Short Biography of Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus was born on February 14, 1766. His father was a great admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Malthus was educated at home, and entered Jesus College at Cambridge at the age of eighteen.

In 1793, he became a Fellow of this College, and in 1797 took the holy orders. In 1804, the year of his marriage, he was appointed Professor of History and Political Economy at the Hailey bury College of the East Indian Company. He was father of three children. He died in 1834.

In 1798, Malthus, then a curate of a small Surrey Parish, published his Essay on Population, which was mainly directed against the optimistic views of William Godwin, an English writer and philosopher, and against Marie Jean Antonie Condorcet, a French mathematician, economist and philosopher.

The title of the essay was: An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, With Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Clandorcet and Others.

This work was published anonymously, for it was feared that some over­sensitive persons might be shocked that a parson had written a book on population.

This important work of Malthus is a landmark in the history of population studies and has become one of the most famous and, at the same time, one of the most controversial books of modern times. It brought great honour to its author but also a great deal of abuse and criticism.

It is significant that the year of the publication of this book is reckoned as a base year for the study of population doctrines. For many years to come, all views on population were classified as pre-Malthusian, Malthusian, anti-Malthusian and neo- Malthusian.

As the first edition of the Essay was intended to contradict the views of Godwin and Condorcet, it is only appropriate to refer to the Utopian views of these two authors for a better understanding of the views of Malthus.

Condorcet was an ardent French revolutionary, who was tried in absentia and was sentenced to death. While hiding in a students’ boarding house, he wrote his famous treatise on the history of human progress from its beginnings to its imminent culmination in human perfection.

According to Condorcet, “All inequalities of wealth, of education, of opportunity, of sex, would soon disappear. Animosities between nations and races would be no more.

All persons would speak the same language. The earth would be bountiful, without stint. All diseases would be conquered and if man did not become immortal, the span of his life would have no assignable upper limit.

The question whether production would always suffice to satisfy the people’s wants could not be answered, for the problem would not have to be faced for ages to come, by which time man would have acquired new types of now still unimagined knowledge.

In the rational age to come, men would recognise their Obligations to those not yet born and to the general well-being both of their society and of all humanity and not to the puerile idea of filling the earth will useless and unhappy beings. At that time, a limit could be set to the population other than by premature death of a portion of those born.”

In 1793, that is, about the same time Condorcet went into hiding, William Godwin of England published his book entitled Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

He had optimistic Utopian ideas of a perfect society, where 30 minutes work per day would fully satisfy the needs of all. The abundance which he prophesied would come as a result of scientific progress and would not lead to over-population.

He declared, “There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice as it is called, and no government. Besides this, there will be neither disease, anguish, melancholy, nor resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardour, the good of all.” ²⁴

The theme of the Essay of Malthus was mainly to refute the Utopean effusions of Condorcet and Godwin. He argued that the tendency of the population to grow faster in relation to its means of subsistence had led to human misery and placed several obstacles in the path of human progress.

In 1803, Mathus published the second edition of his Essay, a much expanded and changed edition which cannot really be called a reprint of the 1797 Essay, for in the new edition the emphasis was more on arguments against the Poor Laws that on counter arguments against the opinions of Condorcet and Godwin.

This edition contained substantial statistical data in support of the many arguments put forward and proposed moral constraint as a preventive check on rapid growth.

Not satisfied with merely stating speculative hypotheses, Malthus spent the next five years in studying other authors’ writings on population issues, visited the Continent, collected relevant statistical data and brought out another revised edition.

Subsequently, four more editions were published, the sixth in 1826, which was entitled, An Essay on the Principle of Population or a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness, with an Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Euils which it Occasions. The seventh edition was published posthumously in 1872.