clude that this is "the sin that most easily "besets him." I can easily imagine that he has a sufficient command over himself, in all other respects. I can believe that he is quite free from the passions of anger, pride, avarice, sloth, drunkenness, envy, revenge, and all those other passions which create so much disturbance in the world. He seems never to have heard of, or never to have felt them; for he passes them over as trifles beneath the notice of a philosopher. But the women are the devil.The delights and torments of love no man, hè tells us, ever was proof against: there all our philosophy is useless; and reason but an empty name. "The rich golden shaft hath killed the " flock of all affections else,” and here only he is vulnerable. The smiles of a fair lady are to him irresistible; the glimpse of a petticoat throws him into a flame; and all his senses are up in arms, and his heart fails within him, at the very name of love. His gallantry and devotion to the fair sex know no bounds; and he not only answers for himself, but undertakes to prove that all men are made of the same combustible materials. His book reminds one of the title of the old play, " All for love, " or the world well lost." If Mr. M.'s passions are too much for him, (though I should not have the worse opinion of him on this account)

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I would advise him to give vent to them in writing love-songs; not in treatises of philosophy. I am aware, however, that it is dangerous to meddle in such matters. As long as Mr. Malthus gravely reduces the strength of the passion to a mathematical certainty, he is sure to have the women on his side; while I, for having the presumption to contradict his amorous conclusions, shall be looked upon as a sour old batchelor, and convicted of rebellion against the omnipotence of love.

But to return. It is the direct object of Mr. Malthus's philosophy to draw our attention from the slight and superficial influence which human institutions have had on the happiness of man, to those "deeper-seated" causes of misery which arise out of the principle of population. These, he says, are by far the most important, and the only ones worth our attending to, because they are the only ones on which all our reasonings and all our exertions will have no effect. He very roundly taxes Mr. Godwin and others as men who talked about what they did not understand, because they did not perceive that social institutions, and the different forms of government, and all the other means in our power of affecting the condition of human life are " but as the dust " in the balance," compared with a principle entirely out of our power, which renders the vices of those institutions necessary, and any. essential improvement in them hopeless. He is also angry with Hume for saying something about " indolence." We are in no case to look beyond the principle of population, in accounting for the state of man in society, if we would not fall under Mr. Malthus's displeasure, but are to resolve every thing into that. In his hands, population is the Aaron's rod which swallowed up all the other rods. The piety of some of the old divines led them to see all things in God: Mr. Malthus's self-complacency leads him to see all things in the Essay. He would persuade us that his discovery supersedes all other discoveries; that it is the category of political science; that all other causes of human happiness and misery are merged and sunk in that one, to which alone they owe their influence, and their birth. So that we are in fact to consider all human institutions, good, bad, and indifferent, all folly, vice, wisdom, virtue, knowledge, ignorance, liberty and slavery, poverty and riches, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, polygamy, celibacy, all forms and modes of life, all arts, manufactures, and science, as resulting mechanically from this one principle; which though simple in itself, yet in its effects is a jumble, a chaos of contradictions, a mass of inconsistency and absurdity, which no human understanding can unravel, or explain. Over this crew and medley of opinions, Mr. Malthus "sits umpire, and by decision more embroils the fray by which he reigns :" for he is not quite undetermined in his choice between good and evil, but is always inclined to give the preference to vice and misery, not only as the most natural, but as the most safe and salutary effects of this principle, as we prescribe a low diet and blisters to persons of too full a temperament. "Our greatest good " is but plethoric ill." - Mr. Malthus may perhaps plead in his own defence that at the outset of his work (second edition) he professes to treat only of one of the causes which have hitherto impeded the progress of virtue and happiness, and that he was not therefore, by the terms of the agreement, bound to take cognizance of any of the other causes which have tended to produce the same effect. He is like a man who takes it into his head to make a huge map of Scotland, (larger than any that ever was made of the whole world besides) and gives you into the bargain as much or as little of Ireland or the rest of Great Britain as he pleases. Any one else who chuses, may make map of England or Ireland on the same scale. There is something fair and plausible in this. But the fact really is, that Mr. Malthus will let nobody make a map of the country but himself: he has put England, Wales, and Ireland in the three corners of his great map (for the title takes up one of the corners) and he insists upon it that this is quite sufficient.What he aims at in all his plans and calculations of existing grievances is to magnify the evils of population, to exonerate human institutions, and to throw the whole blame on nature herself. I shall therefore try to give such a sketch, or bird's-eye view of the subject as may serve to shew the unfairness of our author's statement. How little he has confined himself to his professed object, and how little he can be considered in the light of a jointinquirer after truth, will be seen by quoting the following passages at large.

"The great error under which Mr. Godwin "labours throughout his whole work is, the "attributing of almost all the vices and misery "that prevail in civil society to human insti"tutions. Political regulations, and the esta"blished administration of property are with " him the fruitful sources of all evil, the hot" beds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. "Were this really a true state of the case, it