. . . “I have delayed acknowledging the receipt of
your valuable present, till I had time to examine it thoroughly, that I might
be better able to give my opinion of it. I can now assure you, with great
truth, that I have carefully read the whole of your answer to Mr Malthus with much
pleasure and instruction, and am fully convinced that you have given the
death-blow to his geometrical and arithmetical ratios. It might have been
thought that a system so disgusting could not have required any great effort to
destroy it: but the popularity of Mr
Malthus’s publication has proved the contrary: and I think
the public are much indebted to you for quieting their alarms, and for exposing
the folly and impiety of a system which made the kind and benevolent Author of
Nature to appoint vice and misery as his agents in the world. I do not know
whether you have not granted too much in supposing that the existence of the
present population may be preserved by four children to a marriage. If half the
inhabitants die before they attain the age of 21, as in the Northampton Tables,
which give the mean probabilities very
| ANSWER TO MALTUS. | 273 |
