evidence of importance before a committee of the House of Commons upon emigration in 1827, but added nothing remarkable to his previous achievements in political economy.
Malthus died suddenly of heart disease on 23 Dec. 1834, while spending Christmas with his wife and family at the house of Mr. Eckersall at St. Catherine's. He was buried in the Abbey Church at Bath. He left a son and a daughter. The son, Henry, became vicar of Effingham, Surrey, in 1835, and of Donnington, near Chichester, in 1837. He died in August 1882, aged 76. Brougham asserted (M. Napier, Correspondence, p. 187) that he offered a living to Malthus, who declined it in favour of his son, 'who now has it' (31 Jan. 1837).
Malthus was a member of the French Institute. He was elected in 1833 one of the five foreign associates of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin. A portrait by Linnell was engraved for the 'Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique' (1853).
Malthus appears to have been a singularly amiable man. Miss Martineau, in her 'Autobiography' (i. 327), gives a pleasant account of a visit to him at Haileybury in 1834. She says that although he had a 'defect in the palate' which made his speech 'hopelessly imperfect,' he was the only friend whom she could hear without her trumpet. He had asked for an introduction, because, while other friends had defended him injudiciously, she had interpreted him precisely as he could wish. (Mr. Bonar identifies the passage referred to as that in 'A Tale of the Tyne,' p. 56.) He also told her (Autobiography, p. 211) that he had never cared for the abuse lavished upon his doctrine 'after the first fortnight,' and she says that he was when she knew him 'one of the serenest and most cheerful' of men. Otter says that during an intimacy of nearly fifty years he never saw Malthus ruffled or angry, and that in success he showed as little vanity as he had shown sensibility to abuse. Horner and Empson speak in similar terms of his candour and humanity. His life was devoted to spreading the doctrines which he held to be essential to the welfare of his fellows. He never aimed at preferment, and it would have required some courage to give it to a man whose doctrines, according to the prevalent opinion, were specially unsuitable to the mouth of a clergyman, and therefore gained for him Cobbett's insulting title of 'Parson Malthus.'
Politically he was a whig, though generally moderate and always a lover of the 'golden mean.' He supported catholic emancipation, and accepted the Reform Bill without enthusiasm. He objected to religious tests, and supported both of the rival societies for education (Horner, ii. 97). He was a theologian and moralist of the type of Paley. Though a utilitarian he did not, any more than Bentham, accept the abstract principle of laissez-faire which became the creed of Bentham's followers. He was in favour of factory acts and of national education. He was convinced, however, that the poor laws had done more harm than good, and this teaching had a great effect upon the authors of the Poor Law Bill of 1834. In political economy Malthus objected to the abstract methods of Ricardo and his school, although he was personally on the most friendly terms with Ricardo, and carried on a correspondence, Ricardo's share of which was edited by Mr. Bonar in 1889. He followed Adam Smith in the constant reference to actual concrete facts. Malthus's doctrine of population had been anticipated by others, especially by Robert Wallace, who had replied to Hume's 'Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations' in 1753, and published in 1761 his 'Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence.' In 1761 had also been published J. P. Süssmilch's 'Gottliche Ordnung,' from which Malthus drew many statistics. In the preface to the second edition Malthus says that the only authors whom he had consulted for the past were Hume, Wallace, Adam Smith, and Dr. Price; he had since found discussions of the same topic in Plato and Aristotle, in the works of the French economists, especially Montesquieu and in Franklin, Sir James Stewart, Arthur Young, and Joseph Townshend, the last of whom published in 1786 a 'Dissertation on the Poor Laws,' and whose 'Travels in Spain' (1786-7) are noticed by Malthus as making a fresh examination of the same country unnecessary.
Although more or less anticipated, like most discoverers, Malthus gave a position to the new doctrine by his systematic exposition, which it has never lost. Francis Place [q. v.], the radical friend of James Mill, supported it in 1822 in 'Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population.' It was accepted by all the economists of the Ricardo and Mill school, and Darwin states (Life, i. 63) that Malthus's essay first suggested to him the theory which in his hands made a famous epoch in modern thought. In spite of his own principles, Malthus had no doubt stated the doctrine in too abstract a form; but the only question now concerns not its undeniable importance, but the precise position which it should occupy in any scientific theory of social
