by many writers and intellectuals. Godwin drew on enlightenment ideas and his background in religious dissent for the principles of justice, utility, and the sanctity of individual judgement that drove his powerful critique of all forms of secular and religious authority. He predicts the triumph of justice and equality over injustice, and of mind over matter, and the eventual vanquishing of human frailty and mortality. He also foresees the gradual elimination of practices governing property, punishment, law, and marriage and the displacement of politics by an expanded personal morality resulting from reasoned argument and candid discussion. Political Justice raises deep philosophical questions about the nature of our duty to others that remain central to modern debates on ethics and politics. This edition reprints the first-edition text of 1793, and examines Godwin's evolving philosophy in the context of his life and work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This book is a sweeping global and intellectual history that radically recasts our understanding of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, the most famous book on population ever written or ever likely to be. Malthus's Essay is also persistently misunderstood. First published anonymously in 1798, the Essay systematically argues that population growth tends to outpace its means of subsistence unless kept in check by factors such as disease, famine, or war, or else by lowering the birth rate through such means as sexual abstinence. Challenging the widely held notion that Malthus's Essay was a product of the British and European context in which it was written, Alison Bashford and Joyce Chaplin demonstrate that it was the new world, as well as the old, that fundamentally shaped Malthus's ideas.

The political economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) has gained increasing and deserved scholarly attention in recent years. As well as the republication of his works and letters, a rich body of scholarship has been produced that enlightens our understanding of his thoughts and arguments. Yet little has been written on the ways in which his message was translated to, and interpreted by, a popular audience. Malthus first rose to prominence in 1798 with the publication of his Essay on the Principle of Population, in which he blamed rising levels of poverty on the inability of Britain's economy to support its growing population. His remedy, to limit the number of children born to poor families, outraged many social reformers, most notably William Cobbett, but found a ready audience in other quarters, Harriet Martineau, among others, being a famous Malthusian advocate. In this new study of Malthus and the impact of his writings, James Huzel shows how, by being both popularized and demonized, he framed the terms of reference for debate on the problems of pauperism and became the beacon against which all proposals seeking to remedy the problem of poverty had to be measured. It is argued that the New Poor Law of 1834 was deeply influenced by Malthusian ideals, replacing the traditional sources of outdoor relief with the humiliation of the workhouse. Dealing with issues of social, economic and intellectual history this work offers a fresh and insightful investigation into one of the most influential, though misunderstood, thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and concludes that Malthus was perhaps even more important than Adam Smith and David Ricardo in fostering the rise of a market economy. It is essential reading for all those who wish to reach a fuller understanding of how the tremendous social and economic upheavals of the Industrial Revolution shaped the development of modern Britain.

Contains all the major political, philosophical and educational writings of William Godwin, one of the foremost philosophers of his age. His work on government and individual freedom, "Political Justice", made him the chief exponent of English radicalism in the latter half of the 18th century.

Reviews the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. The classical age of economics was marked by an intense interest in scientific methodology. It was, moreover, an age when science and philosophy were not yet distinct disciplines, and the educated were polymaths. The classical economists were acutely aware that suitable methods had to be developed before a body of knowledge could be deemed philosophical or scientific. They did not formulate their methodological views in a vacuum, but drew on a rich collection of philosophical ideas. Consequently, issues of methodology were at the heart of political economys rise as a science. The classical era of economics opened under Adam Smith with political economy understood as an integral part of a broader system of social philosophy; by the end, it had emerged via J. S. Mill as a "separate science", albeit one still inextricably tied to the other social sciences and to ethics. The Rise of Political Economy as a Science opens with a review of the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell. These principles were influential not just in the development of political economy, but in the rise of social science in general. The author then examines science in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on the all-important concept of induction. Having laid the necessary groundwork, she proceeds to a history and analysis of the methodologies of four economist-philosophers—Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill—selected for their historical importance as founders of economics and for their common Scottish intellectual lineage. Concluding remarks put classical methodology into a broader historical perspective.