[4]. Yet it is extraordinary that with all their wisdom and virtue they would not be able to take any steps to prevent this distress. This is a species of fascination, of which it is difficult to form any conception.
[5]. The prevalence of this check may be estimated by the general proportion of virtue and happiness in the world, for if there had been no such check there could have been nothing but vice and misery.
[6]. In the second edition, it says, moral restraint, vice or misery. What are we to think of a man who writes a book to prove that vice and misery are the only security for the happiness of the human race, and then writes another to say, that vice and folly are not the only security, but that our only resource must be either in vice and folly, or in wisdom and virtue? This is like making a white skin part of the definition of a man, and defending it by saying that they are all white, except those who are black or tawny.
[7]. I here follow the text of Mr. Malthus, who takes great pains to give a striking description of the savage tribes, as a pleasing contrast, no doubt, to the elegancies and comforts of polished life. Mr. Malthus’s extreme sensibility to the grossness and inconveniences of the savage state, may be construed into refinement and delicacy. But it does not strike me so. There is something in this mis-placed and selfish fastidiousness, that shocks me more than the objects of it. It does not lead to compassion but to hatred. We strive to get rid of our uneasiness, by hardening ourselves towards the objects which occasion it, and lose the passive feelings of disgust excited in us by others in the active desire to inflict pain upon them. Aversion too easily changes into malice. Mr. Malthus seems fond of indulging this feeling against all those who have not the same advantages as himself. With a pious gratitude he seems fond of repeating to himself, ‘I am not as this poor Hottentot.’ He then gives you his bill of fare, which is none of the most delicate, without omitting a single article, and by shrugging up his shoulders, making wry mouths at him, and fairly turning your stomach, excites in you the same loathing and abhorrence of this poor creature that he takes delight in feeling himself. ‘Your very nice people have the nastiest imaginations.’ He triumphs over the calamities and degradation of his fellow-creatures. He lays open all the sores and blotches of humanity with the same calmness and alacrity as a hospital surgeon does those of a diseased body. He turns the world into a charnel-house. Through a dreary space of 300 ‘chill and comfortless’ pages, he ransacks all quarters of the globe only ‘to present a speaking picture of hunger and nakedness, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings, in anxious search of calamities most akin to his invalid imagination,’ and eagerly gropes into every hole and corner of wretchedness to collect evidence in support of his grand misery-scheme, as at the time of an election, you see the city-candidates sneaking into the dirty alleys, and putrid cellars of Shoreditch or Whitechapel, and the candidates for Westminster into those of St. Giles’s, canvassing for votes, their patriotic zeal prevailing over their sense of dignity, and sense of smell.
[8]. I mention these names because it is always customary to mention them in speaking on this subject: and there are some readers who are more impressed with a thing, the oftener it is repeated.
[9]. I here leave out of the question, as not essential to it, the effect of sudden rises or falls, and other accidental variations in the produce of a country which cannot be foreseen or provided against, on the state of population.
[10]. I find there is here some transposition of names and circumstances, but it does not much matter.
[11]. I am happy to find that a philosophical work, like Mr. Malthus’s, has got a good deal into the hands of young ladies of a liberal education and an inquisitive turn of mind. The question is no doubt highly interesting; and the author has thrown over it a warmth of colouring, that can hardly fail to please. Even Miss Howe was fond of ardours.
[12]. I have here purposely left an opening for Mr. Malthus’s ingenuity. He will I hope take the hint and write another quarto volume to prove by anatomical and medical inquiries into the state of all countries, beginning at the north and ending at the south pole, that there is the same variation in the quantity and kind of food required by the human stomach in different climates and countries, as there is in the quantity of sexual indulgence.
[13]. Such a change would not require the perfect subjugation, or rather annihilation of these passions, or perfect virtue, in the literal sense, as Mr. Malthus seems to imply in a late publication—which I have not read. It might as well be pretended that no man could ever keep his fingers off bank-notes, or pay his debts, who was not perfectly honest. In neither case is there required any thing more than such a superiority in one set for motives over another, from pride, habit, example, opinion, &c. as just to incline the balance. The gentlemen of the society of Lloyd’s fund would no doubt scorn to touch a shilling of the money entrusted to their care: yet we should hardly conclude from hence that they are all of them persons of perfectly disinterested characters, and altogether indifferent to money-matters. The Turks, it is said, who are very far from the character of perfection, leave their goods for sale on an open stall, and the buyer comes and takes what he wants, and leaves the money on the stall. Men are not governed by extreme motives. If perfect virtue were necessary to common honesty, fair dealing, and propriety of conduct, there would be nothing but swindlers and black-guards in the world. Men steer clear of the law not so much through fear, as because it stamps the public opinion. It is a positive thing. If men could make up their minds as decidedly about the general characters and conduct of individuals without, as they do with, the rough rebuke of the law to sharpen their moral sense (to which by the bye Mr. Godwin’s plan of plain speaking would contribute not a little) this would go a great way towards rendering a system of equality practicable. But I meddle with these questions only as things of idle speculation. Jactet se in aulis, &c.