After a chapter (iv.) on Emigration[690] come three chapters on the Poor Laws, to be viewed with ch. viii. of the fourth book, which deals with Plans for their Abolition. Of all the applications of the doctrines of Malthus, their application to pauperism was probably, at the time, of the greatest public interest. Even the first essay had distinct bearing on Pitt’s Poor Bill; the next writing of the author was on a question of parish relief; and these three chapters in the later _Essay on Population_ have influenced public opinion and legislation about the destitute poor almost as powerfully as the _Wealth of Nations_ has influenced commercial policy. Malthus is the father not only of the new Poor Law, but of all our latter-day societies for the organization of charity. The subject is best introduced in the words of a celebrated parable, which Malthus having used once was never afterwards allowed to forget:[691]—“A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of _right_ to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he do not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in counteracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.”[692] Our neighbours’ misfortunes have seldom been made so picturesque. The figure itself was no new one. Lucretius had written:— “Cur non, ut plenus vitæ conviva, recedis?”[693] and Fenton, in Pope’s[694] familiar lines:— “From Nature’s temperate feast rose satisfied, Thanked heaven that he had lived and that he died.”