In 1784, when 22 years of age, T. R. Malthus went to Cambridge; and, in 1797, became a Fellow of Jesus College. After this he took orders, and for a time officiated in a small parish near his father’s house, in Surrey. In 1798, appeared his first printed work, which may be seen in the British Museum. It is entitled “An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society; with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, Mr. Condorcet, and other Writers.” The writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, from whom these details of Malthus’ life are taken, informs us that the book was received with some surprise, and excited considerable attention, as being an attempt to overturn the prevalent theory of political optimism, and to refute, upon philosophical principles, the speculations then so much in vogue, as to the indefinite perfectibility of human institutions. In this remarkable essay the general principle of population, which Wallace, Hume, and others had very distinctly enunciated before him, though without foreseeing the consequences that might be deduced from it, was clearly expounded; and some of the important conclusions to which it leads in regard to the probable improvement of human society were likewise stated and explained; but his illustrations were not sufficient, and he, therefore, sought in travel further confirmation of his theories. In 1799 he visited Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and, after the peace of Amiens, France; in which countries he busily collected all the data he could bearing upon his researches. In 1815 he was appointed to the professorship of political economy and modern history at Haileybury, near London, which chair he occupied until his death in 1834, at the age of 70. He left behind him one son and one daughter. The son is, we believe, still alive, or was so a few years ago. The account given by Mr. Malthus of the way in which he discovered the law of population is to this effect. His father, Mr. Daniel Malthus, a man of romantic and somewhat sanguine character, had espoused warmly the doctrines of the great writers Condorcet and Godwin, with respect to the perfectibility of man, to which the sound sense of the son was always opposed; and when the subject had been very frequently discussed between them, and the son had always objected to Godwin’s views, on account of the tendency of population to increase faster than subsistence, he was asked by his father to put down in writing his views on this point. The result was the Essay on Population; and his father was so much struck with the value of the arguments, that he recommended his son to publish it. In the first edition of this work he principally deals with the views of Condorcet and Godwin; but on his return from the Continent, where he had collected ample materials, the state and prospects of the poor became the prominent features of the second edition, which appeared in two volumes, in 1805.