It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of Population), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic. What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: _he took an obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences_. Out of this position--_That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground which limited human increase_--united with this other position--_That there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of population to pass that limit_, he unfolded a body of most important corollaries. I have remarked in another article on this subject--how entirely these corollaries had escaped all Mr. Malthus's[26] predecessors in the same track. Perhaps the most striking instance of this, which I could have alleged, is that of the celebrated French work--_L'Ami des Hommes, ou Traite de la Population_ (written about the middle of the last century), which sets out deliberately from this principle, expressed almost in the very words of Mr. Malthus,--'_Que la mesure de la Subsistance est celle de la Population_;'--beats the bushes in every direction about it; and yet (with the exception of one corollary on the supposed depopulating tendency of war and famine) deduces from it none but erroneous and Anti-Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth apparently so barren any corollaries were deducible--was reserved for Mr. Malthus to show. _As_ corollaries, it may be supposed that they imply a logical act of the understanding. In some small degree, no doubt; but no more than necessarily accompanies every exercise of reason. Though inferences, they are not remote inferences, but immediate and proximate; and not dependent upon each other, but collateral. Not logic but a judicious choice of his ground placed Mr. Malthus at once in a station from which he commanded the whole truth at a glance--with a lucky dispensation from all necessity of continuous logical processes. But such a dispensation is a privilege indulged to few other parts of Political Economy, and least of all to that which is the foundation of all Political Economy, viz. the doctrine of value. Having therefore repeatedly chosen to tamper with this difficult subject, Mr. Malthus has just made so many exposures of his intellectual infirmities--which, but for this volunteer display, we might never have known. Of all the men of talents, whose writings I have read up to this hour, Mr. Malthus has the most perplexed understanding. He is not only confused himself, but is the cause that confusion is in other men. Logical perplexity is shockingly contagious: and he, who takes Mr. Malthus for his guide through any