PLACE, Francis.

£5,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population: First edition of the first book to advocate birth control by contraception, an incisive riposte to Malthusian naiveté and Godwinian despair. Malthus himself kept a copy in his library, and Place is largely responsible for the widespread association of Malthusianism with birth control.After concluding that population growth would inevitably outpace food supply, Thomas Malthus considered several ways to limit human reproduction. While he acknowledged the possibility of birth control, he dismissed it as unnatural and morally suspect. Instead, he advocated "moral restraint" among the working classes, urging men to delay marriage and practise sexual abstinence.Francis Place (1771-1854), an innkeeper's son and successful London tailor, was ideally placed to demonstrate Malthus's ignorance of the lives of the working classes. For Place, contraception was the only viable option for avoiding a population boom, and for a time he was effectively the only author attempting to persuade the population of this. The strength of his insights is attested by the men who sought his conversation: he knew many of the leading political economists of the early 19th century, including Ricardo, Mill, and Jeremy Bentham - although the Illustrations and Proofs put many of these friendships under strain."Place holds, therefore, the same position in social education on contraception that Malthus holds in the history of general population theory" (Hi

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