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The Reverend Thomas Malthus's blunt identification of this dilemma has guaranteed his fame, even if his full position has often been misunderstood. This volume, therefore, provides both the full text of Malthus's original work of 1798, and A Summary View, addressed in part to 'those who have not had leisure to read the whole work'. Malthus's basic thesis is that there is a disparity between the potential rate of growth of populatoin and the potential rate of growth of means of subsistence. But Malthus is not primarily a prophet of doom: he goes on to explore the question of why population does not always outstrip the supply of food, and to examine possible checks on population growth.
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