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corruptions, with his pilula salutaria of reform. Some of his partisans believe it a desperate case of king's evil, and long to have the knife and the actual cautery called in. But all those politicians who make any pretensions to philosophy, however they may insist upon these alleged causes for party, or electioneering purposes, agree in their admiration of, what they are pleased to call, a discovery in political science; Mr. Malthus having made it appear to their satisfaction, that the primary source of the evil, the causa causans, lies in the system of nature, and that a great error has been committed in the physical constitution of the universe, inasmuch as men multiply too fast, and, therefore, the land is overstocked.

The cause of the increase of the poor, which this "eminent philosopher," as Mr. Whitbread denominates him, has assigned, and the remedy by which he proposes to counteract it, are both summary enough in themselves, though in their details they have been expanded into what, to borrow a transatlantic term, may truly be called a lengthy work. Mediocrity in literature has a better chance in later times, than it seems to have had in the age of Horace; whatever the gods may think of it, gentlemen and ladies now give it a willing welcome, and it meets with due encouragement from booksellers. There is even a sort of insipidity which seems suited to a weak intellect. But Mr. Malthus had other recommendations; his philosophy was upon a level with the feelings and morality of his admirers, as well as with their understandings; and by a happy combination of qualities, it equally suited the timid, who dreaded the effects of speculative reform; the bold spirits, who fancied that the world might have been much better constituted if their opinions had been asked concerning it; and the lady metaphysicians, who discuss the fitness of things at their conversazioni; the shallow, the selfish, and the sensual.

Worthless as Mr. Malthus's system is, it stands in the way of an inquiry into the state of the poor, and must be removed. The complaint that the land is overstocked, is, indeed, as old in this country as the Reformation. "Some," says Harrison, “ do grudge at the great increase of people in these days, thinking a necessary brood of cattle far better than a superfluous augmentation of mankind. But I can liken such men best of all unto the pope and the devil, who practise the hindrance of the furniture of the number of the elect to their uttermost. But if it should come to pass, that any foreign invasion should be made, which the Lord God forbid, for his mercies sake! then should these men find, that a wall of men is far better than stacks of corn and bags of money, and complain of the want when it is too late to seek remedy." An opinion of this kind is too foolish, as well as too wicked, ever to become permanently prevalent; the temporary reputation which

Mr. Malthus obtained by renewing it is disgraceful to the age, and cannot be excused, though it may be accounted for by the circumstances of the times, and the occasion upon which his system was brought forward.

It has been the hope and consolation of good men, when they contemplated the miseries which man brings upon man, to think that many of the evils, moral as well as physical, which afflict society, are remediable, and will gradually disappear as the human race advances in improvement. But the French revolution, acting upon political enthusiasm, produced a set of speculators as wild as the old fifth-monarchy-men. They announced the advent of a political millennium-which was to be not the kingdom of the saints--saints and kingdoms being with them alike out of fashionbut the commonwealth of philosophers. Ploughs were to work of themselves, butter to grow upon trees, and man to live for ever in this world-a very necessary improvement this upon the former state of things; for, according to their belief, if he were unphilosophical enough to die, he could not expect to live in any other. These notions were connected with the deplorable doctrines of brute materialism, blind necessity, and blank atheism, and with a system of ethics, which, attempting an impossible union between stoicism and sensuality, succeeded just so far as to deprave the morals and harden the heart.

Against the Goliath of these philosophists Mr. Malthus stept forth, at a time when the mirage in which the champion had made his appearance was pretty well dispersed, and had left him in his natural dimensions, an ordinary Philistine of about five feet six. Mr. Malthus attacked him with an argument which had been long before clearly and distinctly stated by Wallace and Townshend, and which, in fact, no person who ever speculated upon an improved state of society, could, by possibility, have overlooked. The sum of this argument is, that, supposing a country to be fully peopled, men must multiply faster than food can be multiplied for them. Mr. Malthus puts this proposition in a technical form, showing that population increases in a geometrical series, but food only in an arithmetical one; this is held up as a discovery in political economy, and this is in reality the first of his fallacies, the fundamental sophism of his book. That which would be true if the whole earth were fully peopled and fully cultivated, he assumes to be universally true at the present time. Admitting, then, the possibility of Mr. Godwin's scheme, he supposes a pure state of philosophical equality to be established, all causes of vice and misery having been removed; but in one generation, he contends, the principle of population would disturb this state of happiness, and in a second, destroy it. The absurdity of supposing that a community, which, according to the

hypothesis, had attained the highest state of attainable perfection, should yet be without the virtue of continence, is overlooked by Mr. Malthus; he reasons as if lust and hunger were alike passions of physical necessity, and the one equally with the other, independent of the reason and the will: and this is the pervading principle of a book written in the vulgar tongue, and sent into the world for the edification of all dabblers in metaphysics, male and female! Upon this his whole argument against Mr. Godwin rests! And, as if to show how happily these rival writers are matched against each other, the latter admitted it in reply, and proposed abortion and exposure as the remedies which, in his Utopia, must be adopted to counteract the power of population!

The direct object of Mr. Malthus's essay, in its original form, was to confute the opinions of Mr. Godwin in particular, and of all those persons in general, who believed that any material improvement in human society might be effected; and this object was thus accomplished by means of a technical sophism, and a physical assumption, as false in philosophy as pernicious in morals. The essay, however, in this state, was consistent with itself. But the author, being a man of decorous life and habits, began to suspect that, to deny the existence of such a virtue as chastity, was neither compatible with the well-being of the community in which he lived, nor with public decency-nor, setting these considerations aside, with facts which necessarily fall within the sphere of every man's knowledge. In his second edition, therefore, he recognises the existence of this virtue, admitting, in express terms, that "moral restraint," or, in other words, sexual continence, is "a virtue clearly dictated by the light of nature, and expressly enjoined by revealed religion:" and with an inconsistency which it would be difficult to parallel, retaining all his arguments against Mr. Godwin in the beginning of the book, he proposes a scheme at the end for abolishing the poor rates by means of this very virtue, upon the denial of which the whole of his preceding argument is founded!

It is this scheme, with its accompanying doctrine, which rendered it necessary to recur to Mr. Malthus on this occasion; for if the doctrines were true, it would be hopeless to seek for any alleviation of existing misery:-the certain and speedy consequence of his remedy will soon be pointed out. We are overstocked with people, he says, and not only are so at present, but always have been, and always must be so. "In every age, and in every state in which man has existed, or does now exist, the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence." "The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that unless arrested by preventive checks, premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers

of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in their war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence and plagues, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world." The checks which keep the population down to the level of the means of subsistence are moral restraint, vice and misery, and "the truth is, that though human institutions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, they are, in reality, light and superficial in comparison with those deeper-rooted causes of evil which result from the laws of nature." According, therefore, to Mr. Whitbread's " eminent philosopher," all the existing plagues of the world, war, pestilence, misery, and vice, in all its forms, are necessary, as preventive checks, to counteract the principle of population! A new mode of proving the necessity and utility of evil, with the comfortable corollary that it is in its nature irremediable.

There are, indeed, some persons who may be disposed to demur at Mr. Malthus's theory, remembering that it is written in the Book of Genesis, " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." Such persons might be inclined to believe, that till the earth shall have been, in obedience to this command, replenished and subdued, if in any part of it production is not made to keep pace with population, the cause is to be ascribed to the errors or defects of human policy, and not to any inherent evil in the laws of nature. But the Malthusians observe, in reply to such objections, that the new discovery is matter of science, and that the Mosaic account cannot be permitted to stand in the way of a demonstration. We ourselves remember to have heard one of these reasoners affirm, in answer to an assertion that this theory was inconsistent with the wisdom and goodness of Divine Providence, that if the two things were incompatible the consequence could not be avoided; the argument of the geometrical and arithmetical series was a demonstration, and Divine Providence must go to the wall. But there is a moral reductio ad absurdum which the man of enlightened piety feels to be demonstrative wherever it applies: he knows in his heart that whatever opinion is wholly and flagrantly inconsistent with the goodness of creating and preserving wisdom, must necessarily be false; and in this knowledge he cannot be deceived, for it is the voice of God which tells him so.

In reality, what is true in Mr. Malthus's book is not applicable,

and what is applicable is not true. It is true that the whole earth may be fully peopled to its utmost power of production, so as to admit of no farther increase; but this truth is as worthless as a jus merum in law, and admits of no possible application. The argu ment that if the world. were thus peopled, it could not continue so, because mankind, though in the highest conceivable state of perfection, would be incapable of restraining the sexual passion, an appetite of irresistible physical necessity, might be applicable a few millenniums hence, if it were true; but the position upon which it rests is false.

So much for the great discovery in political science! But these absurdities are far exceeded by the application which Mr. Malthus makes of moral restraint, after he has luckily recollected that such a virtue is in existence. He proposes, by means of this virtue, to put a salutary stop to the increase of the poor, and abolish the poor rates. The plan, to which he says he can see no material objection, is thus stated in his own words.

"I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance. And to give a more general knowledge of the law, and to enforce it more strongly on the minds of the lower classes of people, the clergyman of each parish should, previously to the solemnization of a marriage, read a short address to the parties, stating the strong obligation on every man to support his own children; the impropriety and even immorality of marrying without a fair prospect of being able to do this; the evils which had resulted to the poor themselves from the attempt which had been made to assist, by public institutions, in a duty which ought to be exclusively appropriated to parents; and the absolute necessity which had at length appeared of abandoning all such institutions, on account of their producing effects opposite to those which were intended. After the public notice which I have proposed had been given, and the system of poor laws had ceased with regard to the rising generation, if any man chose to marry without a prospect of being able to support a family, he should have the most perfect liberty so to do. Though to marry in this case is, in my opinion, clearly an immoral act, yet it is not one which society can justly take upon itself to prevent or punish; because the punishment provided for it by the laws of nature falls directly and most severely upon the individual who commits the act, and, through him, only more remotely and feebly on the society. When nature will govern and punish for us, it is a very miserable ambition to wish to snatch the rod from her hands, and draw upon ourselves the odium of executioners. To the punishment of nature, therefore, he should be left-the punishment of severe want. He has erred in the face of a most clear and precise warning, and can have no just reason to complain of any person but himself,

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