The success of the essay, so far, had been very remarkable. It had provoked replies by the dozen, and an unwilling witness tells us it had converted friends of progress by the hundred.[80] We find Godwin writing to the author in August 1798,[81] and we may conclude that the veil of anonymousness was not very thick, though Malthus used it again in 1800 in the tract on High Prices. In a debate in the House of Commons on the 11th February, 1800, Pitt took occasion to say that, though he still believed his new Poor Bill a good one, he had dropped it in deference to the objections of “those whose opinions he was bound to respect.”[82] He meant Bentham and Malthus. We cannot tell which had the greater share of the credit, but we know that Malthus regarded Pitt and Paley as his most brilliant converts.[83] Pitt’s declaration that he still believed his bill to be a good one could only mean that he still wished to believe it so. It must have been peculiarly galling to a statesman who affected the political economist to find that not only the solemn criticisms of Malthus, but the jocose “Observations” of Bentham,[84] which threshed the chaff out of the bill clause by clause, had turned his favourite science against himself. CHAPTER II. SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803. Exaggerations of the First Essay—Its two Postulates not co-ordinate—Distinctive feature of the Second Essay—Its moderate Optimism—Rough Classification of Checks—Moral Restraint and Mixed Motives—Freedom as understood by Godwin and by Malthus—The two men contrasted.