Of Population

Godwin’s long book in 1820 reopened his dialogue with Malthus after a lapse of 20 years. While his reasons for returning to population are not clear, he may have been disappointed that the sections on his views had largely been replaced in Malthus’s 1817 Essay by a discussion of Robert Owen. In his new book, Godwin cites statistics from Sweden, America and England. He accuses Malthus of relying excessively on deduction. Godwin seeks to show that the population was stationary, agricultural productivity was rising, and unregulated automaticity was developing into propertyless, classless and stateless anarchy. Malthus, he said, had underestimated the evolutionary force of moral restraint on family size. Economic growth and private property automatically solves the problem of large families. Using the example of the hard-working Huguenots, he introduces quality along with quantity in a way that looks forward to eugenics.