The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (160 page)

 
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(1766–1834)
Born in Surrey, the second in a family of eight children, his father was a country gentleman with broad-ranging intellectual interests, who was both a Godwinian and a friend and executor of
Rousseau
. Malthus himself was tutored privately for Cambridge. He obtained a good degree and a fellowship at Jesus College. He took orders in 1788. His writings on population undoubtedly cast a long and deep shadow over Victorian optimism, and all editions of the
Essay on the Principle of Population
, 1798–1803, provoked virulent criticism. In brief, ‘parson Malthus’ argued that the natural rate of population increase was geometrical, while the increase in food production was arithmetical; population, then, would always tend to outstrip food supply. This observation, that scarcity, hunger, and poverty were natural and inevitable conditions, was flanked by a specific concern with the improvidence and imprudence of the poor, whose fertility was unchecked by contraception or moral restraint. Thus, in the popular mind at least, the Malthusian doctrine was that only continuing poverty would limit the numbers of poor. Malthus made some important converts, and his doctrines played a crucial part in the formulation of the theory of natural selection, since the ‘wedging’ effect of population pressure results in a ‘survival of the fittest’.
JH 

 
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Name given first by its opponents to the Manchester-based campaign to repeal the UK Corn Laws, 1838–46. The campaign mixed the self-interest of employers in export industries (for whom protectionist barriers to free trade in food added to their costs, as they increased the wages that must be paid to prevent working-class families from starving) with arguments of principle for free trade. The label is sometimes applied, less accurately, to any or all of the doctrines of
classical economics
which were current at the time.

 
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An electoral victory is interpreted by the successful party or coalition as giving it a mandate from the people to govern in the best interests of the nation or a specific mandate to pursue particular policies. Given that in an election parties campaign on many issues, it is difficult to claim that the government has a specific mandate for every policy, though it can reasonably claim to have a general mandate to govern. If a particular issue dominates a party's successful election campaign, then it might reasonably claim to have a mandate to pursue that issue. In recent times, however, it is difficult to identify particular issues as dominating elections, because parties compete with each other in terms of very general competences to govern.
The doctrine of the mandate can be interpreted in a negative sense to mean that governments ought not to introduce policies for which they lack a specific mandate. This meaning is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a general mandate to govern, but see
House of Lords
.
The doctrine had a particular appeal to the early leaders of the Labour Party who sought a specific mandate to introduce radical change while their opponents sought merely a general mandate as they thought best, without making specific policy commitments. In recent years, however, the doctrine itself has declined in importance.
PBy 

 
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(1670–1733)
Social theorist, who practised medicine in London, although born and educated abroad. He provided important analyses relating individual activity to social outcomes. For example, he drew attention to the advantages which accrued from division of labour. He was also interested in the advantages to society of the pursuit of self-interest and profit, and provided an account of the sort of unintended consequences of individual action within a social process that was later associated particularly with Adam
Smith's
work. His notoriety amongst his contemporaries arose from his apparent denigration of dispositions or moral outlooks which encouraged the intentional promotion of that social benefit. He argued in
The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Public Benefits
that the disappearance of what was conventionally regarded as vice would lead to impoverishment, because such ‘vices’, particularly those associated with acquisitiveness and jealous comparison with the lot of others, were engines of activity. The allegation that conventional virtues were destructive of the good at which they aimed was not well received.
AR 

 
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