Images de page
PDF
ePub

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 a 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

"would not seem an absolutely hopeless task "to remove evil completely from the world; "and reason seems the proper and adequate

instrument for effecting so great a purpose. "But the truth is, that though human institu"tions appear to be the obvious and obtrusive 66 causes of much mischief to mankind, they are, in reality, light and superficial, in com

[ocr errors]

66

parison with those deeper-seated causes "of evil which result from the laws of "nature,"

Now by "the laws of nature," of which human institutions are here made only a sort of cat's-paw, our author means neither more nor less than the principle of population. For after supposing, in compliment to Mr. Godwin, a state of society in which the spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, in which envy, malice, and revenge, in which every species of narrowness and selfishness are banished from the world, where war and contention have ceased to exist, where unwholesome trades and manufactures are no longer encouraged, &c. he breaks out into his usual cant of, "I cannot conceive a form of

society so favourable upon the whole to po66 pulation." He then proceeds gravely to shew, by a train of reasoning which has been already

« PrécédentContinuer »