This article challenges the widely held assumption that Thomas Robert Malthus was a lonely pessimist in the late eighteenth century. Interpreting the sources that Malthus had used to write his Essay on the Principle of Population as predictions of the future, the article argues that Malthus inherited a sense of looming doom from his predecessors. In the second half of the eighteenth century, David Hume, Adam Smith, Richard Price, and Thomas Paine predicted Britain's ruin through national bankruptcy. Although Malthus, too, expressed anxiety about excessive growth, he changed the parameters by worrying about overpopulation, rather than overspending. By considering Malthus in the context in which he originally formulated his famous principle of population, this article sheds new light on what he was doing when he first published his Essay in 1798.

中文翻译：

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厄运与悲观：十八世纪末世界的未来

这篇文章挑战了广泛接受的假设，即托马斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯 (Thomas Robert Malthus) 在 18 世纪后期是一个孤独的悲观主义者。解读马尔萨斯撰写人口原理论文的资料来源作为对未来的预测，文章认为马尔萨斯从他的前辈那里继承了一种迫在眉睫的厄运感。18 世纪下半叶，大卫·休谟、亚当·斯密、理查德·普莱斯和托马斯·潘恩预言英国将因国家破产而灭亡。尽管马尔萨斯也表达了对过度增长的担忧，但他通过担心人口过剩而不是超支来改变参数。通过在马尔萨斯最初提出他著名的人口原理的背景下考虑马尔萨斯，这篇文章揭示了他在 1798 年首次发表论文时所做的事情。