In 1798 an English clergyman, Thomas Robert Malthus, wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, postulating that population tends to grow much faster than the food supply and concluding that human misery will always result from this natural law. A pious scholar who had studied philosophy and economics as well as theology, Malthus wrote to refute the views of such contemporaries as William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, who promoted a rosier view of mankind’s development. While his more optimistic colleagues tended to agree with Johann Peter Süssmilch (“the father of German demography”) that population growth was a necessary precondition to economic and social prosperity, Malthus drew on the work of another English clergyman/ scholar, Joseph Townsend, who felt that discouraging population growth was a necessary function of the state.

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