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67 GODWIN, William. Of Population. London: for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1820 Godwin responds to Malthus First edition of Godwin’s long-meditated answer to Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798, item 100). Malthus’s Essay was originally framed as a corrective to the utopian hopes of both Condorcet and Godwin, but by the time the Essay reached its fifth edition in 1817 Godwin was no longer mentioned and in danger of being forgotten. Godwin’s answer, after over two decades, points to restrictions in the food supply arising from the accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and proposes to make more land available for cultivation and to improve agricultural methods, among other remedies. (See item 130.) Octavo (217 × 130 mm). Recent calf to style, smooth spine ruled in gilt, red morocco label, two-line border to covers in blind. Royal Institution of South Wales inkstamp to title page verso and p. 626 (final page), and of University College Swansea to p. 101, none affecting text, pencil annotation to p. 359. Complete with half-title. Binding fine, faint crease to early leaves, pale marginal tidemark from p. 511 to end, occasional minor marginal spotting. A very good copy. ¶ Kress C.535; Sabin 27676. £1,250 [108241] 68 GRAY, Simon. Remarks on the Production of Wealth, and the influence, which the various classes of society have, in carrying on that process. London: [no publisher,] 1820 First edition, among the earliest critiques of Malthus, extracted from The Pamphleteer , volume XVII, no. XXXIV.
In 1815 Simon Gray had published his treatise on population, The Happiness of States , as an open rejection of many of Malthus’s principles. Previously Malthus’s theories had been broadly accepted without major opposition, but Gray’s attack was rapidly followed by other critiques, most notably John Weyland and Kenneth Grahame’s. The present essay was a lengthy refutation of the principles Malthus had outlined in his chapter “Observations on Productive and Unproductive Labor” in The Principles of Political Economy ; Gray countered that all classes of society were economically productive. It is uncommon, with Library Hub listing only six copies in British institutions. Octavo (212 × 136 mm). Recent quarter calf, black calf label, marbled sides. Cork Library stamps, cropped on title page. Some toning to pages, yet still a very good copy. ¶ Goldsmiths’ 22753; Kress C538; Sraffa 2113. £850 [127189] 69 GREGORY, John. A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World. London: J. Dodsley, 1765 First edition, championing the comparative approach to the study of the human mind, recognizing human and animals minds as analogous even if unequal. The Scottish physician John Gregory co-founded, with Thomas Reid, the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, “where he read many essays; these were later collected, modified, and published anonymously under the title A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man, with those of the Animal World (1765). Gregory considered human nature to be a uniform non-variant, whose principles and function can be discovered through experiment. The two principles of mind are reason (‘a
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