passion, and left standing by themselves without any regular connection with the rest of the discourse. We also give an interjectional form to half sentences, when we are hurried on by passion into the middle of what we mean to express without making any preparation, as Oh virtue! how amiable thou art! i.e. I cannot express how amiable thou art.' We have thus gone through the different parts of the subject, in order to enable those who are conversant in such questions, to judge at one view of the merits or demerits of our plan. It is, we confess, a little different from others. But those, whose time is chiefly occupied in learning grammar, whether Latin or English, are not very strongly prejudiced in favour of established systems. The imperfections of those systems are obvious and unquestionable; and therefore an assiduous endeavour to improve upon them, and to place the fundamental articles of grammatical knowledge on a clearer and more intelligible footing without implicitly subscribing to error and absurdity merely because they are old, can scarcely fail to be received with favour, and examined with fairness, by competent judges. NOTES A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION Thomas Robert Malthus's (1766-1834) Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society was published anonymously in 1798. The second edition 'very much enlarged' appeared with the author's name in a large 4to volume in 1803. For a sketch of Malthus's life and doctrine and of the Malthusian controversy, see Sir Leslie Stephen's The English Utilitarians, 11. 137-185 and 238-259. The references in the following notes are to the second (1803) edition of the Essay. Cf. Hazlitt's essay on Malthus in The Spirit of the Age, ante, pp. 287-298, and the last five essays in Political Essays, vol. 1. PP. 356-385. A paper by De Quincey, entitled 'Malthus,' in the London Magazine for Oct. 1823, led to a brief controversy between De Quincey and Hazlitt, the particulars of which will be found in De Quincey's Works (ed. Masson), 1x. pp. 3, 20-31. Hazlitt's Reply to Malthus was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for August 1810 (vol. xvi. p. 464), or rather, as Hazlitt complains, the title of his Reply was prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh as a pretence for making a formal eulogy' on Malthus's work. Hazlitt thereupon wrote the following letter to Cobbett's Political Register (Nov. 24, 1810, vol. xviii. p. 1014) under the heading 'Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers' : 'SIR,-The title-page of a pamphlet which I published some time ago, and part of which appeared in the Political Register in answer to the Essay on Population, having been lately prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh Review as a pretence for making a formal eulogy on that work, I take the liberty to request your insertion of a few queries, which may perhaps bring the dispute between Mr. Malthus's admirers and his opponents, to some sort of issue. It will, however, first of all be proper to say something of the article in the Review. The writer of the article accuses the anonymous' writer of the reply to the Essay, of misrepresenting and misunderstanding his author, and undertakes to give a statement of the real principles of Mr. Malthus's work. He at the same time informs us for whom this statement is intended, namely, for those who are not likely even to read the work itself, and who take their opinions on all subjects moral, political, and religious, from the periodical reports of the Edinburgh Review. For my own part, what I have to say will be addressed to those who have read Mr. Malthus's work, and who may be disposed to form some opinion of their own on the subject.-The most remarkable circumstance in the Review is, that it is a complete confession of the force of the arguments which have been brought against the Essay. The defence here set up of it may indeed be regarded as the euthanasia of that performance. For in what does this defence consist but in an adoption, point by point, of the principal objections and limitation, which have been offered to Mr. Malthus's system; and which being thus ingeniously applied to gloss its defects, the Reviewer charges those who had pointed them out with misrepresenting and vilifying the author? In fact, the advocates of this celebrated work do not at present defend its doctrines, but deny them. The only resource left them is that of screening its |