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suppressed their laughter; and his most attached friends blushed for the eccentricity of the thing, while they endeavoured, ineffectually, to work up their minds to that degree of enthusiasm which would enable them to praise it. That great man felt a zeal upon the subject of French affairs, in the warmth of which. no other mind, at that time, could entirely correspond. In his conceptions, there was something of that extraordinary elevation and fire, which seem to belong more to prophetic inspiration, than to political sagacity. But he was mistaken in thinking that his auditors were as ardently excited as himself, or that they were sufficiently prepared for such an illustration as this. For him it was scarcely strong enough; for them it was extravagant:

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Yet the fervid glow of feeling, peculiar, I am afraid, to the Greeks and Romans, not only sustained, but encouraged, applauded, nay demanded, flights of oratory as great, if not greater than this. Witness the sublime oath by which Demosthenes made his fellow citizens forget the disastrous battle of Chæronea. No, my fellow citizens, no; you have not erred. I swear by the manes of those heroes, who fought for the same cause in the plains of Marathon and Platea!" Cicero, in one of his speeches against Verres, after painting in the strongest colours the ignominious death of a Roman citizen, whom that infamous prætor had caused to be crucified, breaks out into the following bold amplification:" If I painted the horrors of this scene, not to Roman citizens, not to the allies of our state, not to those who have ever heard of the Roman name, not even to men, but to brute creatures; or even to go farther, if in some desolate solitude, I lifted up my voice in complaint and lamentation to the rocks and to the mountains, yet would these mute and inanimate parts of nature be moved at such a monstrous and disgraceful outrage as this." Shakspeare has rendered Mark Antony's exhibition of the robe of Cæsar familiar to us. To what a state of excitement did that artful intriguer inflame the feelings of the people; and how susceptible, how quick, how feather-springed", must those feelings have been, when such was the effect of Antony's address upon their minds, that they tore up the benches and the tables in the forum (as Plutarch relates) to make a funeral pile for the dead body. Not content with duly performing the last rites towards one, who they must have known meditated, in his life, the destruction of all their ancient privileges, they snatched the burning brands from

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* Quod si hæc non ad cives Romanos, non ad aliquos amicos nostræ civitatis, non ad eos qui populi Romani nomen audiissent; denique, si non, ad homines, verum ad bestias; aut etiam, ut longiùs progrediar, si in aliqua desertissima solitudine, ad saxa et ad scopulos hæc conqueri et deplorare vellem, tamen omnia muta atque inanima, tanta et tam indigna rerum atrocitate commoverentur.-Cic. in Ver.

VOL. 1. NO. II.

the pile, and went to attack the houses of those whom, until the close of his harangue, Antony dared not to call conspirators.

His grandfather, of the same name, who was a much better orator than he, produced a marvellous effect, not on a popular assembly, but on a full bench of judges, by exposing the wounds of a military client, whom he defended on a charge of sedition. That client was his friend; to save him from banishment was the object of his address, and he hesitated not to mingle much of personal feeling and entreaty in all the passion, which he expressed. He saw near him that esteemed friend, whom he remembered to have been consul, to have been a general distinguished by the senate, to have mounted the steps of the capital in triumph, but whom he now beheld reduced to the condition of an accused person, clothed in mourning robes, and, in danger of being banished from his country. But Antony did not yield to the ardour of his own breast, until, by dwelling on the sorrows and dejection of the accused, he had succeeded in moving the judges even to tears; then he tore open the vest of the old warrior, shewed the honourable scars, which he received in maintaining the glory of Rome, and he appealed to gods, to men, to citizens, and friends, whether such a man ought to be banished? His client was saved....

This, then, is the great and disadvantageous difference between us and the ancients the difference in the characters, between a Roman or an Athenian, and an English audience. This essential difference pervades our senate, our forum, and our popular assemblies; and it must necessarily have a proportional effect in reducing the standard of our eloquence. For, surely, we are not destitute of all the other means of success in that brilliant department of literature. Philosophy, poetry, history, and the arts, have each arrived to a degree of perfection in this country, which, in Rome at least, was scarcely surpassed. The graces of style, the vivid lights of fancy, the associations of imagery and of thought, which are most apt to excite emotions, are thoroughly understood, and by many of our writers most felicitously pursued. Civil liberty, which is admitted to be as necessary to the support of eloquence as pure air is to the sustenance of animal life, is with us as abundantly enjoyed, and as highly valued, as it ever has been in any age or nation. That difference of national character alone remains as a drawback a difference unfelt by the historian, for he writes in the presence of posterity -a difference despised by the poet, for he has lifted his mind -To that unearthly mood,

When each conception was a heavenly guest→→

A ray of immortality-and stood,

Star-like, around until *

They gather'd to a God.

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In order to put our readers fully into possession of the questions at issue between Mr. Malthus and Mr. Godwin, we shall briefly state the origin, progress, and present condition of the controversy between them: our design will necessarily involve us in the investigation of some of the most important, and heretofore the least discussed topics of political economy.

Mr. Malthus informs the public, in the preface to the "Essay on Population," that that work was first suggested " by a paper in Mr. Godwin's Political Inquirer." The paper, to which Mr. Malthus refers, is, we believe, that entitled "of riches and poverty," in which Mr. Godwin indulges in some speculations upon the accession of happiness, that would result to the human race from an equal distribution of leisure and labour, or (which he regards as the same thing) of riches and poverty.

For the purpose of shewing, among other matters, that these speculations upon political systems, founded on the principle of equal property, were utterly vain, and that no society, in which they were attempted to be realized, could last a single generation, Mr. Malthus was induced to write his "Essay on the principle of Population." The object of that work is to prove, that there is a law of human nature, which Mr. Malthus calls the principle of population, by which man multiplies his kind more rapidly than his subsistence; a law, to use Mr. Malthus's own words, "by force of which, man has a tendency to increase in a geometrical progression, whereas his subsistence can only be increased in a concurrent arithmetical progression."

The effect, according to Mr. Malthus, of this law upon a state of society, in which the principle of equal property was estab lished, would be, that the members of the society would be so augmented by its operation, in comparison with their subsistence, that want, poverty, the necessity of daily labour, crime, sickness, and so forth, would almost immediately fall upon the entire or part of the society, and thus reduce it to the condition, ir. which men are placed, who live under the ordinary constitutions of the world.

This answer to the system of equality Mr. Malthus considers so preeminently conclusive, that he resisted the suggestions of some of his friends, who advised him to omit, from the last edition of his works, what related to this subject, it having, in their estimation, lost much of the interest it once possessed. Mr. Malthus, on the contrary, thought "that there ought to be, somewhere

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on record, an answer to systems of equality founded on the principle of population." He says, that "the peculiar advantage of this argument, against systems of equality founded upon that principle, is, that it is not more generally and uniformly confirmed by experience in every age and every part of the world; but it is so preeminently clear in theory, that no tolerably plausible answer can be given to it, and consequently no decent pretext can be brought forward for an experiment. "*

This was the original point, upon which Mr. Malthus assailed what he conceived to be the opinions of Mr. Godwin, and there can be no doubt that so far he triumphed. We perfectly agree with Mr. Malthus, that a state of "cultivated equality," as Mr. Godwin has called it in the Inquirer, is one, in which man never can be placed, and, if placed, never could continue; but we certainly do not see, as Mr. Malthus does, that the unfitness of man for such a condition arises more from "the principle of population," than from a thousand other properties of human nature; neither do we concur with him in thinking, that the arguments which he founds upon this principle are at all "more worthy of being recorded," or "more clear and satisfactory" than the arguments to the same, effect, which are commonly drawn from the other qualities of man, of which the existence is equally undeniable, and equally incompatible with his continuance in the condition we are speaking of. We see clearly, that the principle of population would not permit a society to exist where all would be equal and would be happy, and that either this principle must be modified or destroyed, or that the supposed society. could not endure; but we do not see this a jot more clearly, than we do that, for the same purpose, every other quality of man must undergo a similar modification. The truth is, that in order to the formation of these visionary constitutions, man must have undergone a total alteration: examine the details of any one of them that has ever been proposed, and the necessity of this alteration will be manifest. Why not assume an alteration in " the principle of population," as well as any other principle in man? Mr. Malthus, indeed, in order to enhance the value of his arguments, alleges, that it does not seem to be a necessary consequence of a system of equality, that all human passions should be at once extinguished:" we differ from him entirely on this point, and are astonished that a man of his sagacity should have written such a sentence; it is manifest that man, for such a state, must have undergone a revolution in his nature so complete, that it would be a delusion to call, by the same name, the animals so unlike as man, as he now is, and would then be. They would both, no doubt, continue to be " two-legged and without feathers," and

Third vol. Essay, page 45.

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would resemble, in those things, which they would have in common with the brutes; but, in every thing that is proper to the human race, in mind, in passions, in the objects for which men strive, the motives which render them laborious, frugal, abstinent, daring, persevering, in one word, in all that now gives momentum to human exertion, they would be thoroughly dissimilar we repeat, that we see no reason why the principle of population, supposing it to be as stated by Mr. Malthus, may not be assumed to have undergone a thorough or partial transmutation by the powers of the same alchemy, which is to change every other principle of the human character. If Mr. Malthus will, to fit man for such a state, undertake to restrain selfishness, ambition, avarice, pride, and vanity, or to reduce to one unvarying similitude those actual differences in human character, such as differences in talents, application, self-controul, which must always produce differences in the circumstances of individuals, we pledge ourselves to modify and restrain in the same way, and by the same means, the principle of population. If he will tell us how to throw salt on the bird's tail, we shall tell him how the bird is to be caught.

For these reasons, we apprehend, that Mr. Malthus is mistaken when he considers the argument he draws from "the principle of population" against systems of equality, as in any respect different in its nature from the common arguments to the same effect, that are drawn from a consideration of the other qualities of man. If the principle of population exist at all, as he represents it, it is a part or attribute of the animal called man; and when he shews that that quality makes a man unfit for a state of equality, he only enlarges the common arguments, which shew that the other qualities of man would have the same effect.

So much for the original subject, which first suggested the Essay on the principle of Population; and if that work did not extend to other topics, we do not hesitate to say, it would now be forgotten; but, in the course of his reflections, it naturally occurred to Mr. Malthus that the principle of population, if it be as he represents it, has great influence on every other condition of society, as well as it would have on a condition of equality: he thought he had discovered that the legislators, and writers on legislation, who preceded him, were wrong in their notions respecting the nature of population, and the encouragement that should be given to its increase: he considered it to be too prone to augment itself, and thought that, if it at all required the attention of the legislature, it was rather for the purpose of repressing, than of extending it.

It is to these more important topics of the essay that Mr Godwin has applied himself in his new work; and he has manfully refrained from saying one word in vindication of those

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