reverence is the most essential means; reverence for them, as for all other human beings; any of whom, in their wonder and mystery, as much transcend any conception of the scorner, as his own real being does his self-consciousness. Reverence should be paid to themselves, to their actions, to their feelings; instead of neglecting, or reviling them, as the world has hitherto done, they should be made an object of the greatest solicitude, as well to their own sex as to ours. The legal restrictions, those flagrant injustices towards woman, should be removed; and man and woman should share alike in any verdict, moral or legal, passed upon unmarried love. What this verdict should be, I will examine more fully hereafter.

We shall find that if we love and reverence these girls, (at the same time that we endeavour, totally to remove from our society the fearful evil of prostitution,) they will love and reverence us, and on no other consideration. If society enfold them in her bosom, they will soon learn gratefully to repay her love; but if she continue to spurn them, her punishment and sufferings will be no less than theirs. Her unnatural treatment has made them so degraded; and from that degradation, only her repentant love and reverence will uplift them.

THE LAW OF POPULATION.

HAVING thus given a short description of the existing evils of the sexual world, and endeavoured to convey some slight idea of the awful and widely spread miseries arising from sexual abstinence and abuse, and from venereal disease, in both sexes; I now proceed to the second great division of this subject, namely, the great natural difficulty, that opposes the normal and sufficient exercise of the genital organs, which we have seen to be so indispensable to the health and virtue of mankind. This arises from the Principle (or law) of population, so wonderfully explained by Mr. Malthus; and after him by many of the first political economists, among others by Mr. Stuart Mill. This is a subject whose extreme importance cannot be over estimated. It may be called the question of the age, for upon it, as Mr. Malthus and Mr. Mill have shown, depend the grand problems which are at present convulsing society; the wages of labour, poverty and wealth, &c. Upon it depends moreover, the greatest proportion of the sexual diseases and miseries, of which I have spoken, and which can neither be understood nor remedied except by reference to their grand cause. The usual mode of treating of these evils, whether in medical or moral works, where they are not traced to this cause, can have no satisfactory result.

Notwithstanding the paramount importance of the law of population, it is scarcely at all generally understood. In spite of the unanswerable reasonings of Mr. Malthus (and they are as conclusive as a problem of Euclid), in spite of the exertions of Mr. Mill and others, to show that attention to this law can alone enable mankind to solve the social problems, or to emerge from the miserable abyss of poverty, in which the greater part of our race is at present sunk, the subject is practically ignored, and there is not one man in thousands among those who reason on these questions, who pays any heed to it. We have still organizations of industry, socialism christian or unchristian, change in the government, national education, charitable institutions, &c., vaunted as the great remedies for poverty, low wages, and social embarrasments; but there is not one of these which has any real or direct power in the matter, or that when tried by the principle of population, can bear a moment's scrutiny as a proposed cure for social evils.

Mr. Malthus's great work was written fifty years ago, and his reasonings still stand impregnable, for truth cannot be overthrown. What then is the reason that these vital truths have made so little impression, that a knowledge of them is confined to a few of the must enlightened minds, and that they have had little practical effect on individual conduct?

There are two great reasons for this. The first is, that the subject is a sexual one, and like all similar subjects, has been prevented from being openly discussed by the feelings of morbid delicacy, to the inevitable ruin of mankind.

The second is, that the remedies which Mr. Malthus suggested were, I believe, as erroneous and unhealthy as his principle of population was undeniable; and the impracticability of the former led to the neglect of the latter. Most people know nothing of Mr. Malthus's views, except from some casual allusion to them by those, who probably have not read them, and certainly have not understood their paramount importance. But without a knowledge of these views, and in fact without their being taken as an axiom in all our reasonings, it is utterly in vain to approach the great social problems.

I do not know any work so important to the happiness of mankind at present as that of Mr. Malthus. It alone explains the real cause of the fearful evils both in the economical and sexual world: of poverty, hard work, and early death, on the one hand, and of sexual abstinence, selfabuse, and prostitution on the other; of the mnltiform miseries, which are breaking the hearts and paralysing the arms of so many myriads among us, and making the philanthropist despair. What can be done by any effort to benefit mankind: how can disease be prevented or happiness promoted, while poverty exists? Poverty is the fountain-head of evils innumerable. Crime, disease, prostitution, ignorance, drunkenness, and all imaginable miseries spring from it in endless exuberance: and while poverty continues, every one must feel, that all efforts at social improvement will be of little avail.

Now what Laennec did for chest disease, what M. Lallemand did for the diseases of the male generative organs, what Newton did for the law of gravitation-that has Mr. Malthus done for poverty. He has shown its nature and its only important cause; and in so doing, has conferred a boon upon mankind, which cannot be sufficiently valued. To know the cause of any evil is for man, but the preparatory step to devising a remedy: and although, till Mr. Malthus showed the cause of poverty, it was not possible for society to escape from this, its greatest evil; I firmly believe that, by the knowledge he has given us, the evil is no longer irremediable, and that we will, by persevering and combined social efforts, ultimately be freed from it.

As Mr. Malthus's celebrated essay is not very easily procurable by every one, and as there are no truths, which deserve to be more universally known and deeply felt by all of us, than those which he explains, I shall give here a short sketch of his work, using in most places the

author s own words.

I entreat the reader to study it carefully, and to make himself thoroughly

T

master of the great law which it explains. By doing so, he will obtain a deeper insight into the complex problems of human society, the real difficulties with which our race has to contend, and the true cause of the evils existing among us, than if he studied every other branch whatsoever, of moral and political science, and omitted this; as is so frequently done. He will learn the profound errors on poverty and its remedies, which are still so prevalent; will be enabled to see through the fallacies on these subjects, which he will hear every day in conversation, from the pulpit, or the platform, or read in the pages of our newspapers, and other publications, the very same fallacies, which Mr. Malthus so unanswerably exposed, but which are still widely, nay, almost universally spread, not only in this country, but on the continent; and will perceive the utter uselessness and superficiality of the usual discussions on poverty and low wages, and of the common routine practice of statesmanship, which tacitly ignore the real law of population and wages, "not," as Mr. Mill says, "as if it could be refuted, but as if it did not exist."

ESSAY

ON THE

PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION.

BY THE

REVEREND MR. MALTHUS.

In an inquiry concerning the improvement of society, the mode of conducting the subject which naturally presents itself is

1st. To investigate the causes, that have hitherto impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness;

2nd. To examine the probability of the total or partial removal of these causes in future.

To enter fully into this question, and to enumerate all the causes, that have hitherto influenced human improvement, would be much beyond the power of an individual. The principal object of the present essay is to examine the effects of one great cause, intimately united with the very nature of man; which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the writers, who have treated this subiect. The facts, which establish the existence of this cause, have indeed been repeatedly stated and acknowledged; but its natural and necessary effects have been almost wholly overlooked; though probably among its effects may be reckoned a very consideable portion of that vice and misery, and of that unequal distribution of the bounties of nature, which it has been the unceasing object of the enlighten ed philanthropist in all ages to correct.

The cause to which I allude, is the constant tendency in all animated life, to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.

It is observed by Dr. Franklin, that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might, in a few ages, be replenished from one nation only, as for instance, with Englishmen.