250TH ANNIVERSARY
Thomas Robert Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798)
This work changed world thinking on economics and population. An Essay on the Principle of Population, written in 1798 by the mild-mannered cleric Thomas Malthus, set off a firestorm of controversy. Malthus believed that while population increases at a geometrical ratio, the food supply only grows at an arithmetical ratio. War, pestilence and "vice"were the positive checks on uncontrolled population.
Malthus' views ran counter to the utopian notions held with such certainty by William Godwin and Condorcet. Early nineteenth-century social reformers, facing the growing ills of the Industrial Revolution, viewed Malthus as their enemy. As Robert Heilbroner observes, "In one staggering intellectual blow Malthus undid all the roseate hopes of an age oriented towards self-satisfaction and a comfortable vista of progress."
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