MALTHUSIANISM.

£4,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Remarks on a late publication, entitled, "An Essay on the Principle of Population, or, a view of its present and past effects on Human Happiness". First edition of the first work devoted to criticism of Malthus's Essay. The anonymous Remarks provides a good-humoured critique of Malthus's analysis as overly pessimistic and lacking in logical rigour - a point familiar to many subsequent generations of Malthusian scholars.Malthus published the Essay in 1798, before bringing out the second, considerably expanded edition in 1803. There, he added extensive accounts of living conditions in other nations to support his argument that overpopulation led to extreme human misery. The Remarks critiques as myopic these efforts to link overpopulation with human suffering, pointing out that many other factors were at play. It further contends that much human misery can, in fact, be remedied by a greater faith in public institutions and private virtue than Malthus is prepared to allow.

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