OTHER REVIEWS

The first chapter takes a more conventional approach, reviewing the basic features of Malthus's thought in the first six editions of the Essay on the principle of population (1798-1826), and in lesser-known works, including the Principles of political economy (1820) and Definitions in political economy (1827). Significantly, in light of what follows, Huzel argues that Malthus's reputation among other political economists was in decline from the early 1820s due to his heterodox positions (from the point of view of young Ricardian Turks) on Say's Law, rent, and the corn laws. The introductory chapter suggests that early nineteenth-century commentators on the family faced a choice between two classificatory categories: 'representative types', such as the models of family life presented in literature or political economy manuals; and the 'statistical aggregates' reported in abstracts compiled by statisticians and census-takers. Whereas Martineau's critics attacked her for paying insufficient regard to the evidence of population statistics and real-life behaviour in her fictionalized depictions of family formation (pp. 117, 143), the statistical facts compiled by Quetelet in his Treatise on man (1842) proved resistant to unambiguous causal explanations (p. 163).