The Sun.
London, England, 1822-02-05 00:00:00

FOR THE SUN.

The MALTHUS SCHOOL of POLITICAL ECONOMY.
[LETTER VI.I

" To bestow alms, to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry,
" to shelter the houseless, to snatch the expiring victini from
" the jaws of death ; these always merit, and the world is al-
" ways so just as to give them, unequivocal praise. But-far
" gruater is the praise due to those who endeavour to provide,
" or who cause to be provided, the means of preventing naked-
" ness, hunger, and destitution of shelter. This is true charity ;
" this is what our country and the Laws of God call for at our
" hands."—Cobbctt's Monthly Sermons, p. 91.

MR. EDITOR—In my last letter, I intimated
that Mr. Malthus and I, though intent on the
'ame pursuit2--namely, the substitution of moral
restraint for vice and misery, as a check upon an
increase of population disproportioned to the
means of comfortable subsistence, were about to
separate at a certain point to which I had cheer-
fully anti pleasurably accompanied him. I have
subscribed to the correctness of the proposition su b-
stantiall y stated in several passages of the Essay,
that moral restraint is found to have the strongest
influence upon those persons who have something
valuable to lose, and a reasonable prospect of
improving their condition ; while it is seldom, if
ever, that the wretchedly poor give themselves
much concern as to the remote consequences of
their actions.

It is when Mr. Malthus (after having critically
reviewed a great variety of plans and suggestions,
some of them for mitigating, and others for
wholly removing the evils of poverty) proceeds
to favour us with his own plan, that I find myself
compelled to reject his guidance, under a per-
suasion that he would reconduct me to the Ser-
honian Bog, from which I had so happily escap-
ed. Many of his criticisms upon the schemes of
other writers arc themselves very liable to criti-
cism, as I may perhaps endeavour to prove here-
after.

I have not judged it expedient to take the
ground upon which Mr. Godwin combated the
doctrines of Mr. Malthus, because, as I have ir-
refragably proved, there was not the smallest oc-
casion to deny thepower of procreation to double
the number of a community in a very limited
period of time, in order to overthrow the basis of
Mr. Malthus's Theory. When a question regard-
ing human powers is agitated, we are apt to esti-
mate our own strength, and looking at home, I
found that we had more than quadrupled our
numbers in the course of about seventeen years.
Such an obtrusive illustration of the mete power
of increase did, I confess, predispose me to ad-
mit, without much hesitation, the fact alleged
by Mr. Malthus, that under the most
.favour-
able circumstances, mankind may double their
numbers in the space of twenty-five years ;
and therefore, I did not much relish the
idea of resting the argument against the Malthus
theory upon a negation of the before mentioned
power. To my great joy, I found that there was
not the smallest occasion to attack a position so
strongly fortified by numerous tables, the mate-
rials of which had been collected with wonderful
pains, and arranged with considerable skill. To
have adopted that plan of operation would, I
clearly perceived, have protracted the war to an
indefinite period, and after all would not have
afforded an assurance of` ultimate success. On
closely and minutely reconnoitring the enemy's
works, I found, (as I have said, to my great joy)
that his whole force and attention had been be-
stowed upon the defence of his front ;—that he
had totally neglected his rear ; and that I had
nothing more to do than to march boldly in by a
good road, which he had himself put into excel-
lent repair, and to take undisputed possession of
his citadel. There lam at this blessed moment.
My flag is flying ever the turret,—you, my
good friend, are kindly conveying on sun beams
the news of the victory ; and I defy Mr. Mal-
thus, and all his host, horse and foot, light-armed
and heavy, with their field pieces and battering
train, to dislodge me while sun, moon, and stars
endure.

Mr. Godwin says, " the only substantial evidence which
has been collected on this branch of political economy, teaches
us, that the numbers of mankind have no permanent tendency
to increase." (He qualifies this assertion a little in a note.)
" The population of Europe, of Asia, of Africa, is at best at a
stand. In some countries it is certainly diminished; and we
have, I believe, no sound reason to think, that in any it has
increased. The solitary example of North America is pro-
duced against this mighty mass of experience,. North Ame-
rica, a country which for a century past has been the recep-
tacle of almost all the emigrations that have been made from
all parts of the world. Even in North America, the inhabi-
tants of the British dominions have not increased, and the
negroes have not increased. A man must be the free citizen of
a republic before he is entitled to the benefit,—for a benefit
there it is considered to be, of the geometrical ratio."—p. M)2.
Now I honestly confess, that I felt very tot-
terish on Mr. Godwin's ground : because I was
aware of the process by which, it might be cut
away from under my feet. Mr. Malthus would
have only to say, I have proved that in some
cases (that is, under the most,favourable circum-
stances) mankind have been known to double
their numbers in 25 years. Here then we have
the geometrical ratio. I never asserted that po-
pulation every where always has doubled ; but
the reason that this has not happened, is because
their numbers are diMinished by vice and mi-
sery, except where, as in America, circumstances
are favourable to the progressive increase of the
means of subsistence. Where this is not the
case, I do not say that children die from starva-
tion soon after they are born, and that the streets
are strewed with their carcases : hut I do say,
that a scanty supply of food, and the vices and
wars engendered by poverty and cui.idity,
are the causes which fully account for the fact
stated by Mr. Godwin, (if a fact it be) that the
population of Europe, of Asia, and of Africa, is
at a stand. This Mr. Malthus might have said,
and 1 rather think something to that eliect has
been said for him ; and; if Mr. Godwin shall
persist in denying the power of increase, and
shall labour to justify the assertion by popula-
tion returns, I promise him, he, and his friend
David Booth, will have employment for the rest
of their days. It is, alas, but too true, that vice
and misery, disease and war, have hurried, and
continue to hurry, vast numbers of mankind to a
premature grave. And such is the imperfection
of the science of statistics in most countries, that
there will be little difficulty (beyOnd the labour
of procuring them) in raising piles of antagonist
censuses to the height of a first floor, I have she w u

him a more excellent way of dealing with Mr.
Malthus;—namely, that of making him refute
himself.

But, although I have not derived the smallest
aid from that part of Mr. Godwin's Treatise
upon. which he has bestowed the most pains,
I shall be proud to avail myself of several
glowing passages, which cost him nothing more
than the trouble of writing them, as they flowed
spontaneously from the exhuberant stores of his
cultivated mind.
" The proper tendency of Mr. Nialthus's System (says Mr.
Godwin) is to persuade us to sit still, or rather to deliver our-
selves, bound hard and foot, into the hands of. the awful and
mysterious power that presides over those deeper seated causes
of evil, in comparison with which human institutions are mere
feathers that float on the surface. For, as I have already ob-
served, and this, M I apprehend, none of Mr. althus's disciples
will be disposed to contend with me, if human institutions can
do comparatively no harm, it must, in fairness and consistency
of reasoning, be adthited that they can do as little good."--
(p. 538.)
I must confess that the foregoing sen,
tence did not appear to me justly to describe the
character of Mr. Malthus's Essay-: but just at
present it strikes me as being a faithful por-
trait.

If you ask me, " Whence arises this vacillation
in your judgment I must reply, that it is owing
to the incongruities, or rather, to the palpable con-
trarieties, of which that work is composed:—Here
it is black as Erebus,—there, it is white.as ala-
baster; and, viewed at a certain distance, it is
difficult to say precisely what. is the colour .of
The effect of the tout ensemble, however, is far
from pleasing. N hen I am in Mr. Malthus's
company, I am like the man with his two wives,
—one old and ugly, the other young
,and pretty,
w'ro amused themselves alternately in plucking
from his grizzled head and beard—the old lady
all the bliick,—and the young bride bill the grey
hairs. Mr. Malthus dazzles and perplexes me by
shifting from side to side, and compels me to ring
constant changes upon the words, right, wrong,.
true, false, good, bad.—He. bends my mind this
way and that way,—pushes the forward, and puts
me back again, until I become comatose.
Mr. Godwin appears to have been somewhat
similarly affected by the Essay.
" To this doctrine of quietism, (says he) there can properly,
upon our author's principles, be but one limitation ; and that
is, from the consideration of the mischiefs to he apprehended
from all attempts at improvement. As the elder Cato con-
cluded all his speeches, upon whatever subject, in the Roman
Senate, with, Remember Carthage I So Mr. Malthus is bound
upon every occasion to lift his warning voice, and exclaim,
Remember Utopia ! Reject every measure, however specious in
its appearances, that looks that way I—The proper question
upon every new legislative proceeding that is suggested is,
does it not interfere with those causes which contribute, in what-
ever degree, to shorten the natural duration of human life'?"

" When he had done all this, however, and properly com-
pleted the mighty. web 'of his theory, there was a latent sen-
timent remaining in the author's mind that all was not right.
This doctrine of quietism, and of negatively presenting a front
of resistance against all improvements, hardly amounted to his
idea of a treatise upon Political Economy. He was accordingly
seized with the ordinary passion, that in ancient times modified
the obsolete systems of Plato and Aristotle, and became de-
sirous to be doing. Strangely, therefore, and with an incon-
sistency hardly to be accounted for, but from the original in-
firmity of our nature,

veteres arias
Tibi de puhnone revello,
towards the conclusion of his book he purposes to inquire res-
pecting our rational expectations with regard to the future
improvement of society.' The checks for which he has pleaded
through three ample volumes, strike him as somewhat too hor-
rible, and lie proposes certain restrictions to counteract these
checks.

" lle hes several very different ways which he proposes for
this end. They may all,howevcr be reduced to two The
securing that no child, and no human creature in the lower
walks of society, should be subsisted but by his own labour, or
that of his parents :—and, 2. The providing that the reward of
labour, and consequently the power of every man to subsist
either himself or his children, should, to the operating hand, be
reduced within the narrowest bounds.

These are the restrictions that Mr. Malthus proposes,
to check the excessive inroads of vice and misery upon man-
kind : and it may, therefore, reasonably be remarked that the
author of the Essay on Population has the talent to render his
benetits,no less odious than his injuries:'
" The first thing that Mr. Malthus attacks under this branch
of his subject, is the poor-laws of England, upon which he pro-
nounces the sweeping censure, that they are an evil, in compa-
rison of which the National Debt, with all its magnitude of
terror, is of little moment.

" Since, however, this tremendous evil of a legal provision
for the necessitous poor of England is in existence, Mr. Mal-
thus is, by all means, for its very gradual abolition.
" As a previous step to any considerable alteration in the
present system, it appears to our author, that we are bound, in
justice and honour, normally to disclaim the right of the poor
to support. And why have they no right ?'
" There was an old maxim, the repetition of which has been
attended with some compunction in the minds of the tender-
hearted and humane.--4 Ile that will not work neither shall he
eat.'

" But Mr. Malthus's rescription is of a very different sort,
and includes-1, Man in is infancy and childhood, whose little
hands are yet incapable o the labour that should procure him
the necessaries of life :--.9.d. The aged, whom length of years,
and the hardships they have Crkdured, have finally rendered as
feeble as helpless infancy :—:.ld. The sick, the cripple, the
maimed, and those wlio labour Under one or other of those dis-
eases which make the most fearful, part of the picture of human
life :-4th. Those who being both able and willing towork, are
vet, by the ill constitution of the society of which they are
members, or by some of those revolutions, to which, perhaps,
all societies are liable, unable to procure employment. These
are the persons whom, in justice and honour, we are bound to
inform that they have no claim of right to the assistance of
their prosperous neighbours.
" There is no nsed of informing them, that they have' no
right, tbunded in political law, to assistance, except in those
countries and to that extent, where, and to which .a provision is
made for that purpose as by the Poor Laws of England.
" But Mr. Malthus's appeal is to a very different jurisdic-
tion. lie denies that they have any right in morality to the as-
sistance of their neighbours.
"'There are two heads and springs of moral duty, as far as
this country of England is concerned ; the first of which is to
be found in the records of the Christian. Religion, and the other
in the instruction we derive from the light of Nature. I should
not think myself justifiable on the present occasion in overlook-
ing the first.
" The lessons of Christianity on. this subject are plain and.
incontrovertible. We are there taught to love our neighbours
as ourselves, and to do unto others as we would that they should
do unto us. -

" By Revelation we are instructed that wean stewards; not
proprietors, of the good things of this life ;—we are forbidden
to pamper our appetites or our vanity ;—we are commanded to
be feilow_w•orkeis with, and impartial ministers of, the bound,
ful principle of nature : and we are told that when we have
done all, we have done nothing of which we have any right to
boast.

" Such arc the dictates of the Christian Revelation in this
particular : And in all this there is nothing new—nothing that.
the light of nature did not as clearly and imperiously prescribe
to every one who was willing conscientiously to inquire into the
law of morality.
" We arc here then furnished with a complete answer to what
Mr. Malthus says in another place, that 'every man has aright
to do what he will with his own." '—Vol. 3, p. 222.
" Indeed, I was beyond measure astonished to find such a
sentence as this in a book professing itself to be a hook of
science,—and, in a pat of that book, treating of the rights of
human creatures.

" Mr. 3lalthus could scarcely intend by this any thing so fu-
tile as to inform his readers, that the laws of all civilized coun-
tries protect a man, and justly, in the exercise of his own discre-
tion as to the disposal of his property.
" Did the author propose then to be understood as speaking
as a moralist or a divine, when he said, Every man has a
right to do what lie will with his own ?'

fn every moral question,-or,it; other words, in every
question where the pleasure or pain, the happiness or unhappi-
ness of others is concerned, there is one thing which it is a
man's duty to do, end he has no right to do otherwise.
" The sick man, therefore, has no right to withhold his as-
sistance from his rother-man in distress, except in the sense
That he cannot reasonably be brought under the jurisdiction of

a court of justice, far his breach of tlle moral law in this
respect. _ _

The rights of any man, as to his treatment of his fellow--
man, are rights of discretion merely : in other words, that no
man must attempt to compel him to do that which it is his
duty to do. The appeal is exclusively to the judgment of bin
who is to act ; hut he is bound to inform his judgment to the
utmost of his power, and rigorously to adhere to the unbiassed
decisions of that judgment. So far is it from being true, that
every man has a right to do what he will with his own.'
4"rhese are the fundamental principles of moral law ; and
though they are so plain that the most uninstructed man may
comprehend them as soon as they are announced, they cannot
be repeated too often.
" Thus stood the principles of morality before Mr. Malthus
wrote his Essay on Population.
" The rich man believed in these principles : and though he
perpetually offended against them by the sums he wantonly
expended upon his appetites and his vanity, his conscience al-
ways reproached him. This was still something.
"'The poor man believed in these principles, and though he
saw how little tlley prevailed in the world at large, yet he had
the consolation to know what ought to be, and to compare it
with *hat was. lle knew that he could not, in law or mora-
lity, compel the rich to part with their superfluity ; but he did
not less know that the poor, that is, the infant, the helpless old,
the sick, and the man who cannot procure employment, has
right to support.
" In this belief he was borne out by the light of nature, and
by the Gospel. Neither the Evangelists, nor Apostles, nor the
Holy Spirit that inspired them, were aware that these maxims
were subvert!-..d by the principle of population.
" Mr. Malthus indeed, as far as he has succeeded in his
Essay, has changed the situation of the rich and the poor.
" To the poor he has taught that if they receive any relief,
they owe it nat_to any claim they had to relief, but to what he
sometimes calls the spontaneous charity and pure benevolence
of the rich ; though since, as he tells us, ' private charity
almost invariably leads to pernicious consequences ;' he should
have said, they owe it to the want of fortitude and firmness in
the rich, and to their vices.

" To the rich also he has read an important lesson. A great
portion of this class of society are sufficiently indisposed tQ acts
of charity, and eminently prone to the indulgence of their ap-
petites and their vanity.
" But hitherto they had secretly reproached themselves with
this, as an offence against GOD and Man. Mr. Malthus has►
been the first man to perform the grateful task of reconciling
their conduct and their consciences, and to shew them that
when they thought they were allowing themselves in vire, tY.y
were in reality conferring a most eminent and praise worthy
benctit upon the community." (p. 533 to 54f1)
Sir, it is, i find, dangerous to quote Mr. God-
win : it is like bestriding a fiery steed, from Whose
back you cannot dismount till it pleases him to
stop. Mr. Godwin has fairly run away with me
to the end of a chapter of his book, and I am too
much out of breath tQ add more than that
I remain, Dear Sir,
Your's truly,
Feb. 2, 3822. INDEX.

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THE s
•

SOLEN OUIS DICERE FALSUM AUDEAT

LONDON,
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1822.

MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

Ilis MAJESTY this day, at two o'clock, pro-
ceeded in state to the 'louse of Lords, in order
to open the Parliamentary Session. His MA'
JESTY was accompanied on his entrance into the
House by all the Great Officers of State and
of the Household, and ascended the Throne.
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod was
then ordered to command the attendance of the
House of Commons. The SPEAKER and a consi-
derable number of the Members immediately
after appeared at the Bar, and his INIATESTY des
livered the Speech from the TFnone, of which
the following is a correct and ample outline :
His MAJESTY begins with stating to the two
Houses, that lie has the satisfaction of informing
them that He continues to receive from Foreign
Powers the strongest assurances of their friendly
disposition to this Country.

He then states, that His endeavours have been
directed, in conjunction with His Allies, to the
settlement of the differences which have arisen
between the Courts of Russia and Turkey, and
entertains hopes that these differences will be
satisfactorily adjusted.
His MAJESTY then expresses the gratification}
which, on his late visit to Ireland, he derived
from the loyalty and attachment manifested by all
His Subjects, and remarks, that, with this im-
pression, it was matter of the deepest concern
to Him that a spirit of outrage, which has led to
daring and systematic violations of Law,has arisen,
and prevails, in some parts of that Country. He
avows His determination to use all the means in
His power for the protection of the PPrAons and
Property of the 1 oyal and peaceable, and sub-
mits to the immediate consideration of Parlia-
ment, whether the existing Laws are sufficient
for the purpose.

His MAJESTY then di.cia-es, that, notwith-
standing the interruption ofthe pablic tranquillity,
he has the satisfaction of believing that his pre-
sence in Ireland had been p .oductive of very
beneficial effects, and adds, that all descrip-
tions of ilis People might confidently rely on

the just and equal Administration of the Law,
and on His PatQrna.l Solicitude for their wel-
fare.

MS MAJESTY next states to the Howe of
Commons how much he is gratified to inform
them, that, during the last Year, the Revenue
has exceeded that of the preceding Year, and
appears to be progressively improving.
His MAJESTY acquaints them that he has di-
rected the Estimates 'to be laid before them,