[14]. See also other passages giving an account of the state of population in Africa, &c. which will be found at the end.
[15]. This is a work which I would recommend to every reader of whatever party, not only for the knowledge it contains, but for the purity, simplicity, and noble dignity of the style. It smacks of the old Roman elevation.
[16]. I should like to know whether Mr. Malthus would go so far as to say that all the wars and rebellions occasioned by religion, that all the plots, assassinations, burnings, massacres, the persecutions, feuds, animosities, hatreds and jealousy of different sects, that the cruelty, bigotry, the pernicious customs, and abominable practices of the Pagan and other superstitions, such as human sacrifices, &c. whether all those mischiefs and enormities of which religion has been made a tool, whether the martyrdom of the first christians, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the expeditions to the holy land, the Gunpowder Plot, the Inquisition, the long Parliament, the Reformation and the Revolution,—Popery, Protestantism, monks, eremites, and friars, with all their trumpery’ were the offspring of the principle of population.
[17]. See the extracts from Davenant, Montague, and Bolingbroke.
[18]. See the ingenious and elegant defence of the Slave-Trade, attributed in the newspapers to his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. There is a magnanimity and noble ingenuousness in the avowal of such a sentiment, which can only be expected from those, who from the elevated superiority of their situation can look down with contempt on the opinion of mankind, and the vulgar notions of decency and order.
[19]. Mr. Malthus, for what reason I know not, in his account of the state of population in the different countries of modern Europe, has declined giving any account of the state of population in Italy.
[20]. Among other instances it is mentioned, that every vassal was obliged to give the first night of his bride to the lord of the manor, if he demanded it. It is hard to be sure for a man to be cuckolded the very first night of his marriage. But even at present, though the formality of the thing is abolished, there are very few husbands who are not tolerably certain of being cuckolded by the first lord, or duke, who thinks it worth his while to attempt it. It is some consolation to us poor devils of authors, that we have no chance of getting a wife who is at all likely to meet with any such distinction. But if I were a snug tradesman or city-merchant, and had bargained for a sweet girl whose smile was Elysium, whose air was enchantment, and her looks all love,—I should be terribly afraid of the cocked hats at the opera. I should tremble at every coronet coach that passed the door, and should run mad at the sight of a prince’s feather.
[21]. Even this is making a very large concession to Mr. Malthus. The real points to be given are the possible power of productiveness in the earth and the necessary tendency of population to increase.
[22]. Fletcher of Saltoun.
[23]. Spelman’s Glossary.