[ Daniel Malthus, father of the political economist T. R. Malthus. ] Autograph Signature ('Danl Malthus') on printed Exchequer Receipt completed in manuscript.

1p., 8vo. In poor condition, aged and worn, with loss to edges and holing around the signature. Begins (with manuscript text in square brackets): 'The [-9] Day of [ffebry] <...> | Received by me [Daniel Malthus] | [Execd as P Margin] | Of the Right Honourable Robert Earl of Northampton, One of the Four Tellers of His Majesty's Receipt of Exchequer, the Sum of | [Fifty Pounds] | [...]'. The annuity has been raised on 'Rates and Duties upon all Wines imported into Great Britain, and for raising a certain Sum of Money for the Service of the year 1745'. According to T. R. Malthus's entry in the Oxford DNB, his father, 'being an only son [of seven children], appears to have inherited considerable wealth and property, and these independent means enabled him to travel and to cultivate his literary, artistic, theatrical, and scientific interests. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1747 but did not graduate. He was an admirer of Rousseau, who once visited The Rookery when Malthus was an infant. He was said to have published some literary pieces anonymously, but the statement by an obituarist that he had translated works from French and German was firmly contradicted by Malthus. He supported the views of the marquis de Condorcet and William Godwin on the perfectibility of mankind, but also encouraged his son's publication of opposing views. Aspects of his behaviour—for example, the unconventional education he chose for Malthus, and his refusal to allow his wife to wear her wedding ring—were regarded as eccentric, and perhaps show the influence of Rousseau. He married (on 6 May 1752) Henrietta Catherine Graham (1733–1800), his second cousin, the daughter of Daniel Graham (1695–1778), apothecary to George II and George III. She can be seen as a young girl with her brother and two sisters, in Hogarth's painting The Graham Children (1742), now in the National Gallery, London. Malthus was the sixth of their seven children (two boys and five girls).