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mote their own happiness by thieving, | is to make the bones of sages and falls to the ground. If it is not, then patriots stir on the 1st of December. there are men whose greatest happiness We can only say that, unless it be is at variance with the greatest happi- something infinitely more ingenious ness of the community. than its two predecessors, we shall leave it unmolested. The Westminster Reviewer may, if he pleases, indulge himself like Sultan Schahriar with espousing a rapid succession of virgin theories. But we must beg to be excused from playing the part of the vizier who regularly attended on the day after the wedding to strangle the new Sultana.

To sum up our arguments shortly, we say that the "greatest happiness principle," as now stated, is diametrically opposed to the principle stated in the Westminster Review three months ago.

We say that, if the "greatest happiness principle," as now stated, be sound, Mr. Mill's Essay, and all other works concerning Government which, like that Essay, proceed on the supposition that individuals may have an interest opposed to the greatest happiness of society, are fundamentally erroneous.

We say that those who hold this principle to be sound must be prepared to maintain, either that monarchs and aristocracies may be trusted to govern the community, or else that men cannot be trusted to follow their own interest when that interest is demonstrated to them.

We say that, if men cannot be trusted to follow their own interest when that interest has been demonstrated to them, then the Utilitarian arguments in favour of universal suffrage are good for nothing.

We say that the "greatest happiness principle" has not been proved; that it cannot be generally proved; that even in the particular cases selected by the Reviewer it is not clear that the principle is true; and that many cases might be stated in which the common sense of mankind would at once pronounce it to be false.

The Westminster Reviewer charges us with urging it as an objection to the "greatest happiness principle" that "it is included in the Christian morality." This is a mere fiction of his own. We never attacked the morality of the Gospel. We blamed the Utilitarians for claiming the credit of a discovery, when they had merely stolen that morality, and spoiled it in the stealing. They have taken the precept of Christ and left the motive; and they demand the praise of a most wonderful and beneficial invention, when all that they have done has been to make a most useful maxim useless by separating it from its sanction. On religious principles it is true that every individual will best promote his own happiness by promoting the happiness of others. But if religious considerations be left out of the question it is not true. If we do not reason on the supposition of a future state, where is the motive? If we do reason on that supposition, where is the discovery?

The Westminster Reviewer tells us that "we wish to see the science of We now leave the Westminster Re- Government unsettled because we see viewer to alter and amend his "magni- no prospect of a settlement which acficent principle" as he thinks best. cords with our interests." His angry Unlimited, it is false. Properly limited, eagerness to have questions settled it will be barren. The "greatest hap- resembles that of a judge in one of piness principle" of the 1st of July, as Dryden's plays-the Amphitryon, we far as we could discern its meaning think-who wishes to decide a cause through a cloud of rodomontade, was after hearing only one party, and, an idle truism. The "greatest happi- when he has been at last compelled to ness principle" of the 1st of October listen to the statement of the defenis, in the phrase of the American news- dant, flies into a passion, and exclaims, papers, "important if true." But un- "There now, sir! See what you have happily it is not true. It is not our done. The case was quite clear a business to conjecture what new maxim | minute ago; and you must come and

puzzle it!" He is the zealot of a sect. | not, however, altogether unsettled. We We are searchers after truth. He wishes have an opinion about parliamentary to have the question settled. We wish reform, though we have not arrived at to have it sifted first. The querulous manner in which we have been blamed for attacking Mr. Mill's system, and propounding no system of our own, reminds us of the horror with which that shallow dogmatist, Epicurus, the worst parts of whose nonsense the Utilitarians have attempted to revive, shrank from the keen and searching scepticism of the second Academy.

that opinion by the royal road which Mr. Mill has opened for the explorers of political science. As we are taking leave, probably for the last time, of this controversy, we will state very concisely what our doctrines are. On some future occasion we may, perhaps, explain and defend them at length.

Our fervent wish, and we will add our sanguine hope, is that we may see It is not our fault that an experi- such a reform of the House of Commental science of vast extent does not mons as may render its votes the admit of being settled by a short de-express image of the opinion of the monstration;— -that the subtilty of na- middle orders of Britain. A pecuniary ture, in the moral as in the physical qualification we think absolutely necesworld, triumphs over the subtilty of syllogism. The quack, who declares on affidavit that, by using his pills and attending to his printed directions, hundreds who had been dismissed incurable from the hospitals have renewed their youth like the eagles, may, perhaps, think that Sir Henry Halford, when he feels the pulses of patients, inquires about their symptoms, and prescribes a different remedy to each, is unsettling the science of medicine for the sake of a fee.

If, in the course of this controversy, we have refrained from expressing any opinion respecting the political institutions of England, it is not because we have not an opinion or because we shrink from avowing it. The Utilitarians, indeed, conscious that their boasted theory of government would not bear investigation, were desirous to turn the dispute about Mr. Mill's Essay into a dispute about the Whig party, rotten boroughs, unpaid magistrates, and ex-officio informations. When we blamed them for talking nonsense, they cried out that they were insulted for being reformers,—— just as poor Ancient Pistol swore that the scars which he had received from the cudgel of Fluellen were got in the Gallia wars. We, however, did not think it desirable to mix up political questions, about which the public mind is violently agitated, with a great problem in moral philosophy.

Our notions about Government are

sary; and, in settling its amount, our object would be to draw the line in such a manner that every decent farmer and shopkeeper might possess the elective franchise. We should wish to see an end put to all the advantages which particular forms of property possess over other forms, and particular portions of property over other equal portions. And this would content us. Such a reform would, according to Mr. Mill, establish an aristocracy of wealth, and leave the community without protection and exposed to all the evils of unbridled power. Most willingly would we stake the whole controversy between us on the success of the experiment which we propose.

SADLER'S

LAW OF POPULATION.
(JULY 1830.)

The Law of Population; a Treatise in Six Books,
in Disproof of the Superfecundity of Human
Beings, and developing the real Principle
of their increase. By MICHAEL THOMAS
SADLER, M.P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830.
WE did not expect a good book from
Mr. Sadler: and it is well that we did
not; for he has given us a very bad one.
The matter of his treatise is extraordi-
nary; the manner more extraordinary
still. His arrangement is confused,
his repetitions endless, his style every-
thing which it ought not to be. In-
stead of saying what he has to say

thereupon he breaks forth into singing
as follows:

"What myriads wait in destiny's dark womb,
Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb!
'Tis his to blot them from the book of fate,
Or, like a second Deity, create;

To dry the stream of being in its source,
Or bid it, widening, win its restless course;
While, earth and heaven replenishing, the
flood

Rolls to its Ocean fount, and rests in God."

We

If these lines are not Mr. Sadler's, we heartily beg his pardon for our suspicion--a suspicion which, we acknowledge, ought not to be lightly entertained of any human being. can only say that we never met with them before, and that we do not much care how long it may be before we meet with them, or with any others like them, again.

with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similes,-all the worst of their respective kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabby finery with so much profusion and so little discrimination, that they remind us of a company of wretched strolling players, who have huddled on suits of ragged and faded tinsel, taken from a The spirit of this work is as bad as common wardrobe, and fitting neither its style. We never met with a book their persons nor their parts; and who which so strongly indicated that the then exhibit themselves to the laughing writer was in a good humour with himand pitying spectators, in a state of self, and in a bad humour with everystrutting, ranting, painted, gilded body else; which contained so much of beggary. "Oh, rare Daniels!" "Po- that kind of reproach which is vulgarly litical economist, go and do thou like- said to be no slander, and of that kind wise!" Hear, ye political economists of praise which is vulgarly said to be and anti-populationists!" Popula- no commendation. Mr. Malthus is attion, if not proscribed and worried down tacked in language which it would be by the Cerberean dogs of this wretched scarcely decent to employ respecting and cruel system, really does press Titus Oates. "Atrocious," "execrable," against the level of the means of sub-" blasphemous," and other epithets of sistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to urge society through advancing stages, till at length the strong and resistless hand of necessity presses the secret spring of human prosperity, and the portals of Providence fly open, and disclose to the enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and re-self on the plea of haste. Two-thirds warded labour." These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr. Sadler's eloquence. We could easily multiply them; but our readers, we fear, are already inclined to cry for mercy.

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Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes, sometimes rightly quoted, sometimes wrongly,--sometimes good, sometimes insufferable,-sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and sometimes, for aught we know, Mr. Sadler's own. man," cries the philosopher, "take heed how he rashly violates his trust; " and

"Let

the same kind, are poured forth against that able, excellent, and honourable man, with a profusion which in the early part of the work excites indignation, but, after the first hundred pages, produces mere weariness and nausea. In the preface, Mr. Sadler excuses him

of his book, he tells us, were written in a few months. If any terms have escaped him which can be construed into personal disrespect, he shall deeply regret that he had not more time to revise them. We must inform him that the tone of his book required a very difierent apology; and that a quarter of a year, though it is a short time for a man to be engaged in writing a book, is a very long time for a man to be in a passion.

The imputation of being in a passion Mr. Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which "it were

impious to be calm;" and he boasts that, "instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom throughout." If Mr. Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principle of population should be carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, we can have no personal objections. We are quite as little afraid of a contest in which quarter shall be neither given nor taken as he can be. But we would advise him seriously to consider, before he publishes the promised continuation of his work, whether he be not one of that class of writers who stand peculiarly in need of the candour which he insults, and who would have most to fear from that unsparing severity which he practises and recommends.

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Now nothing is more certain than that there is physical and moral evil in the world. Whoever, therefore, believes, as we do most firmly believe, in the goodness of God, must believe that there is no incompatibility between the goodness of God and the existence of physical and moral evil. If, then, the goodness of God be not incompatible with the existence of physical and moral evil, on what grounds does Mr. Sadler maintain that the goodness of God is incompatible with the law of population laid down by Mr. Malthus?

There is only one excuse for the extreme acrimony with which this book is written; and that excuse is but a bad one. Mr. Sadler imagines that the theory of Mr. Malthus is inconsistent with Christianity, and even with the purer forms of Deism. Now, even' had Is there any difference between the this been the case, a greater degree of particular form of evil which would be mildness and self-command than Mr. produced by over-population, and other Sadler has shown would have been be- forms of evil which we know to exist coming in a writer who had undertaken in the world? It is, says Mr. Sadler, to defend the religion of charity. But, not a light or transient evil, but a great in fact, the imputation which has been and permanent evil. What then? The thrown on Mr. Malthus and his follow-question of the origin of evil is a quesers is so absurd as scarcely to deserve an answer. As it appears, however, in almost every page of Mr. Sadler's book, we will say a few words respecting it. Mr. Sadler describes Mr. Malthus's principle in the following words :

"It pronounces that there exists an evil in the principle of population; an evil, not accidental, but inherent; not of occasional occur

rence, but in perpetual operation; not light, transient, or mitigated, but productive of miseries, compared with which all those inflicted by human institutions, that is to say, by the weakness and wickedness of man, however instigated, are 'light' an evil, finally, for which there is no remedy save one, which had been long overlooked, and which is now enunciated in terms which evince anything rather than confidence. It is a principle, moreover, pre-eminently bold, as well as 'clear.' With a presumption, to call it by no fitter name, of which it may be doubted whether literature, heathen or Christian, fur

tion of ay or no,-not a question of more or less. If any explanation can be found by which the slightest inconvenience ever sustained by any sentient being can be reconciled with the divine attribute of benevolence, that explanation will equally apply to the most dreadful and extensive calamities that can ever afflict the human race. The difficulty arises from an apparent contradiction in terms; and that difficulty is as complete in the case of a headache which lasts for an hour as in the case of a pestilence which unpeoples an empire,-in the case of the gust which makes us shiver for a moment as in the case of the hurricane in which an Armada is cast away.

It is, according to Mr. Sadler, an instance of presumption unparalleled in

literature, heathen or Christian, to trace | cane heard mustering its devastating powers,

and perpetually muttering around us; were the skies like brass,' without a cloud to produce one genial drop to refresh the thirsty earth, and famine, consequently, visibly on the approach; I say, would such a state of things, as resulting from the constant laws of Nature, be reconcilable with the attributes we assign to the Deity,' or with any attributes which in these inventive days could be assigned to him, so as to represent him as anything but the tormentor, rather than the kind benefactor, of his creatures? Life, in such a condition, would be like the unceasingly threatened and miserable existence of Damocles at the table of Dionysius, and the tyrant himself the worthy image of the Deity of the anti-populationists."

an evil to "the laws of nature, which
are those of God," as its source. Is
not hydrophobia an evil? And is it
not a law of nature that hydrophobia
should be communicated by the bite of
a mad dog? Is not malaria an evil?
And is it not a law of nature that in
particular situations the human frame
should be liable to malaria? We know
that there is evil in the world. If it is
not to be traced to the laws of nature,
how did it come into the world? Is it
supernatural? And, if we suppose it
to be supernatural, is not the difficulty
of reconciling it with the divine attri-it
butes as great as if we suppose it to be
natural? Or, rather, what do the words
natural and supernatural mean when
applied to the operations of the Su-
preme Mind?

Mr. Sadler has attempted, in another part of his work, to meet these obvious arguments, by a distinction without a difference.

Surely this is wretched trifling. Is on the number of bad harvests, or of volcanic eruptions, that this great question depends? Mr. Sadler's piety, it seems, would be proof against one rainy summer, but would be overcome by three or four in succession. On the coasts of the Mediterranean, where earthquakes are rare, he would be an optimist.

South America would make him a sceptic, and Java a decided Manichean. To say that religion as"The scourges of human existence, as necessary regulators of the numbers of mankind, it signs a solemn office to these visitations is also agreed by some, are not inconsistent is nothing to the purpose. Why was with the wisdom or benevolence of the Gover-man' so constituted as to need such nor of the universe; though such think that

it is a mere after-concern to reconcile the undeniable state of the fact to the attributes we assign to the Deity. The purpose of the earthquake,' say they, the hurricane, the drought, or the famine, by which thousands, and sometimes almost millions, of the human race, are at once overwhelmed, or left the victims of lingering want, is certainly inscrutable.' How singular is it that a sophism like this, so false, as a mere illustration, should pass for an argument, as it has long done! The principle of population is declared to be naturally productive of evils to mankind, and as having that constant and manifest tendency to increase their numbers beyond the means of their subsistence, which has produced the unhappy and disgusting consequences so often enumerated. This is, then, its universal tendency or rule. But is there in Nature the same constant tendency to these earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and famines, by which so many myriads, if not millions, are overwhelmed or reduced at once to ruin? No; these awful events are strange exceptions to the ordinary course of things; their visitations are partial, and they occur at distant intervals of time. While Religion has assigned to them a very solemn office, Philosophy readily refers them to those great and benevolent principles of Nature by which the universe is regulated. But were there a constantly operating tendency to these calamitous occurrences; did we feel the earth beneath us tremulous, and giving ceaseless and certain tokens of the coming catastrophe of Nature; were the hurri

warnings? It is equally unmeaning to say that philosophy refers these events to benevolent general laws of nature. In so far as the laws of nature produce evil, they are clearly not benevolent. They may produce much good. But why is this good mixed with evil? The most subtle and powerful intellects have been labouring for centuries to solve these difficulties. The true solution, we are inclined to think, is that which has been rather suggested, than developed, by Paley and Butler. But there is not one solution which will not apply quite as well to the evils of over-population as to any other evil. Many excellent people think that it is presumptuous to meddle with such high questions at all, and that, though there doubtless is an explanation, our faculties are not sufficiently enlarged to comprehend that explanation. This mode of getting rid of the difficulty, again, will apply quite as well to the evils of over-population as to any other evils. We are sure that those who humbly confess their inability to expound the

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