1831.] Mr. Sadler and the Political Economists. 527 



tion ; but in proportion to the ignorance and lack of opportunity of the 

 people, is the responsibility of the hireling who, under a shew of 

 exposing fallacies and instructing his fellow men, daringly mis-states 

 the elementary principles of a new and untried philosophy, distrusts its 

 proofs, and crows on his own rank Scotch muck-midden, in all the 

 glee of victory. The rationale of this vast inquiry is as simple as that 

 two and two make four ; it cannot be vitiated even by stupid men, if 

 they can but repeat one brief sentence of ten words correctly ; for within 

 that compass, aye, within the metaphorical outline, in this case truly 

 made and provided, of a nut-shell, could the whole basis of the One 

 Truth be shut up. The multitudinous and laborious links of reasoning 

 by which this conclusion is attained are, however, of a different com- 

 plexion. They would engross in their own compilation the time of an 

 ordinary life spent in ordinary habits of research. The space they fill 

 voluminous as they are is as a shadow to the time they demand of 

 him who would honestly put his mind through the same exercise of 

 inquiry to which Mr. Sadler must have subjected himself. But our 

 Edinburgh Reviewer, who deals with those gigantic proofs as boys on 

 vaulting poles deal with mounds and ditches, by springing over them, 

 wisely avoided entering at full upon the bearings of the question ; but, 

 getting rid of some parts by a side-wind, mystifying others, deforming 

 not a few, and wholly suppressing the rest, contrived to perplex him- 

 self into the belief that the whole theory was insubstantial and untenable, 

 firstly, because he could not comprehend it, and secondly (and princi- 

 pally), because Old Blue-and- Yellow had years ago pledged himself to 

 the atrocities of the Malthusian system, and could not now retreat 

 without acknowledging, what your Scotch Whig never will acknowledge, 

 that he was for once in his life fallible. 



This is the Vanity of Vanities. This it is that makes intolerant 

 tolerance and bigotted liberalism so foul, and nauseous, and unseemly. 

 Now that this question of the Rights of the Poor for such it is, let the 

 economists marvel as they please has brought to issue the true nature 

 of men's Christian charities, the pureness of their Active Creeds, and 

 the strength, arid wisdom, and honesty of their political professions, we 

 find how the steam of pollution and falsehood rises round the oratorSj 

 pamphleteers, and reviewers, who in times past have been the advocates 

 of popular privileges, and the Oracles of damnatory prophecies against 

 all those who dared to think and move outside their circle. Who now 

 advocate the Rights of the Poor ? Who now stand up in their proper 

 places to redeem by practical deeds, at the moment when the exigencies 

 of famine and anarchy demand it of them, the solemn promises of their 

 cheap popularity ? Who are now to be found the Apostles of Hope 

 and Messengers of Good, dispensing in the season of want the suste- 

 nance granted in prospect when it was not wanted ? Where are they 

 to be found ? Do the Irish landlords succour the Irish poor who starve 

 and rot on their estates ? Do the Liberals oppose the crushing, diabo- 

 lical, selfish, grinding, and unnatural doctrines of Malthus ? Who are 

 the promoters of those doctrines ? Who are their enemies ? And who 

 is their Detector and Exposer? The last interrogatory concerns us 

 mainly here. The master mind that developed the ingenious sophistry 

 and laborious artfulness of the Malthusian system was a Tory no other 

 than Mr. Sadler ! The Malthusian system was essentially a defence of 

 a gilded and luxurious order of hereditary families that could never 



