Thomas Robert Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834)[1] was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2]
"Malthus" redirects here. For the demon Halphas, sometimes called Malthus, see Halphas.
Thomas Robert Malthus
13/14 February 1766
29 December 1834 (aged 68)
3
In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war, famine, and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3]
Malthus considered population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man."[4] As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior.[5] Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by subsistence," "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase," and "the superior power of population repress by moral restraint, vice, and misery."[6]
Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.[7] He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws).[8] His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[9][10] Malthus's failure to predict the Industrial Revolution was a frequent criticism of his theories.[11]
Malthus laid the "...theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically,[12] on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries."[13] He remains a much-debated writer.
Early life and education[edit]
Thomas Robert Malthus was the sixth of seven children[14] of Daniel Malthus and Henrietta Catherine, daughter of Daniel Graham, apothecary to kings George II and George III, and granddaughter of Thomas Graham, apothecary to kings George I and George II. Henrietta was depicted alongside her siblings in William Hogarth's painting, The Graham Children (1742).[15] Malthus was born at The Rookery, a "small elegant mansion" at Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, which his father had bought—at that time called Chertgate Farm—and converted into "a gentleman's seat"; the family sold it in 1768 and moved to "a less extensive establishment at Albury, not far from Guildford". Malthus had a cleft lip and palate which affected his speech; such birth defects had occurred in previous generations of his family. His friend, the social theorist Harriet Martineau, who was hard of hearing, nevertheless stated that due to his sonorous voice he was the only person she could hear well without her ear trumpet.[16][17][14][18] William Petersen and John Maynard Keynes describe Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means [...] [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Daniel Malthus was son of Sydenham Malthus, who was a clerk of Chancery and director of the South Sea Company; he was also "proprietor of several landed properties in the Home Counties and Cambridgeshire". Sydenham Malthus's father, Daniel, had been apothecary to King William and later to Queen Anne; Daniel's father, Rev. Robert Malthus, was appointed vicar of Northolt, Middlesex (now West London) under the regicide Cromwell, but "evicted at the Restoration"; he was described as "an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution", due to "a very great impediment in his utterance" which has been concluded to be likely to have been a cleft palate.[19][20][21] The young Malthus received his education at the Warrington Academy from 1782, where he was taught by Gilbert Wakefield. Warrington was a dissenting academy, which closed in 1783. Malthus continued for a period to be tutored by Wakefield at the latter's home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire.[22][23]
Malthus entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784. While there, he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics. His tutor was William Frend.[23][24] He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College two years later.[25] In 1789, he took orders in the Church of England, and became a curate at Oakwood Chapel (also Okewood) in the parish of Wotton, Surrey.[26]
Travel and further career[edit]
In 1799, Malthus made a European tour with William Otter, a close college friend, travelling part of the way with Edward Daniel Clarke and John Marten Cripps, visiting Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. Malthus used the tour to gather population data. Otter later wrote a Memoir of Malthus for the second (1836) edition of his Principles of Political Economy.[40][41] During the Peace of Amiens of 1802 he travelled to France and Switzerland, in a party that included his relation and future wife Harriet.[42]
In 1803, he became rector of Walesby, Lincolnshire.[25]
In 1805, Malthus became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College in Hertfordshire.[43] His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop", "Population", or "web-toe" Malthus.
Near the end of 1817, the proposed appointment of Graves Champney Haughton to the college was made a pretext by Randle Jackson and Joseph Hume to launch an attempt to close it down. Malthus wrote a pamphlet defending the college, which was reprieved by the East India Company within the same year, 1817.[44]
In 1818, Malthus became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Later life[edit]
Malthus was a founding member in 1821 of the Political Economy Club, where John Cazenove tended to be his ally against Ricardo and Mill.[55] He was elected in the beginning of 1824 as one of the ten royal associates of the Royal Society of Literature. He was also one of the first fellows of the Statistical Society, founded in March 1834. In 1827 he gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons on emigration.[56]
In 1827, he published Definitions in Political Economy[57] The first chapter put forth "Rules for the Definition and Application of Terms in Political Economy". In chapter 10, the penultimate chapter, he presented 60 numbered paragraphs putting forth terms and their definitions that he proposed should be used in discussing political economy following those rules. This collection of terms and definitions is remarkable for two reasons: first, Malthus was the first economist to explicitly organize, define, and publish his terms as a coherent glossary of defined terms; and second, his definitions were for the most part well-formed definitional statements. Between these chapters, he criticized several contemporary economists—Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Ramsay McCulloch, and Samuel Bailey—for sloppiness in choosing, attaching meaning to, and using their technical terms.[58]
McCulloch was the editor of The Scotsman of Edinburgh and replied cuttingly in a review printed on the front page of his newspaper in March 1827.[59] He implied that Malthus wanted to dictate terms and theories to other economists. McCulloch clearly felt his ox gored, and his review of Definitions is largely a bitter defence of his own Principles of Political Economy,[60] and his counter-attack "does little credit to his reputation", being largely "personal derogation" of Malthus.[61] The purpose of Malthus's Definitions was terminological clarity, and Malthus discussed appropriate terms, their definitions, and their use by himself and his contemporaries. This motivation of Malthus's work was disregarded by McCulloch, who responded that there was nothing to be gained "by carping at definitions, and quibbling about the meaning to be attached to" words. Given that statement, it is not surprising that McCulloch's review failed to address the rules of chapter 1 and did not discuss the definitions of chapter 10; he also barely mentioned Malthus's critiques of other writers.[58]
In spite of this and in the wake of McCulloch's scathing review, the reputation of Malthus as economist dropped away for the rest of his life.[62] On the other hand, Malthus did have supporters, including Thomas Chalmers, some of the Oriel Noetics, Richard Jones and William Whewell from Cambridge.[63]
Malthus died suddenly of heart disease on 23 December 1834 at his father-in-law's house. He was buried in Bath Abbey.[56] His portrait,[64] and descriptions by contemporaries, present him as tall and good-looking, but with a cleft lip and palate.[65]
Family[edit]
On 13 March 1804, Thomas Malthus married Harriet Eckersall, the eldest daughter of his first cousins John and Catherine Eckersall, who lived near Bath. Harriet became well-known at Haileybury College for hosting gatherings of notable scientists; eleven years younger than Thomas, she survived him by thirty years, remarrying after his death.[66]
The couple had a son, Henry, and two daughters, Emily and Lucille. Henry, the eldest, became vicar of Effingham, Surrey in 1835 and of Donnington, Sussex in 1837; he married Sofia Otter (1807–1889), daughter of Bishop William Otter and died in August 1882, aged 76. Emily, the middle child, died in 1885, outliving her parents and siblings. Lucille, the youngest, died unmarried and childless in 1825, at age 17.[56][67]
Other works[edit]
1800: The present high price of provisions[edit]
In this work, his first published pamphlet, Malthus argues against the notion prevailing in his locale that the greed of intermediaries caused the high price of provisions. Instead, Malthus says that the high price stems from the Poor Laws, which "increase the parish allowances in proportion to the price of corn." Thus, given a limited supply, the Poor Laws force up the price of daily necessities. However, he concludes by saying that in time of scarcity such Poor Laws, by raising the price of corn more evenly, actually produce a beneficial effect.[75]
1814: Observations on the effects of the Corn Laws[edit]
Although government in Britain had regulated the prices of grain, the Corn Laws originated in 1815. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars that year, Parliament passed legislation banning the importation of foreign corn into Britain until domestic corn cost 80 shillings per quarter. The high price caused the cost of food to increase and caused distress among the working classes in the towns. It led to serious rioting in London and to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819.[76][77]
In this pamphlet, printed during the parliamentary discussion, Malthus tentatively supported the free-traders. He argued that given the increasing cost of growing British corn, advantages accrued from supplementing it from cheaper foreign sources.
1820: Principles of political economy[edit]
In 1820 Malthus published Principles of Political Economy. (A second edition was posthumously published in 1836.) Malthus intended this work to rival Ricardo's Principles (1817).[78] It, and his 1827 Definitions in political economy, defended Sismondi's views on "general glut" rather than Say's Law, which in effect states "there can be no general glut".[79]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Malthus, Thomas Robert". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
