Joseph Townsend

Joseph Townsend (4 April 1739 – 9 November 1816) was a British medical doctor, geologist and rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, perhaps best known for his 1786 treatise A Dissertation on the Poor Laws in which he expounded a naturalistic theory of economics and opposed state provision, either outdoor or otherwise.

Townsend has been credited with anticipating Thomas Malthus' argument against public welfare assistance in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).

[1] Unlike Malthus, however, Townsend advocated a system of social insurance through compulsory membership of friendly societies, which would meet the health and burial costs of the poor.

[2] He was ordained in the Church of England in 1763,[4] and ceased his studies in 1764 when his father procured for him the lucrative living of Pewsey, Wiltshire, where he was rector until his death.

In the late 1760s he spent some four years as an evangelical orator for the Calvinist wing of Methodism,[2] and he is reputed to have allowed Methodists to preach from his pulpit in the 1780s.

Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjugation to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.