An Essay on the Principle of Population;: or, a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry into our Prospects respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions. The Fourth Edition.

HANDSOME COPY IN CONTEMPORARY BOLDLY SPECKLED CALF
2 vols. tall 8vo. (iii)-xvi, 580; (iii)-(viii), 484, [58 (index)]pp., contemporary boldly speckled calf, smooth spines richly decorated in gilt in panels using two different designs, black lettering and russet numbering labels gilt, board edges gilt rolled, spines a trifle chaffed at headbands, some cracking at ends of some joints, but overall a very nice copy.
Near contemporary pencilled shelf number "D198" of Lord Dunraven of Adare Manor, Co. Limerick, on endpaper.

KRESS B5219
This is edition incorporates the substantial revisions and additions which Malthus had made for his third edition of 1806. They are listed and described in full in his preliminary 'Advertisement' to that edition, also printed here. The most substantial of the changes made was that "The chapters which were the fourth and sixth of the second book are nearly rewritten, on account of an error into which the author had fallen in an attempt to estimate the fruitfulness of marriages and the number born living to be married, from the data in registers" ['Advertisement']. Furthermore he added as an appendix, here vol.2 p.429-484, his important Reply to the Chief Objections to the second edition of 1803. This appendix he had also published separately in quarto "for the accomodation of the purchasers of the former edition" ['Advertisement'].Malthus recommends that "those who have not the leisure or inclination to read the entire work, will find in the appendix such notice of its most prominent arguments, as will give them a good general idea of the aim and bent of the whole". In it he writes "My object is to correct some of the misrepresentations which have gone abroad respecting two or three of the most important points of the Essay. ... The first grand objection that has been made to my principles is, that they contradict the original command of the Creator, to increase and multiply and replenish the earth .... The next grand objection which has been urged against me, is my denial of the right of the poor to support. .... [and lastly and] rather a matter of feeling than of argument. Many persons [have accused him of excessive pessimism in] throwing a darker shade over our views of human nature, and tending particularly to narrow our prospects of future improvement". All of these objections he attempts to refute.
From the library of Edwin R. W. Wyndham-Quin, Viscount Adare, F.R.S., of Adare Manor, Co. Limerick.