Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country

by Thomas Robert Malthus

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Genres: Economics, Politics, History

24 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

The Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert.

His An Essay on the Principle of Population observed that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible. He thought that the dangers of population growth precluded progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". As an Anglican cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. Malthus wrote:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticized the Poor Laws, and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. 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. He remains a much-debated writer.

Reviews

[terio bost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reead

While I am not sure how many of the insults thrown at Adam Smith were necessary, I did enjoy reading an opposing view. I think the good Reverend had forgotten that Adam Smith simply wrote about his observations of the correlation between the price of silver and the quantities of corn in 1776 he was not making predictions about how those correlations would act in the 1840's

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, British agricultural policy was governed by the Corn Law, which protected British cereal producers from cheaper import competition.

Thomas Malthus fiercely attacked the legislation as protectionist and counter-productive in a text which, as the spectre of protectionism threatens to make its way back into public policy, is once again very relevant.