[WALLACE, Robert].

A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in antient and modern Times: in which the superior Populousness of Antiquity is maintained. With an Appendix, containing additional observations on the same subject, and some remarks on Mr Hume's Political Discourse, of the Populousness of antient Nations ...

Edinburgh, G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1753. 8vo in fours, pp. iv, 331, [1] blank; edges lightly browned, heavier to the endpapers, else a good copy in contemporary full speckled calf, a few small stains, neatly rebacked preserving the original gilt-stamped compartments, with a red morocco lettering-piece. First edition of this early contribution to the eighteenth-century literature of historical demography, from papers read by Wallace (1697–1771), a Presbyterian minister, at the Edinburgh Philosophical Society some time before 1745. He opposed the theories expounded by David Hume in the chapter ‘Populousness of ancient nations’ in the Political Discourses (1752). Hume himself, however, had read the manuscript of Wallace’s book and helped to prepare it for the press; he also drew from it some corrections for the next edition of his own work. The question of the relative populations of Antiquity and modern times was ‘integral to the Age of Enlightenment; … a development of the Ancient-Modern controversy which had been waged throughout the seventeenth century and extended into the eighteenth. Hume regarded it as “the most curious & important of all Questions of Erudition”’ (Mossner, Life of David Hume, pp. 263–4).This work is also important for its influence on the population question at the end of the century. Godwin directly addressed Wallace’s ideas in a chapter of Political Justice (1793), ‘Of the Objection to this System from the Principle of Population’, to which Malthus’s Essay (1798) was a riposte. Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age, went so far as to assert that ‘both the principle of the necessary increase of the population beyond the means of subsistence, and the application of that principle as a final obstacle to all Utopian perfectibility schemes, are borrowed by Mr Malthus from Wallace’s work’. Indeed, in the preface to the second edition of the Essay, Malthus names Wallace among the four authors (the others being Hume, Adam Smith and Richard Price) who led him to the population question. The work was translated into French the following year, but did not receive a second English edition until 1809, reflecting a revival of interest after the impact of Malthus. See James Bonar, Theories of Population from Raleigh to Arthur Young (1931), ch. 6.Chuo III, 222; Fieser, p. 74; Goldsmiths’ 8782; Higgs 619; Jessop, p. 52; Kress 5318; McCulloch, p. 257.

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