Principles of Political Economy considered with a view to their practical application.

London: John Murray,, 1820. In the original boards First edition of the author's major late work, a re-examination of his economic work in the early 1800s, and a point-by-point response to David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy (1817). Notably, Keynes held that "if economics had followed Malthus instead of being constrained by Ricardo in an artificial groove, the world would be a much wiser and richer place" (ODNB). In the Principles, Malthus summarizes his earlier writing on rents, currency, food prices, and corn laws. The book was conceived as a series of tracts rather than a comprehensive and systematic treatise, though Malthus published it to establish his own position against that of Ricardo, with whom he disagreed about the nature of labour, demand, and profit. "In his Principles of Political Economy, Malthus was proposing investment in public work and private luxury as a means of increasing effective demand, and hence as a palliative to economic distress. The nation, he thought, must balance the power to produce and the will to consume" (DSB). In the 20th century, the Principles received recognition, "largely as a result of the comments by J. M. Keynes in the 1930s. Keynes argued that Malthus's theory of effective demand provided a scientific explanation of unemployment, and that the hundred-year domination of Ricardo over Malthus had been a disaster for the progress of economics" (ODNB). This copy includes an extremely early reback, presumably by the original bookseller. The reback preserves the original blue boards, while a section has been cut from the cloth backstrip to expose the original printed label. Octavo. Uncut in original blue boards, early reback in brown cloth, preserving original printed paper label. Circular "Y.S." ink stamp to title. Light bumping and wear, moderate foxing to endpapers and contents, front hinge cracked and lacking front free endpaper, holding firm, slight separations between and within several gatherings, small hole to head of K4: a very good copy. Goldsmiths' 22767; Kress C.577; Mattioli 2221.