THE FIRST OF THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMISTS

Bacchus—when an Englishman is called Bacchus—derives from Bakehouse. Similarly the original form of the rare and curious name of Malthus was Malthouse. The pronunciation of English proper names has been more constant one century with another than their spelling, which fluctuates between phonetic and etymological influences, and can generally be inferred with some confidence from an examination of the written variations. On this test (Malthus, Mawtus, Malthous, Malthouse, Mauthus, Maltus, Maultous) there can be little doubt that Maultus, with the first vowel as in brewer's malt and the h doubtfully sounded, is what we ought to say.

We need not trace the heredity of Robert Malthus further back than to the Reverend Robert Malthus who became Vicar of Northolt under Cromwell and was evicted at the Restoration. Calamy calls him ‘an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution’. But his parishioners thought him ‘a very unprofitable and fruitless minister’, perhaps because he was strict in the exaction of tithes, and in a petition for his removal complained of him as having ‘uttered invective expressions against our army while they were in Scotland’, and also that ‘Mr Malthus is one who hath not only a low voice but a very great impediment in his utterance’; from which it seems probable that he shared with his great-great-grandson not only the appellation of the Reverend Robert Malthus, but also the defect of a cleft palate.