BOOK III. MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 319 „ IV. THE CRITICS 355 „ V. BIOGRAPHY 399 INDEX 428 MALTHUS AND HIS WORK BOOK I. THE ESSAY. CHAPTER I. FIRST THOUGHTS, 1798. The Common Caricature—The Essay an Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations—Godwin’s _Political Justice_ and _Enquirer_—The Two Postulates and Conclusions from them—Condorcet’s _Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind_—Organic Perfectibility of Man and its Obstacles—Historical Context of the Essay—_The Crisis_—Pitt’s Poor Bill—Malthus and his Teachers—Success explained—Theology and Metaphysics—Faults of the Essay—Immediate aim secured. He was the “best-abused man of the age.” Bonaparte himself was not a greater enemy of his species. Here was a man who defended small-pox, slavery, and child-murder; who denounced soup-kitchens, early marriage, and parish allowances; who “had the impudence to marry after preaching against the evils of a family;” who thought the world so badly governed that the best actions do the most harm; who, in short, took all romance out of life and preached a dull sermon on the threadbare text—“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Such was the character of Malthus as described by his opponents. If an angry man is probably in the wrong, an abusive man is certainly so; and, when not one or two, but one or two thousand are engaged in the abuse, the certainty amounts to a demonstration. We may measure the soundness of the victim’s logic by the violence of the personal attacks made upon him. For most worldly purposes, to be ignored and to be refuted are the same thing. Malthus from the first was not ignored. For thirty years it rained refutations. The question, as he stated it, was thoroughly threshed out. The _Essay on Population_ passed in the author’s lifetime through six editions (1798, 1803, 1806, 1807, 1817, and 1826); even between the first edition, in 1798, and the second, in 1803, there were more than a score of ‘Replies’; and the discussion was carried on in private correspondence, as well as in public journals and parliamentary speeches. The case was fully argued; and no one who fairly considers the extent of the discussion, and the ability of the disputants, can fail to believe that we have, in the records of this controversy, ample materials for forming our own judgment on the whole question in dispute.