Adverbs are for the most part words expressing the circumstance, manner, degree, &c., of an action, or attribute. Some of them, however, as the words No, Yes, are properly abbreviations of whole sentences, that is, convey assent to or dissent from an entire proposition. The last of these words is in fact the French verb, Ouis, I hear, used as an indeclinable term, that is, a term having a definite sense and meaning like declinable words, but not varied to adapt it to different situations, because it is restricted by custom to a particular application. The same account may be given of the other indeclinable words. Prepositions and conjunctions are either nouns or verbs expressing certain ideas like other nouns and verbs, but which are now used only for a particular purpose, and in a particular manner; that is to say, they are abruptly inserted between other words or sentences to join them together, and point out some such abstract relation between them as is implied in the original words themselves. So when we say All except John, we do not mean to address ourselves formally to any person who is to except or leave out John, though the preposition Except is undoubtedly the imperative mood of the same verb. We merely mean to convey the abstract idea, that John is to be excepted from the observation we have made, or that what is true of the others is not true of him. So the word From is a noun originally signifying Beginning, and now inserted before another noun to point it out as the source, cause, or first instance of any thing: as He speaks from (source) inspiration, or inspiration being the cause of his speaking. Interjections are the last class of indeclinable words, and they admit of a similar explanation. For they are merely words, conveying some sudden burst of passion, and left standing by themselves without any regular connection with the rest of the discourse. We also give an interjectional form to half sentences, when we are hurried on by passion into the middle of what we mean to express without making any preparation, as ‘Oh virtue! how amiable thou art! i.e. I cannot express how amiable thou art.’

We have thus gone through the different parts of the subject, in order to enable those who are conversant in such questions, to judge at one view of the merits or demerits of our plan. It is, we confess, a little different from others. But those, whose time is chiefly occupied in learning grammar, whether Latin or English, are not very strongly prejudiced in favour of established systems. The imperfections of those systems are obvious and unquestionable; and therefore an assiduous endeavour to improve upon them, and to place the fundamental articles of grammatical knowledge on a clearer and more intelligible footing without implicitly subscribing to error and absurdity merely because they are old, can scarcely fail to be received with favour, and examined with fairness, by competent judges.

NOTES

A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION

Thomas Robert Malthus’s (1766–1834) Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society was published anonymously in 1798. The second edition ‘very much enlarged’ appeared with the author’s name in a large 4to volume in 1803. For a sketch of Malthus’s life and doctrine and of the Malthusian controversy, see Sir Leslie Stephen’s The English Utilitarians, II. 137–185 and 238–259. The references in the following notes are to the second (1803) edition of the Essay. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay on Malthus in The Spirit of the Age, ante, pp. 287–298, and the last five essays in Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 356–385. A paper by De Quincey, entitled ‘Malthus,’ in the London Magazine for Oct. 1823, led to a brief controversy between De Quincey and Hazlitt, the particulars of which will be found in De Quincey’s Works (ed. Masson), IX. pp. 3, 20–31. Hazlitt’s Reply to Malthus was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for August 1810 (vol. xvi. p. 464), or rather, as Hazlitt complains, the title of his Reply was prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh ‘as a pretence for making a formal eulogy’ on Malthus’s work. Hazlitt thereupon wrote the following letter to Cobbett’s Political Register (Nov. 24, 1810, vol. xviii. p. 1014) under the heading ‘Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers’:—

‘Sir,—The title-page of a pamphlet which I published some time ago, and part of which appeared in the Political Register in answer to the Essay on Population, having been lately prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh Review as a pretence for making a formal eulogy on that work, I take the liberty to request your insertion of a few queries, which may perhaps bring the dispute between Mr. Malthus’s admirers and his opponents, to some sort of issue. It will, however, first of all be proper to say something of the article in the Review. The writer of the article accuses the ‘anonymous’ writer of the reply to the Essay, of misrepresenting and misunderstanding his author, and undertakes to give a statement of the real principles of Mr. Malthus’s work. He at the same time informs us for whom this statement is intended, namely, for those who are not likely even to read the work itself, and who take their opinions on all subjects moral, political, and religious, from the periodical reports of the Edinburgh Review. For my own part, what I have to say will be addressed to those who have read Mr. Malthus’s work, and who may be disposed to form some opinion of their own on the subject.—The most remarkable circumstance in the Review is, that it is a complete confession of the force of the arguments which have been brought against the Essay. The defence here set up of it may indeed be regarded as the euthanasia of that performance. For in what does this defence consist but in an adoption, point by point, of the principal objections and limitation, which have been offered to Mr. Malthus’s system; and which being thus ingeniously applied to gloss its defects, the Reviewer charges those who had pointed them out with misrepresenting and vilifying the author? In fact, the advocates of this celebrated work do not at present defend its doctrines, but deny them. The only resource left them is that of screening its fallacies from the notice of the public by raising a cry of misrepresentation against those who attempt to expose them, and by holding a mask of flimsy affectation over the real and distinguishing features of the work. Scarcely a glimpse remains of the striking peculiarities of Mr. Malthus’s reasoning, his bold paradoxes dwindle by refined gradations into mere harmless common-places, and what is still more extraordinary, an almost entire coincidence of sentiment is found to subsist between the author of the essay and his most zealous opponents, if the ignorance and prejudices of the latter would but allow them to see it. Indeed the Edinburgh Reviewer gives pretty broad hints that neither friends nor foes have ever understood much of the matter, and kindly presents his readers for the first time, with the true key to this much admired production. He accordingly proceeds with considerable self-complacency to translate the language of the essay into the dialect of the Scotch school of economy, to put quite on one side the author’s geometrical and arithmetical ratios, which had wrought such wonders, to state that Mr. Malthus never pretended to make any new discovery, and to quote a passage from Adam Smith, which suggested the plan of his work; to shew that this far-famed work which has been so idly magnified, and so unjustly decried as overturning all the commonly received axioms of political philosophy, proves absolutely nothing with respect to the prospects of mankind or the means of social improvement, that the sole hopes either of the present or of future generations do not centre (strange to tell!) in the continuance of vice and misery, but in the gradual removal of these, by diffusing rational views of things and motives of action, and particularly by ameliorating the condition, securing the independence, and raising the spirit, of the lower classes of society; and finally that both the extent of population, and the degree of happiness enjoyed by the people of any country depend very much upon, and, as far as there is any difference observable between one country or state of society and another, are wholly regulated by political institutions, a good or bad government, moral habits, the state of civilization, commerce, or agriculture, the improvements in art or science, and a variety of other causes quite distinct from the sole mechanical principle of population. And, this Sir, is what the Reviewer imposes on his unsuspecting readers as the sum and substance, the true scope and effect of Mr. Malthus’s reasoning. It is in truth an almost literal recapitulation of the chief topics insisted on in the Reply to the Essay, which the Reviewer seems silently to regard as a kind of necessary supplement to that work.—In this account it is evident, both that Mr. Malthus’s pretentions as an original discoverer are given up by the Reviewer, and that his obnoxious and extravagant conclusions are carefully suppressed. Now with regard to the general principle of the disproportion between the power of increase in population, and in the means of subsistence, and the necessity of providing some checks, moral or physical, to the former, in order to keep it on a level with the means of subsistence, I have never in any instance called in question either of “these important and radical facts,” which it is the business of Mr. M.’s work to illustrate. All that I undertook in the Reply to the Essay was to disprove Mr. Malthus’s claim to the discovery of these facts, and to shew that he had drawn some very false and sophistical conclusions from them, which do not appear in the article in the Review. As far therefore as relates to the Edinburgh Reviewers, and their readers, I might consider my aim as accomplished, and leave Mr. Malthus’s system and pretensions in the hands of these friendly critics, who will hardly set the seal of their authority—on either one or the other, till they have reduced both to something like their own ordinary standard. But against this I have several reasons. First, as I never looked upon Mr. Malthus as “a man of no mark or likelihood,”[[74]] I should be sorry to see him dandled into insignificance, and made a mere puppet in the hands of the Reviewers. Secondly, I in some measure owe it to myself to prove that the objections I have brought against his system are not the phantoms of my own imagination. Thirdly, Mr. Malthus’s work cannot be considered as entirely superseded by the account of it in the Review, as there are, no doubt, many persons who will still take their opinion of Mr. Malthus’s doctrines from his own writings, and abide by what they find in the text as good authority and sound argument, though not sanctioned in the Commentary.—I will therefore proceed to put the questions I at first proposed as the best means I can devise for determining, both what the contents of Mr. Malthus’s work really are, and to what degree of credit they are entitled, or how far they are true or false, original or borrowed.’

The queries which follow were with a few alterations republished by Hazlitt in The Examiner (Oct. 29, 1815—The Round Table, No. 23) and in Political Essays (vol. III. pp. 381–5). The alterations are almost entirely confined to the omission of all reference to the Edinburgh Review, for which Hazlitt himself had begun to write in 1814. The letter concludes as follows: ‘The drift of these questions, is, I believe, sufficiently obvious and direct; but if they should not be thought clear enough in themselves, I am ready to add a suitable commentary to them, by collating a convenient number of passages from the Essay, the Reply, and the Review.’

PAGE [1]. Letter I. First published in Cobbett’s Political Register, March 14, 1807: xi. 398. The proposed alteration. Hazlitt alludes to the poor-law bill of Samuel Whitbread (1758–1815), introduced on February 19, 1807. One of the main features of the scheme was the establishment of a system of free education. The bill was attacked not only by Cobbett (Political Register, August, September, and October, 1807), and Hazlitt, but also by Malthus. Portions of the scheme passed their second readings as separate bills, but were abandoned. See Martineau, History of the Peace, I. 116. [2]. ‘Who have none to help them.’ Job, xxix. 12. ‘Pride and covetousness.’ St. Mark, vii. 22. ‘The compunctious visitings of nature.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5. ‘Laying the flattering unction.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. ‘Grinding the faces of the poor.’ Isaiah, iii. 15. Mandeville. He refers to Bernard Mandeville (1670?–1733), whose Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices Public Benefits, appeared in 1714. ‘Will but skin and film,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. Note. The late Sir W. Pulteney. Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, 5th bart. of Westerhall (1721–1805), M.P. for Shrewsbury in seven successive parliaments. His name was originally Johnstone, but he took the name of Pulteney on marrying the youngest daughter and heiress of Daniel Pulteney, Lord of the Admiralty in Sir R. Walpole’s Ministry. ‘In private life he was remarked principally for his frugal habits, which were perhaps the more striking, as he was supposed to be the richest Commoner in the kingdom.... In the latter part of his life he was remarkable for his abstemious manner of living, his food being composed of the most simple nourishment, principally bread and milk.’ Gentleman’s Magazine, June, 1805, Vol. LXXV., p. 587. In 1804 he married the widow of Andrew Stuart, who fought a duel with Thurlow in connection with the Douglas cause. Cf. ante, p. 298. [3]. In corpore vili. This well known saying was quoted by Burke in his great speech on conciliation with America. See Select Works, ed. Payne, I. 224. The editor in a note (p. 325) quotes from Menagiana (3rd ed., p. 129) an anecdote of Muretus which is said to be the origin of the saying. [4]. ‘Baser matter.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5. [5]. Leurre de dupe. An expression of Rousseau’s (Confessions, Liv. IV.). Unsuccessful endeavours, etc. Hazlitt refers to Whitbread’s management of the impeachment of Lord Melville for malversation as Treasurer of the Navy. Melville was acquitted on June 12, 1806. [6]. The celebrated Howard. John Howard died of camp fever at Kerson on January 20, 1790, while investigating the condition of Russian military hospitals. The ‘champion,’ etc. A reference to Pitt’s description of Buonaparte as ‘the child and champion of Jacobinism. See Vol. III., note to page 99. [7]. ‘The latter end,’ etc. Tempest, Act II. Scene 1. Letter II. Political Register, May 16, 1807: XI. 883. The English have been called, etc. Diderot said this in his Lettre sur les aveugles, ed. Tourneux, I. 312, but the opinion was expressed more than once in France during the period of Anglomania which prevailed in the middle of the eighteenth century. Cf. Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (trans. Matthews) pp. 96 et. seq. [8]. ‘Worthless importunity in rags.’

‘——Lib’ral of their aid

To clam’rous Importunity in rags.’