1831.] Mr. Sadler and the Political Economists. 531 



and throw down their arms. This is now happening Old Blue-and- 

 Yellow is the last in the field, and he, perchance, may fight [like the 

 Parthians ; but run he must, or strike. 



To convey the spirit of Mr. Sadler's stupendous work that is its 

 leading bearings is as much as we can accomplish within our neces- 

 sarily circumscribed limits. It will be well to begin with his great ele- 

 mentary principle, which is a direct refutation of the fundamental doctrine 

 of the Malthusian system. The main and primary position is, that as 

 the numbers of mankind increase the tendency to increase diminishes, 

 thereby assuming that procreation contains within itself the elements 

 of correction, by the mysterious operation of which its due progress is 

 rectified. This position is not mere statement, or theory. It is the 

 sum of many complicated calculations ; it is the result of such a mass 

 of population returns as were never before collected into any work 

 professedly statistical; and it is sustained by tabular evidences to 

 which it is as impossible to refuse conviction as it would be to offer re- 

 futation. 



If the propagation of our species be checked by an agency in nature 

 itself, and that it never can exceed the amount of vegetable life through 

 which and by which it is sustained, then the whole system of political 

 economy which mistakes the meaning of capital, and proceeds upon an 

 erroneous apprehension of existing or approaching super-fecundity, is 

 utterly false. To attain the means of settling that question for ever is a 

 signal blessing to mankind : and even if this Law of Population accom- 

 plished no more, it would be for this alone entitled to our gratitude. 



Our readers will remember that Mr. Malthus maintains the geometric 

 ratio in the propagation of the human race, and the arithmetical ratio in 

 that of vegetable life. Now Mr. Sadler maintains that the prolificness 

 of human beings, otherwise similarly circumstanced, varies inversely as 

 their numbers; or in the words of Old Blue-and- Yellow, who unluckily 

 for himself has made his opponent's principle so clear to his readers as 

 to neutralize his own arguments, that " on a given space, the number of 

 children to a marriage becomes less and less, as the population becomes 

 more and more numerous/' Extend this doctrine to nations, con- 

 tinents, and finally to the whole world, and you have the substance of 

 Mr. Sadler's Law of Population. It is at once evident that it differs as 

 widely as pole from pole from the Malthusian system ; that it distinctly 

 controverts its first and great doctrine ; and that it derives no aids from 

 appeals to the credulity, the passions, the interest, or the fears of man- 

 kind. In the latter theory there was, to speak tolerantly of it, a vast 

 deal of twaddle ; it affected to argue upon moral possibilities ; to draw 

 lessons of human self-control from instances of individual self-con- 

 quest ; it demanded assent to assertions without proofs, and passed 

 on to its final deduction, (that the days, the numbers, and the hap- 

 piness of mankind ought to be curtailed,) through a sort of trellice- 

 work of sophistry and sentiment, in which the facts that were mixed 

 up were only seen at intervals as they flitted through. On the other 

 hand, in Mr. Sadler's work, whatever enthusiasm there may be, and 

 there is much and it is right there should be a lofty and glorious 

 enthusiasm in such a cause the reader, be his prejudices in favour of, 

 or against, the principle, is never irritated by a display of zeal without 

 knowledge, or of statistical argument without documentary substantia- 

 tion in other words, Mr. Sadler never asks belief in a single principle, 



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