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, dispersed 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 'An Exposition of Fallacies, &c.']

A

CATECHISM ON THE CORN LAWS;

WITH

A LIST OF FALLACIES AND THE ANSWERS.

THIRD EDITION.

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

way in which they take place artificially, will be best illustrated by recurring to the case of the island formerly introduced.

One

If, after the population of the supposed island had begun to press against the limits of the soil, a contiguous island should spring up of the same nature as the first, the prospect of increased wealth to the land-owners of the first would drop at once. way only there would be, by which they could keep up the amount of prices and of rents;-for the rent is no other than the superfluity of price, or that part of it which is not necessary to pay for the production with a living profit. One way only there would be; and that is, to prohibit the use of the produce of the neighbouring island, or, in other words, enact corn laws. Of which laws, the effects are next to be traced.

If the island first cultivated had been the Isle of Wight, and the contiguous land the rest of the United Empire, it is clear that if the original land-owners had the power effectually to decree, that no corn should be consumed but what was the produce of the Isle of Wight, that though their descendants might wander into the wilds of Hampshire or the deserts of Middlesex, it should be against law for them to eat a fragment of agricultural produce except what had been grown within the licensed territory,-the consequence must have been, that the population, wealth, and power, of the United Empire, must for ever have been confined to something bearing a near resemblance to the present circumstances of the Isle of Wight.

If the land-owners should be disposed to deny this conclusion, they would be answered as regards the question of population, by showing that the produce of the Isle of Wight, even though for argument's sake it could be extended by the cultivation of every nook and crevice to two, three, or four times its present amount, would only be a small portion of the quantity consumed by the present population of the empire. And as regards the question of wealth, they would be answered, by showing that the quantity of commodities which can possibly be manufactured and sold with a living profit to the producers, must in all cases have an ultimate reference to the quantity and price of corn.

"It seems to be abundantly clear, that if the manufacturing capitalists, who now demand a profit of, it may be, ten per cent on the capital they advance, and consider it as only a living profit, could be persuaded to advance it for four, their goods would be offered at a less price, and a greater quantity would from time to time be manufactured and sold. And if they could be induced to advance capital with no profit at all, a still greater increase of sales might take place. And it might be greater still if, for argument's sake, it were possible that they should consent to advance capital at four per cent loss."