30 HISTORICAL 



to suggest. 1 Southey and Coleridge represent this view ; the 

 former attacked the Essay more than once with considerable 

 violence.^ Cobbett made himself prominent among the critics by 

 inventing the sobriquet ' Parson ' Malthus. It occurs in the 

 following passage. 



' Why,' said I, ' how many children do you reckon to have had 

 at last ? ' 



' I do not care how many,' said the man, ' God never sends 

 mouths without sending meat.' 



' Did you never hear,' said I, ' of one Parson Malthus ? ' 



' No, sir.' 



* If he were to hear of your works, he would be outrageous, for 

 he wants an Act of Parliament to prevent poor people from 

 marrying young, and from having such lots of children.' 



' Oh, the brute,' exclaimed the wife, while the husband laughed, 

 thinking I was joking,^ 



Hazlitt, who may be classed as a radical, was one of the most 

 violent of the opponents. Indeed, as Mr. Bonar says, ' Malthus 

 was the best abused man of his age.' * 



The Essay early became known on the Continent. As far as 

 Germany was concerned, this was attributable, according to von 

 Mohl, to a w^ork by Luden.^ During the lifetime of Malthus the 

 violence of the opposition gradually weakened and the principle 

 was very generally accepted. For many years such opposition 

 as there was was based rather on religious grounds than upon an 

 understanding of true weaknesses of the theory. Nevertheless 

 Sumner, who was afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and 

 Thomas Chalmers in early days both proclaimed their adherence 

 to the principle.^ In 1840 three books were published which each 

 attacked the principle on religious grounds. Of the authors, 

 Sadler was a Churchman without apparently any strong political 



• It is thus curious to find that the Essay was highly praised by Joseph de 

 Maistre — one of the greatest of conservatives of this or of any age : see Du Pape, 

 Bk. Ill, ch. iii, section 3, where the Essay is called ' un profond ouvrage ' . . . 

 ' un des livres rares apres lesquels tout le monde est dispense de traiter le meme 

 sujet'. Yet in 1856 the Dictionnaire de VEconomie Politique was put upon the 

 Index because it supported the conclusions of the Essay. 



2 See, for instance, Aitken's Annual Review, vol. ii, 1803, p. 292. ' Quoted 



by Leslie Stephen, English Utilitarians, vol. ii, p. 255. * Bonar, loc. cit., p. I. 



^ Luden, Handhuch der Staatstveisheit oder Politik. Von Mohl gives a useful 

 review of the literature following upon the publication of the Essay {Die Geschichte 

 und Literatur der Staatsmssenschaften, vol. iii, p. 480, and Handworterbuch der 

 Staatswissenschaften, vol. ii, p. 955). 



" Sumner, A Treatise on the Records of Creation and the Moral Attributes of 

 the Creator ; Chalmers, On Political Economy in connexion with the Moral State 

 and Moral Prospects of Society. 



