Economic essays

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The malthusiad fantasia economica / James Bonar

Collection:: Economics Books

THE MALTHUSIAD: FANTASIA ECONOMICA James Bonar Ir the tables have been turned on Adam Smith since his first edition in 1776, what of Malthus since 1798? He might seem less vulnerable as presenting a smaller surface to attack, a single contention instead of a system of doctrines,—more vulner- able on the other hand as putting all his eggs into one basket. It may prove that what is obsolete in him is just the eggs in the other baskets, which he could not refrain from filling, indeed, as a professor, was bound to fill according to his faculties. Suppose him to appear in a dream to some Young Economist of our century, demanding “Am I obsolete or am I not?” The other might answer: “Mr. Malthus, if we believe your earlier opponents and some of your later, you were obsolete from the first, or at least as soon as Mr. Godwin found that you were after all worth powder and shot, and wrote his Enquiry concerning Population, 1820.” The Shade might reply: “We there as you here are bound to speak nothing but good of those who have left the world, and, though at one time I held Godwin an indifferent amateur in statistical study, I allow that he gave me a hint from which I profited. It helped me to rid myself of early raw exaggerations; and by the time he and Booth and Coleridge, to say nothing of Hazlitt, had said their say, I had already gone beyond them and escaped their hands.” Y. E.: “Is it true that you made population increase faster than food?” Suape: “Even in my first fine careless rapture I never made it work miracles. I said it was always tending to increase beyond the food, and trying hard to do it, and it was repressed and kept down by vice and misery, or the fear of misery. In my second edition (1803) I allowed for a third power, moral restraint, A

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Economic essays

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation