[210] Ami des hommes, p. 26.
[211] See the curious debate in Parl. Hist. xiv. 1318-1365.
[212] The seventh edition of Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments, etc. (1812), contains a correspondence with Pitt (i. 216, etc.). The editor, W. Morgan, accuses Pitt of adopting Price's plans without due acknowledgment and afterwards spoiling them.
[213] Essay on Population, p. 18. In Observations, ii. 141, he estimates the diminution at a million and a half. Other books referring to the same controversy are Howlett's Examination of Dr. Price's Essay (1781); Letter to Lord Carlisle, by William Eden (1744-1814), first Lord Auckland; William Wales's Enquiry into Present State of Population, etc. (1781); and Geo. Chalmers's Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain (1782 and several later editions).
[214] Essay (first edition), p. 339.
[215] Memoirs, etc. (1819), ii. 10.
[216] So Sir James Stewart, whose light was extinguished by Adam Smith, begins his Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy (1767) by discussing the question of population, and compares the 'generative faculty' to a spring loaded with a weight, and exerting itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance (Works, 1805, i. 22). He compares population to 'rabbits in a warren.' Joseph Townsend, in his Journey Through Spain (1792), to whom Malthus refers, had discussed the supposed decay of the Spanish population, and illustrates his principles by a geometric progression: see ii. 213-56, 386-91. Eden, in his book on the poor (i. 214), quotes a tract attributed to Sir Matthew Hale for the statement that the poor increase on 'geometrical progression.'
[217] Malthus and his Work, p. 85.
[218] Voltaire says in the Dictionnaire Philosophique (art. 'Population'): 'On ne propage point en Progression Géométrique. Tous les calculs qu'on a faits sur cette prétendue multiplication sont des chimères absurdes.' They had been used to reconcile the story of the deluge with the admitted population of the world soon afterwards.
[219] Essay (1826), ii 453 n. I cite from this, the last edition published in Malthus's lifetime, unless otherwise stated.