ABSTRACT
Malthus’s first is famous first for the fact that it contains the first formulation of the principle of population, and second for its vehement attack on the Poor Laws. Malthus’s further step –in a sense a necessary one after the possibility of ascribing the origins of social evil to some original depravity of man had been ruled out –was establishing a link not just between theodicy and ethics, but also between theodicy and politics. Malthus’s own theodicy follows Cumberland in so far as the key idea is that partial evil caused by general laws can be mitigated, but neither eliminated nor explained away by such arguments as that Nature has a divine origin or that evil has a purely negative character, consisting in the privation of good. Malthus admits that misery and vice are ‘two bitter ingredients in the cup of human life’ and he argues, against Godwin, that they depend on causes deeper than human institutions.
