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). 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.

Life He was the fourth son of Chauncy Townsend, London merchant, mining speculator and Member of Parliament. then continued his studies at Edinburgh University, where he began to study medicine. 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.

According to Simon Winchester, a biographer of Smith, Townsend was an active member of the regional Highways Trust and, being rather tall and well built, was referred to by colleagues as "the Colossus of Roads".

He died at Pewsey on 9 November 1816, aged 77, and was buried at his church of St John the Baptist, Pewsey.

Views In A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, Townsend criticized relief as allowing the population to swell by protecting the weak (see his parable of the goats and dogs on the Island of Fernandez), and thus called for the abolition of any state relief in pursuance of greater productivity, as "it is only hunger which can spur and goad them on to labour." (Townsend, 1971:23) In another statement, he more explicitly said: "[Direct] legal constraint [to labor] . . . is attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise. . . whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry, it calls forth the most powerful exertions. . . . 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."

Works A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, 1786 A Journey Through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787, 1791. "Townsend Guide to Health Being Cautions and Directions in the Treatment of Diseases", 1795.