17. Whether Mr. Malthus has not been too much disposed to consider the rich as a sort of Gods upon earth, who were merely employed in distributing the goods of nature and fortune among the poor, who themselves neither ate nor drank, ‘neither married nor were given in marriage,’ and consequently were altogether unconcerned in the limited extent of the means of subsistence, and the unlimited increase of population?
18. Lastly, whether the whole of the reverend author’s management of the principle of population and of the necessity of moral restraint, does not seem to have been copied from the prudent Friar’s advice in Chaucer?
‘Beware therefore with lordes for to play,
Singeth Placebo:—
To a poor man men should his vices tell,
But not to a lord, though he should go to hell.’
END OF POLITICAL ESSAYS
ADVERTISEMENT AND BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTES
FROM
THE ELOQUENCE OF THE BRITISH SENATE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
This work was published in two 8vo volumes in 1807 with the following title-page: ‘The Eloquence of the British Senate; or, Select Specimens from the Speeches of the most Distinguished Parliamentary Speakers. From the beginning of the Reign of Charles I. to the Present Time. With Notes, Biographical, Critical, and Explanatory. Two Volumes. London: Printed for Thomas Ostell, No. 3, Ave Maria Lane, Ludgate St. 1807.’ In the following year the work appeared with another title-page, which contains the same title, and proceeds ‘By William Hazlitt. In Two Volumes. London: Printed for J. Murray, Fleet-Street, and J. Harding, St. James’s-Street, London; and A. Constable and Co., Edinburgh. 1808.’