Therefore, when I happened to read malthus on population, the idea of natural selection flashed on me.
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler
Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him of malthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that the increase in food production did not keep pace with increase of population; then a quieting down, a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price of eggs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, until politics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the glorious demagogue in his tantrums.
"Afoot in England"
W.H. Hudson
He confessed to the Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland, in 1830, that he had changed his views on the subject entirely since his previous evidence in 1825. He had formerly been, he said, "too much imbued with mere theory, with the opinions of malthus and Townsend"; but he had become a firm believer in the necessity and the public advantage of a legal provision for the able-bodied poor, and he strongly recommended the introduction of such a system into Ireland, in the first instance as an instrument of individual relief, but also as an effectual engine of social improvement.
"Contemporary Socialism"
John Rae