Autograph letter signed ('T. Robt Malthus') to William Roscoe, Hertford, 8 February 1808.

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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert (1766-1834)

Autograph letter signed ('T. Robt Malthus') to William Roscoe, Hertford, 8 February 1808.

Price realised GBP 4,788

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MALTHUS, Thomas Robert (1766-1834)
Autograph letter signed ('T. Robt Malthus') to William Roscoe, Hertford, 8 February 1808.
In English. Three pages, 226 x 185mm, bifolium, integral address panel, docketed by recipient.

On prospects of peace with France, and the British bombardment of Copenhagen. Malthus is inclined to agree with Roscoe 'respecting the practicability of peace' with the French, although he has had doubts particularly after conversations with 'your friend Hamilton', who has heard in Paris 'that Bonaparte had no serious intentions of making peace at the time of the last negotiation. I am sensible however that in a government such as that of France, no reliance can be placed on what is heard in conversation'. Malthus also expresses agreement with Roscoe's 'reprobation of the Copenhagen expedition and the new morality on which it was founded'. He expects to have William Smyth to stay in a few days: 'He is very busy in preparing his lectures' [presumably for his new appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge], on which he has received advice from Roscoe.

The recipient, William Roscoe (1753-1831) was an abolitionist, banker, collector, author and librarian. The 'Copenhagen expedition' of August-September 1807 was intended to capture the Dano-Norwegian fleet and prevent Napoleon's new Continental System from blocking access to the Baltic: the Danish capitulation after a four-day bombardment of Copenhagen by the Royal Navy made it successful on these terms, but the brutality of the attack against an ostensibly neutral power proved highly controversial. The poet and historian William Smyth (1765-1849) was like Roscoe a native of Liverpool. Malthus had been since 1805 professor of history and political economy at the East India Company College in Hertfordshire: his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) had already reached its fourth edition by this date.

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