The reason was that for a long time in England it was a hard enough task for reformers to secure the negative freedom of being let alone, the freedom of trade and of the press and of local government, with the abolition of privileges. Cobden’s attempt to resolve Politics into Economics was well-timed and fruitful in its generation; and the Manchester school has still a part to play in our own time. But the special work of political reform in the future is to achieve the positive freedom, “the maximum of power, for all members of human society alike, to make the best of themselves.”[815] Of this programme neither Malthus nor any writer of his day had any clear conception. He himself had no claim to a seer’s vision; and the horizon of his opponents was never wider than his own. It is time to go back to the _Essay_ and confront its opponents. We have now a sufficient knowledge of the economics and philosophy of Malthus to be able to sympathize with him under misconception, or at least to understand what appearance an objection would wear to his mind. Not that we have a complete picture of the man, or even a view of his entire mental furniture, which is more than this _curta supellex_; but we see enough to judge the cause of the _Essay_ on its merits, not prejudiced, favourably or unfavourably, by the life and character of the author. BOOK IV. THE CRITICS. Three Questions for the Critics—Parr and _Thoughts on Parr_—Pulpit Philosophy—Godwin’s Blessing in 1801—The Cursing in 1820—Theology—The Command to Noah—The Ratios—Population “fitful”—S. T. Coleridge among the Economists—James Grahame—Empson’s Classification of Critics—Weyland and Arthur Young—“Cannot, therefore ought not”—Spence’s _Plan_ and Owen’s—_Progress and Poverty_—_Das Kapital_—Herbert Spencer—Classification of Critics—Ethics of the Hearth and of the World—End and Means of Malthus. The critics of Malthus had three questions before them: Do the conclusions of Malthus follow from his premises? Does he himself draw them? Are they true as a matter of fact? The answers will be best given by a short survey of the principal critics with whom Malthus contended in his lifetime, and those who have most formidably contended with his followers since his death. There is a sense in which the _Essay on Population_ begins and ends with Godwin, for it begins and ends with the question of human perfectibility. The relations of Malthus and Godwin are as it were the tale on which the play is founded.