We said nothing about this argument, as Mr. Sadler calls it, merely because we did not think it worth while; and we are half ashamed to say anything about it now. But, since Mr. Sadler is so urgent for an answer, {277}he shall have one. If there is evil, it must be either partial or universal. Which is the better of the two? Hydrophobia, says this great philosopher, is no argument against the divine goodness, because mad dogs bite rich and poor alike; but, if the rich were exempted, and only nine people suffered for ten who suffer now, hydrophobia would forthwith, simply because it would produce less evil than at present, become an argument against the divine goodness! To state such a proposition, is to refute it. And is not the malaria a respecter of persons? It infests Rome. Does it infest London? There are complaints peculiar to the tropical countries. There are others which are found only in mountainous districts; others which are confined to marshy regions; others again which run in particular families. Is not this partiality? Why is it more inconsistent with the divine goodness that poor men should suffer an evil from which rich men are exempt, than that a particular portion of the community should inherit gout, scrofula, insanity, and other maladies? And are there no miseries under which, in fact, the poor alone are suffering? Mr. Sadler himself acknowledges, in this very paragraph, that there are such; but he tells us that these calamities are the effects of misgovernment, and that this misgovernment is the effect of political economy. Be it so. But does he not see that he is only removing the difficulty one step farther? Why does Providence suffer men, whose minds are filled with false and pernicious notions, to have power in the state? For good ends, we doubt not, if the fact be so; but for ends inscrutable to us, who see only a small part of the vast scheme, and who see that small part only for a short period. Does Mr. Sadler doubt that the Supreme Being has power as absolute {278}over the revolutions of political as over the organisation of natural bodies? Surely not: and, if not, we do not see that he vindicates the ways of Providence by attributing the distresses, which the poor, as he confesses, endure, to an error in legislation rather than to a law of physiology. Turn the question as we may, disguise it as we may, we shall find that it at last resolves itself into the same great enigma,--the origin of physical and moral evil: an enigma which the highest human intellects have given up in despair, but which Mr. Sadler thinks himself perfectly able to solve. He next accuses us of having paused long on verbal criticism. We certainly did object to his improper use of the words, “inverse variation.” Mr. Sadler complains of this with his usual bitterness.