296 
iscience and virtue, but to expose the 
‘utter ungroundedness of the writer’s spe- 
culation ; adding, however, that if we be- 
lieved with Mr. Malthus’s warmest par- 
tizans, that men never will in general 
be capable of regulating the sexual ap- 
petite by the law of reason, and that the 
gratification of lust is a thing of physical 
necessity, equally with the gratification 
of hunger, (a faith which we should 
laugh at for its silliness, if its wicked- 
ness had not pre-excited abhorrence) 
-nothing would be more easy than to 
‘demonstrate that abortion, or the expo- 
sure of chilcren, or artificial sterility on 
the part of the male, would become 
virtues :—a thought which we turn from 
with loathing, but not with greater 
‘loathing than we do from the degrading 
theory of which it would be a legitimate 
consequence. By a yet stronger incon- 
sequence, this theory (so far as it is aim- 
ed against the hopes of the progressive 
improvement of mankind) pleads for the 
.existence, not only of these vices, but of 
-a thousand others, and of the brutal 
ignorance and misery, the production of 
wwhich does alone render these actions 
crimes; it pleads for the continuance of 
all this misery whercof these very vices 
form apart, in order to prevent that 
tate of society, in which, admitting 
one or other of these actions after the 
birth of every second or third child, the 
whole earth might be imagined filled to 
‘its utmost extent with enlightened and 
happy beings. 
If then Mr. Malthus's reasoning were 
just, the application would be absurd, 
for what can be more absurd than to 
ab:undon all hope of this attainable state 
of happiness because certain evils would 
exist in it, and therefore to remain con- 
tented with the continuance of -those 
very evils, and of all the other evils 
which, upon the admitted hypothesis, 
would be removed? What should we 
say to the physician who should object 
to the cow-pox, and to all remedies for 
scroft:la and syphilis, for fear that when 
these diseases were annihilated, men 
should become plethoric and subject to 
apoplexy from excess of health? 
But the reasoning is as absurd as the 
application; the whole proceeds upon the 
assumption, that lust and hunger are 
alike passions of physical necessity, and 
the one equally with the othér indepen- 
dent of the reason and the will. If 
this were true, chastity could not exist ; 
fornication would be as indispensable as 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. 
food, every single man must be a br 
theller, every single woman a strum 
There lives not a wretch corrupt enough 
of heart, and shameless enough of front 
to say that this is so: there lives not a 
man who can look upon his wife and his 
daughter, who can think upon his sister, 
and remember her who bore him, with-— 
out feeling indignation and resentment. 
that he Rate be insulted by so infa~ 
mous an assertion. But if the possibility 
of chastity be admitted (and it will be 
seen that Mr. Malthus does hereafter 
fully admit it) the whole argument 
against the system of equality, against 
the perfectibility, or to use a more ac- 
curate and less obnoxious term, the im- 
proveability of man, falls to the ground. 
Mr. Godwin has been knecked down by 
the wind of the pop-gun, the pellet has 
missed him. Drawcansir is driven off 
the stage, and his enemies may get “up 
and dance. , 
Having thus rescued the philosopher 
from the Philistines, let us try the truth 
of Mr. Malthus’s principle as applied 
against all those who hope for any refor- 
mation in the state of society. 
er hr eee eee se C! 
‘*« The power of population is so superior 
to the power in the earth to produce subsis- 
tence for man, that, unless arrested by the 
preventive check, premature death must in 
some shape or other visit the human race. 
The vices of mankind are active and able 
minisiers of depopulation. They are the 
precursors in the great army of destruction, 
and ofien finish the dreadful work them- 
selves. . But should they fail in this war of 
extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, 
pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific 
array, and sweep off their thousands and ten 
thousands. Should success be still incom- 
plete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the 
rear, and, with one mighty blow, levels the 
population with the food of the world. 
«© Must it not then be acknowledged, by 
an attentive examiner of the histories of man- 
kind, that, in every age, and in every state 
in which man has existed, or does now exist, 
«« The increase of population is necessari~ 
ly limited by the means of subsistence? 
«« Population invariably increases when 
the means of subsistence increase, unless 
prevented by powerful and obvious checks. 
“© These checks, and the checks which 
keep the population down to the level of the 
means of subsistence, are, moral restraint, 
yice, and misery,” ' 
* * * * 
*€ The great error under which Mr. God 
win labours, thronghout his whole work, is, 
the attributing of almost all the vices and 
misery that prevail in civil society to human 
institutions, Political regulations, and the 
