ABSTRACT
Godwin, Of Population (1820); review by Thomas Robert Malthus, Edinburgh Review, XXXV (July 1821), 362–377. Nothing is so insidious in the realm of anonymous reviewing as the temptation to let an interested party review a work as though he were disinterested. Here Malthus (again) takes advantage of Jeffrey’s lapse to discredit a book written to counter his own theories. Basically it was the policy of the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review to promote Malthusian theory in the hope of revising the Poor Laws, thereby lightening the tax burden on the middle classes. These revisions were enacted by the reformed Parliament after 1832.
