298 
own. All that Mr. Malthus has done 
is to prove that radical evil in’ society 
which his whole work is designed to pal- 
liate. 
Till the whole earth be peopled to its 
utmost capacity, it is the fault of man 
if any check to population exist, except 
such as are dispensed by the elements 
and the operations of physical nature : 
his moral nature is in his own power, 
and it hath been said, ‘* Be ye perfect, 
even as your father in heaven is perfect.” 
So much for Mr. Malthus’s argument 
against the hopes-of the human race! 
It has been demonstrated that all checks 
to population, till the power of produc- 
tion can be pushed no farther, and actual 
room for farther increase be wanting, 
must be attributed to error and igno- 
rance im man, not to wnerring nature 
and omniscient goodness. When that 
point has been reached, it has been de- 
monstrated that the practice. of one 
virtue will secure the happiness of man- 
kind and render it permanent. Either 
chastity is possible, or it is not; in the 
one case his argument has been shown 
to be groundless, in the other inapplica- 
ble : one of the horns of this dilemma 
must wound him, and either wound 
smust be mortal. He has played off his 
positive check and his preventive check, 
but they have not saved him from this 
check-mate. 
By these miserable sophisms Mr. 
Malthus has obtained the high reputa- 
tion which he at present enjoys; his 
book having become the political bible 
of the rich, the selfish, and the sensual; 
nor need we wonder that so contemp- 
tible a book should have produced so 
much mischief: if the body be corrupt 
and predisposed to mortification, a 
scratch will occasion death. But to our 
utter astonishment we find that, though 
in this present edition the author has re- 
tained and enlarged all these arguments, 
and insisted upon their application ; at 
the end of the volume he admits every 
thing which he has controverted in the 
beginning, and is clearly and coniessed- 
ly a convert to the doctrine of the perfec- 
tibility of man! He draws a picture of 
ehristian society, in which the well being 
of all is founded upon this very virtue of 
chastity, the non-existence of which was 
to destroy all the theories of Godwin 
and Condorcet. 
“The difficulty of moral restraint, will 
perhaps be objected to this doctrine. To 
him who does not acknowledge the authority 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. 
of the christian religion, I have only to say, 
that, after the most careful investigation, this 
virtue ‘appears to be absolutely necessary, in 
order to avoid certain evils which would 
otherwise result from the general laws of 
nature. According to his own principles, it 
is his duty to pursue the greatest good con- 
sistent with these laws ; and not to fail ia 
this important end, and produce an over- 
balance of misery, by a partial obedience to 
some of the dietates of nature while he neg- 
lects others. ‘The path of virtue, though it 
be the only path which leads to permanent 
happiness, has always been represented by 
the heathen moralists, as of difficult ascent. 
“‘ To the christian E would say, that the 
scripturés most clearly and precisely point 
it out to us as our duty, to restrain our pas- 
sions within the bounds of reason ; and it is 
a palpable disobedience of this law, to in- 
dulge our desires in such a manner, as reason 
tells us, will unavoidably end in misery. 
The christian cannot consider the difficulty 
of moral restraint as any argument against 
its being his duty ; since in almost every page 
of the sacred writings, man is described as 
encompassed on all sides by temptations, 
which it is extremely difficult to resist ; and 
though no duties are enjoined, which do not 
contribute to his happiness on earth as well 
as in a future state, yet an undeviating obe- 
dience is never represented as an easy task.” 
«In a society, such as I have supposed, 
all the members of which endeavour to attain 
happiness by obedience to the moral code, 
derived from the light of nature, and enforced 
by strong sanctions in revealed religion, it is 
evident that no such marriages could take 
place ; and the prevention of a redundant 
population, in this way, would remove one 
of the principal causes, and certainly the 
sitbetigeil ction of offensive war ; and at the 
same time tend powerfully to eradicate those 
two fatal political disorders, internal tyran- 
ny and internal tumult, which mutually pro- 
duce each other. 
«¢ Weak in offensive war, in a war of de- 
fence, such a society would be strong as a 
rock of adamant. Where every family pos- 
sessed the necessaries of life in plenty, and 
a decent portion of its comforts and conve- 
niences, there could not exist that hope of 
change, or at best that melancholy and dis- 
heartening indifference to it, which some- 
times prompts the lower classes of people 
to say, ‘let what will come, we cannot 
be worse off tian we are now.’ Every 
heart and hand would be united to repel an 
invader, when‘each individual felt the value 
of the solid advantages which he enjoyed, 
and a prospect of change presented only a 
prospect of being de rived of them. 
«« As it appears, therefore, that it is in the 
power of each individual to avoid all the evil 
consequences to himself and society resuilt- 
ing from the principle of population, by the 
practice of a virtue clearly dictated to him 
by the light of nature, and expressly enjoined 
