‘The permission of infanticide is bad enough, and cannot but have a bad effect on the moral sensibility of a nation; but I cannot conceive any thing much more detestable, or shocking to the feelings, than any direct regulation of this kind, although sanctioned by the names of Plato and Aristotle.’ Mr. Malthus in this passage very properly gives way to his feelings, which are, in my opinion, a much better test of morality than a calculation of consequences. At the same time, he would himself make a law to starve the children of the poor, because their parents are not able to maintain them. Mr. Malthus’s humanity is of the _intermittent_ sort. The mention of the Chinese, of Plato or Aristotle, has a great effect in bringing the fit on: at the mention of population or the poor-laws it vanishes in an instant, and ‘he is himself again.’—I hope I shall sometimes be allowed to appeal to my feelings against Mr. Malthus’s authority, as he dissents from that of Plato and Aristotle on the same _unphilosophical_ plea, and to look upon those arguments as narrow and superficial, which pay no regard to ‘the moral sensibility of a nation’; the more so as the system of morality prevailing at present is built upon the natural affections and common feelings and habitual prejudices of mankind, not, as Mr. Malthus pretends, on pure reason, or a dry calculation of consequences. Our author’s plan is addressed neither to the _head_, nor _heart_. It retains the common sympathies of our nature only to shock and insult them, and engrafts the vices of a bad heart on a perverted understanding. Mr. Malthus defies Mr. Godwin to point out a method, by which it is possible ‘to limit the number of children to each prolific marriage.’ According to his theory, there seems no way but by having a constable in the room, and converting bed-chambers into a kind of lock-up houses.—Speaking of the possibility of delaying the gratification of the passion between the sexes, he says,