‘This posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work which he proposed should be executed. It necessarily wants, therefore, that detail and application, which can alone prove the truth of any theory.’ [This remark I cannot admit. I do not think for instance that any detail or application is necessary to prove the truth of Mr. Malthus’s general principle of the disproportion between the power of increase in population, and in the productions of the earth, or to shew the bad consequences of an unrestricted increase of population.] ‘A few observations will be sufficient to shew how completely this theory is contradicted, when it is applied to the real and not to an imaginary state of things.’ [The _contre-sens_ implied in this expression is not a slip of the pen, but a fixed principle in Mr. Malthus’s mind.] He has a very satisfactory method of answering all theories relating to any imaginary alterations or improvements in the condition of mankind, by shewing what would be the consequences of a certain state of society, if no such state of society really existed, but if every thing remained just as it is at present. He thinks it sound sense and true philosophy to judge of a theory which is confessedly imaginary or has never been realized by comparing it ‘with the real and not with an imaginary state of things.’ That is, he does not adopt the necessarian maxim that men will be always the same while the circumstances continue, but he insists upon it that they will be always the same, whether the circumstances are the same or not. Some instances have already appeared of this in the foregoing work. The following passage may serve as another instance. After supposing Mr. Godwin’s system of equality to be realized to its utmost extent, and the most perfect form of society established, he exclaims, ‘this would indeed be a happy state; but that it is merely an imaginary state with scarcely a feature near the _truth_, the reader, I am afraid, is already too well convinced.’ Mr. Godwin himself was I apprehend very well convinced that this imaginary state was very different from the truth or from the present state of things, when he wrote his book to shew how much better the one _would be_ than the other _is_. He then goes on, ‘Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual,’ &c. If there were no established administration of property, while men continued as selfish as they are at present, (which is I suppose what Mr. Malthus means by applying the theory _to the real state of things_‘) the consequences here mentioned would no doubt follow. But it is supposed that there is no established administration of property, because the necessity for it has ceased or