Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 [1830]
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The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 [1830] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected]. LIBERTY FUND, INC. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 Edition Used: The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 2, (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860). Author: Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay About This Title: The second volume of a two volume collection of Macaulay’s essays. The first volume contains his essays from Knight’s Quarterly Magazine written during the mid-1820s. The second volume contains essays published in the Edinburgh Review in the 1830s and 1840s; in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the 1850s; and miscellaneous poems and inscriptions. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/366 Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/366 Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 Table Of Contents Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. Sadler’s Law of Population. (july 1830.) Sadler’s Refutation Refuted. (january 1831.) Mirabeau. (july 1832.) BarÈre. (april 1844.) Contributions to the EncyclopÆdia Britannica. Francis Atterbury. (december 1853.) John Bunyan. (may 1854.) Oliver Goldsmith. (february 1856.) Samuel Johnson. (december 1856.) William Pitt. (january 1859.) Miscellaneous Poems, Inscriptions, Etc. Translation From Plautus. (1850.) Paraphrase of a Passage In the Chronicle of the Monk of St. Gall. (1856.) Inscription On the Statue of Lord Wm. Bentinck. At Calcutta. (1835.) Epitaph On Sir Benjamin Heath Malkin. At Calcutta. 1837. Epitaph On Lord Metcalfe. (1847.) PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/366 Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 [Back to Table of Contents] CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. SADLER’S LAW OF POPULATION. (July 1830.) The Law of Population: a Treatise in Six Books, in Disproof of the Superfecundity of Human Beings, and developing the real Principle of their Increase. By Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1830. We did not expect a good book from Mr. Sadler: and it is well that we did not; for he has given us a very bad one. The matter of his treatise is extraordinary; the manner more extraordinary still. His arrangement is confused, his repetitions endless, his style everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similes, — all the worst of their respective kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabby finery with so much profusion and so little discrimination, that they remind us of a company of wretched strolling players, who have huddled on suits of ragged and faded tinsel, taken from a common wardrobe, and fitting neither their persons nor their parts; and who then exhibit themselves to the laughing and pitying spectators, in a state of strutting, ranting, painted, gilded beggary. “Oh, rare Daniels!” “Political economist, go and do thou likewise!” “Hear, ye political economists and anti- populationists!” “Population, if not proscribed and worried down by the Cerberean dogs of this wretched and cruel system, really does press against the level of the means of subsistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to urge society through advancing stages, till at length the strong and resistless hand of necessity presses the secret spring of human prosperity, and the portals of Providence fly open, and disclose to the enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and rewarded labour.” These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr. Sadler’s eloquence. We could easily multiply them; but our readers, we fear, are already inclined to cry for mercy. Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes, sometimes rightly quoted, sometimes wrongly,—sometimes good, sometimes insufferable,—sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and sometimes, for aught we know, Mr. Sadler’s own. “Let man,” cries the philosopher, “take heed how he rashly violates his trust;” and thereupon he breaks forth into singing as follows: “What myriads wait in destiny’s dark womb, Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb! ’Tis his to blot them from the book of fate, Or, like a second Deity, create; To dry the stream of being in its source, Or bid it, widening, win its restless course; PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/366 Online Library of Liberty: Miscellaneous Writings, Vol.2 While, earth and heaven replenishing, the flood Rolls to its Ocean fount, and rests in God.” If these lines are not Mr. Sadler’s, we heartily beg his pardon for our suspicion — a suspicion which, we acknowledge, ought not to be lightly entertained of any human being. We can only say that we never met with them before, and that we do not much care how long it may be before we meet with them, or with any others like them, again. The spirit of this work is as bad as its style. We never met with a book which so strongly indicated that the writer was in a good humour with himself, and in a bad humour with everybody else; which contained so much of that kind of reproach which is vulgarly said to be no slander, and of that kind of praise which is vulgarly said to be no commendation. Mr. Malthus is attacked in language which it would be scarcely decent to employ repecting Titus Oates. “Atrocious,” “execrable,” “blasphemous,” and other epithets of the same kind, are poured forth against that able, excellent, and honourable man, with a profusion which in the early part of the work excites indignation, but, after the first hundred pages, produces mere weariness and nausea. In the preface, Mr. Sadler excuses himself on the plea of haste. Two-thirds of his book, he tells us, were written in a few months. If any terms have escaped him which can be construed into personal disrespect, he shall deeply regret that he had not more time to revise them. We must inform him that the tone of his book required a very different apology; and that a quarter of a year, though it is a short time for a man to be engaged in writing a book, is a very long time for a man to be in a passion. The imputation of being in a passion Mr. Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which “it were impious to be calm;” and he boasts that, “instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom throughout.” If Mr. Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principle of population should be carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, we can have no personal objections. We are quite as little afraid of a contest in which quarter shall be neither given nor taken as he can be. But we would advise him seriously to consider, before he publishes the promised continuation of his work, whether he be not one of that class of writers who stand peculiarly in need of the candour which he insults, and who would have most to fear from that unsparing severity which he practises and recommends.