Malthus, THOMAS ROBERT, the expounder of the theory of population, was born 17th February 1766, at the Rookery, near Dorking, in Surrey, where his father owned a small estate. He was ninth wrangler at Cambridge in 1788, was elected Fellow of his college (Jesus), took orders, and was appointed to a parish in his native county. In 1798 he brought out his Essay on the Principle of Population, which attracted great attention and met with no little criticism. During the following years Malthus extended his knowledge of the subject both by travel and by reading, and in 1803 published a greatly enlarged edition of his essay. In 1804 he married happily, and next year was appointed professor of Political Economy and Modern History in the East India Company's college at Haileybury, a post which he occupied till his death at Bath on 2d December 1834.
Personally Malthus was a kindly and accomplished man, who followed what he believed to be the truth, and who endured without a complaint the abuse and misunderstanding to which his writings exposed him. The aim of the Essay was to supply a reasoned corrective to the theories regarding the perfectibility of society, which had been diffused by Rousseau and his school, and which had been advocated in England by Godwin. Malthus maintained that such optimistic hopes are rendered baseless by the natural tendency of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence. He pointed out that both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms life was so prolific that if allowed free room to multiply it would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. The only limit to its increase is the want of room and food. With regard to man, the question is complicated by the fact that the instinct of propagation is controlled by reason; but even in his case the ultimate check to population is the want of food, only it seldom operates directly, but takes a variety of forms in accordance with the complexity of human society. The more immediate checks are either preventive or positive. The former appear as moral restraint or vice. The positive checks are exceedingly various, including 'all unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, large towns, 'excesses of all kinds, the whole train of common diseases and epidemics, wars, plague, and famine.' Malthus goes on to illustrate the action of his principle by a review of the history of the different nations and races, showing what are the actual checks that have limited population—celibacy, wars, infanticide, plagues, vicious practices—and proving that the population difficulty has affected the development of society from the beginning.
It cannot be said that Malthus was original in his exposition of the theory of population. It is a theme of both Plato and Aristotle. Shortly before the time of Malthus the problem had been handled by Benjamin Franklin, Hume, and many other writers. Malthus crystallised the views of those writers, and presented them in systematic form with elaborate proofs derived from history. In certain details and in the form of exposition the Essay may be criticised; but the broad principles of it can be doubted only by those who do not understand the question. The enormous increase of the means of subsistence attained by colonisation and modern industrial development has only for a time postponed the population difficulty for the world at large, while its pressure is still felt in the more thickly peopled centres both of Europe and of the East. At the present time the most interesting feature of Malthus is his relation to Darwin. Darwin saw 'on reading Malthus On Population that natural selection was the inevitable result of the rapid increase of all organic beings,' for such rapid increase necessarily leads to the struggle for existence. To prevent misunderstanding it should be added that Malthus gives no sanction to the theories and practices currently known as Malthusianism. In this reference Malthus approved only of the principle of moral self-restraint; 'do not marry till you have a fair prospect of supporting a family.' Besides his Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus wrote two important works, An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent and Principles of Political Economy. See Memoir by Dr Otter, Bishop of Chichester (prefixed to 2d ed., 1836, of the Principles of Political Economy); also Bonar's Malthus and his Work (1885).