attainment of this important end, it is abundantly plain that there is nothing impracticable. There is nothing which offers any considerable difficulty, except the prejudices of mankind.-Supplement to the 4th and 5th Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Art. BANKS FOR SAVINGS. p. 93.

As the tendency in population to increase faster than food, produces a greater number of individuals than can be fed,-as this is the grand parent of indigence, and the most prolific of all the sources of evil to the labouring portion of mankind, take all possible means for preventing so rapid a multiplication; and let no mere prejudice, whether religious or political, restrain your hands in so beneficent and meritorious an undertaking. It would be easy to offer suggestions on this head, if we were not entirely precluded from going into detail. It is abundantly evident, in the mean time, that indirect methods can alone avail; the passions to be combated cannot be destroyed, nor, to the production of effects of any considerable magnitude, resisted. With a little ingenuity they may, however, be eluded, and, instead of spending themselves in hurtful, male to spend themselves in harmless channels. This it is the business of skilful legislation to effect.-Ib. Art. BEGGAR. p. 246.

What are the best means of checking the progress of population, when it cannot go on unrestrained without producing one or other of two most undesirable effects,-either drawing an undue proportion of the population to the mere raising of food, or producing poverty and wretchedness, it is not now the place to inquire. It is indeed, the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied. It has, till this time, been miserably evaded by all those who have meddled with the subject, as well as by all those who were called upon by their situation to find a remedy for the evils to which it relates. And yet, if the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principle of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very difficult to be found; and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil, a source which, if all other sources of evil were taken away, would alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.-Art. CoLONY. p. 261.

It may occur to some readers, that abstinence from marriage is the remedy intended. But this is inconsistent with the data; as will be proved by going through the passages marked with italics in the extracts. For marriages to be sparingly contracted," is one way; but to "take care that children, beyond a certain number, shall not be the fruit," is another. Abstinence from marriage cannot be termed either "artificial means," or "expedients." The plan is "to secure to the great body of the people all the happiness which is capable of being derived from the matrimonial union," though "without the evils which a too rapid increase of their numbers involves;" which is something quite different from abstinence from marriage. What is found to oppose the plan, is "superstition;" and superstition was never understood to be opposed to abstinence from marriage. The evil of improvident marriages has long been known; but nobody ever entered before on the grand practical problem" of "limiting the number of

births" without diminishing marriages, by means of expedients." The thing is stated to be easy, if it were not for the prejudices of mankind," religious among others; and religious prejudices never hindered abstinence from marriage. "It would be easy to offer suggestions on this head," but there is something that "precludes from going into detail." There is nothing to prevent the going into detail to the utmost, on the subject of abstinence from marriage. The passions, it is declared, are not proposed to be "resisted;" but they are to be "eluded," and made to "spend themselves in harmless channels." Of all the occupations invented for legislators, assuredly that here proposed is the oddest. The question, it is affirmed, has hitherto "been miserably evaded;" yet all has been said on abstinence from marriage, that can be said. "If the superstitions of the nursery were discarded,” the solution might be found; and assuredly there are no nursery superstitions on the subject of abstinence from marriage.

It would be a painful thing to load any sect or school with a disagreeable misconstruction; but if any thing like it should happen in the present case, the aggrieved have a ready remedy, which is, to explain what it is they do mean. Men are certainly not always obliged to prove a negative; but when circumstances of reasonable suspicion have arisen out of their own act, the most innocent persons on earth must either do so, or remain under the imputation. There is no use in pretending not to know, what has been disseminated in full and disgusting detail by the instrumentality of the press. It is submitted, without violence or exaggeration, to the judgement of unprejudiced persons, whether in the absence of explanation, the passages extracted do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that "the new school of political economy" intended what is alluded to above.

To describe it as nearly as is easily practicable, it was an appeal to the doctrines of political economy on the evils of a redundant population, concluding with a detail of "expedients" for procuring abortion in an evanescent period by mechanical means; or to define it with more accuracy in the words of the extracts, for procuring "the happiness capable of being derived from the matrimonial union," without "children being the fruit." It was printed in two different forms; and possibly in more. One was of a superior type and paper, in general appearance resembling the hand-bills of fashionable venders of perfumery; and, as might be gathered from the circumstances of the individual case, was distributed anonymously by the twopenny post. The other was in the manner of the lowest order of quack advertisements which are thrust into the hands of passengers at Temple Bar; and was apparently for distribution among the labouring classes. It was stated in some of the public prints of the time, that tailors were the class among whom the plan found its principal supporters, and that the progress of the sect was stopped by a threat of public prosecution.

It may appear questionable to some, whether it is right to bring such a subject into notice. The objection would be valid, if the matter was really drawn out of obscurity. But when a theory has been published in Encyclopædias, recommended in octavos, dis persed in detail by the press, and urged, as cannot be doubted, on the acceptance of every new institution for purposes of education to the extent of what the influence of the propounders can effect, this objection seems to be gone by, and nothing is left but to examine the theory on the grounds, first of morality, and secondly of its adaptation to the attainment of the end proposed. And on the first of these, it may be conceded to the fullest extent, that the question shall stand solely on "the principle of utility," or the effect on the general happiness. What, then, is to be the situation of the women of the lower and middle classes, when in every street political economists go about seeking whom they may devour, under the assurance that they bring with them the "expedients" for evading the ordinary consequences of sexual irregularity? And what will be the purity of the wives and daughters of the higher classes, when in every room the footmen are neighing after the chambermaids under assurances of like impunity? There is difficulty enough in keeping the passions of mankind in a state of decent repression, with all the existing checks on their irregular exhibition; and what is to be the case when one of the strongest checks, the fear of consequences, is removed? Society may and must struggle, with so much of men's passions as are connected with the great operations of nature and the continuation of the species; but it has long agreed to rid itself of the intolerable nuisance of struggling with any others, by referring them to a class of crimes which it is not usual to describe except by omitting to name.

And next for its adaptation to the end proposed. And here it is plain, First, that as long as such practices are not universal in the classes where population is proposed to be repressed, their adoption by one will only make room for the natural use of marriage by another, and consequently the reduction of population will be nothing. Secondly, that the ultimate effect must be the same as that of the permission of infanticide; which is well known to end in increasing the density of population, through men's entering into marriage with some view to the practice while it is at a distance, and shrinking from it afterwards.

It is impossible not to notice the contrast presented by the purity, and even elegance, of the author of the great discoveries on the subject of Population. Virginibus puerisque canto may, as far as the spirit of the author is concerned, be written on every page of the work of Mr. Malthus; and his illustrations, such as those of the tree with its branches and foliage," and "the

sunny spot in man's whole life where his imagination loves to bask," are the very poetry of science.

Though the instructors of youth are not bound to enter into the actual confutation of every unseemly error that men may fall into, enough has been said to show the importance of bringing the pursuits of political economy within the pale of academical education. When such efforts are made to teach the new mumpsimus, the least the universities can do is to teach the old sumpsimus. As long as the accredited guardians of learning stand aloof from a branch of science peculiarly adapted for the exercise of cultivated reason, it necessarily falls into the hands of those who have less power to distinguish fallacies, and less caution to avoid them.

THE END.

{Published Dec. 18, 1826. Second Edition, published under the title of

The true Theory of Rent, in opposition to Mr. Ricardo and others, Being

The object of the present continuation is to trace the nature and consequences of the Corn Laws, as derivable from the true, or Adam Smith's, theory of rent; and to present, in a concise form, the answers to the fallacies which have appeared upon the subject.

If the conclusions on this point present no direct opposition to those of the theory questioned in the preceding article, it does not follow that there is not an important difference in the modes of proof. What is contended for is, that the rent's being the superfluity of the price, is at once the reason why charges on the land must fall on the rent, and why restrictions on importation are an unjust invention for the advantage of the landlords; and that the theory which would separate these, has weakened the argument against the Corn Laws, by interweaving with it a fallacy on Tithes.

WHAT has preceded shows, that the rent of any object is the difference between the living price of the produce (by which is meant the price necessary to pay for the production with a living profit to the producer), and the price for which the produce can be sold in consequence of the whole quantity being less than there would be a demand for at the living price. The application of this to land, mines, and most of the ordinary subjects of rent, needs no explanation. In the case of the ground-rent of houses, the house is the produce, and the builder is in the situation of the cultivator or capitalist. Hence the difference between the sum for which the house can be built with a living profit, turned into the shape of an annuity, and the sum which from the situation of the house can be annually obtained by letting it, will be the ground

rent.

The causes of the difference which makes rent, may be either natural or artificial. They take place naturally to a certain extent, in the case of land in peculiarly favourable situations, and in various other circumstances which it is not intended to enumerate. The