That there was force in this reasoning appears from the way in which Malthus received it when stated to him by letter a few months after the publication of the essay. He replied that the “prudence” in question, if existing in Godwin’s new society, would mean an eye to the main chance; it would mean that one man is strengthening his position and getting to himself more than the minimum of necessaries; if you prevent this, what becomes of your freedom? if you do not, what becomes of your equality and wealth? Secondly, the effect of the prudence would be that the population would not be the greatest possible, but considerably within the limits of the food; and yet you object to present society, that its arrangements prevent the “greatest practicable population.” In all our political theories, if we would trace to particular institutions the evil that is really due to them, we must deduct the evil that is known to be due to other causes. “The very admission of the necessity of prudence to prevent the misery from an overcharged population, removes the blame from public institutions to the conduct of individuals. And certain it is, that almost under the worst form of government, where there was any tolerable freedom of competition, the race of labourers, by not marrying, and consequently decreasing their numbers, might immediately better their condition, and under the very best form of government, by marrying and greatly increasing their numbers they would immediately make their condition worse.”[827] This was no doubt a point against Godwin, but it was also a point against Malthus himself. The essay in its first form had not made sufficient allowance for “prudence”; and the introduction of moral restraint in the second edition might very plausibly have been ascribed by Godwin’s friends to Godwin himself, in spite of the elaborate reply to the _Thoughts_ in a chapter afterwards dropped.[828] Godwin said to him afterwards that he had no right to introduce a new element into his solution of the problem, and pretend that it was the same solution as before;[829] if he altered his premises he ought to alter his conclusion. To which Malthus might have answered, that, though his conclusion is altered, it retains its value as an argument against Godwin. At first the tendency of numbers to increase up to the food was described as an obstacle fatal to progress; now it is indeed an obstacle which must be faced and overcome, but it is fatal not to progress, but only to equality. Godwin himself had at first considered it an entirely imaginary obstacle which might be ignored for the present by reformers; and his very doctrine of prudence amounts to an admission that his view of it had changed.