WEYLAND, John.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Principles of Population and Production, First edition of an important criticism of Malthus's Principles of Population, which Malthus responded to in the appendix to his fifth edition of the Principles the following year.Though Malthus rejected Weyland's conclusions in his response, he respected his adversary, thinking much higher of the work than the other object of the appendix, James Grahame's Inquiry into the Principle of Population: "a slight work without any very distinct object in view. Mr. Weyland's work is of a much more elaborate description [and] has also a very definite object in view" (Malthus, Principles, 1817, pp. 388, 397-8).John Weyland (1774-1854), a magistrate and a writer on the poor laws, praised Malthus for having raised the subject of population from the level of academic discussion to that of scientific inquiry. However, his conclusion on the subject of population was the exact opposite, advocating an increase in population. Weyland argued that a society in which one-third of the population lived in towns had "arrived at its point of non-reproduction" (Weyland, Principles, p. 109). With infant mortality higher in towns, the state should "keep an additional set of healthy breeders for the community; and that all unnecessary expense may be spared, it must place them in situations most favourable to child-bearing, and to the health of children, and most favourable also to their morals, that is to say, in the country villages" (ibid, p. 172). Weyland c

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