Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/468

 kind benefactor, to whom, therefore, he ought to be bound by the strongest ties of gratitude."

This passage has been well answered by Mr. Cobbett in one word, "Parson;"—the most expressive apostrophe that ever was made; and it might be answered as effectually by another word, which I shall omit. When Mr. Malthus asserts, that the poor man and his family have been doomed to starve by the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, he means by the laws of God and nature, the physical and necessary inability of the earth to supply food for more than a certain number of human beings; but if he means that the wants of the poor arise from the impossibility of procuring food for them, while the rich roll in abundance, or, we will say, maintain their dogs and horses, &c. out of their ostentatious superfluities, he asserts what he knows not to be true. Mr. Malthus wishes to confound the necessary limits of the produce of the earth with the arbitrary and artificial distribution of that produce according to the institutions of society, or the caprice of individuals, the laws of God and nature with the laws of man. And what proves the fallacy is, that the laws of man in the present case actually afford the relief, which he would wilfully deny; he proposes to repeal those laws, and then to tell the poor man impudently, that "the laws of God and nature have doomed him and his family to starve, for disobeying their repeated admonitions," stuck on the church-door for the last twelve months! 'Tis much.

I have in a separate work made the following remarks on the above proposal, which are a little cavalier, not too cavalier;—a little contemptuous, not too contemptuous;—a little gross, but not too gross for the subject.—

"I am not sorry that I am at length come to this passage. It will I hope decide the reader's opinion of the benevolence, wisdom, piety, candour, and disinterested simplicity of Mr. Malthus's mind. Any comments that I might make upon it to strengthen this impression must be faint and feeble. I give up