Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822 edition. Excerpt: ... ON THE THEORY OF MALTHUS. Mit. Malthus has deservedly acquired great celebrity by his essay on populatiou. Its great leading principle, that population, which has aeon stant tendency to increase is always pressing on the means of subsistence, which are limited, though it had been often previously noticed, and is indeed sufficiently obvious, bad never before led to any important result, either of speculation or practice. This principle, developed and illustrated as it has been by Mr. Malthus, has taught some valuable lessons to the legislator. It distinctly points out to him the limits which nature has set to the numbers of every community: it proves te him that all systems of poor laws and geueral plan of charity eventually increase (lie very e Is of which they afford a temporary mitigation: aud by showing the real cause of a thin or declining population, it teaches him to apply the only effectual corrective, an increased facility of subsistence: and to avoid useless or pernicious remedies' But the ingenious author, not content with this high praise, pushes his theory still farther; and, like all first explorers in a new field of speculation, probably too fay. He endeavours to show that this pressure of population on its means of support occasions much of the misery and vice which exist in the world, and which consequently are not to be ascribed to human habits and institutions, but to the predestined laws of nature. As this doctrine has an evident tendency to reconcile us not only to the wretchedness to which the mass of mankind are but too probably doomed, but also to much of. their depravity and vice; and as it goes far to place all governments on a level, or least to lessen our repugnance to one form and our estimation of another, ..