Note 7 — A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION BY THE REV. T. R. MALTHUS In a Series of Letters. To which are added, Extracts from the Essay, with Notes (continued 2)

I here follow the text of Mr. Malthus, who takes great pains to give a striking description of the savage tribes, as a pleasing contrast, no doubt, to the elegancies and comforts of polished life. Mr. Malthus’s extreme sensibility to the grossness and inconveniences of the savage state, may be construed into refinement and delicacy. But it does not strike me so. There is something in this mis-placed and selfish fastidiousness, that shocks me more than the objects of it. It does not lead to compassion but to hatred. We strive to get rid of our uneasiness, by hardening ourselves towards the objects which occasion it, and lose the passive feelings of disgust excited in us by others in the active desire to inflict pain upon them. Aversion too easily changes into malice. Mr. Malthus seems fond of indulging this feeling against all those who have not the same advantages as himself. With a pious gratitude he seems fond of repeating to himself, ‘I am not as this poor Hottentot.’ He then gives you his bill of fare, which is none of the most delicate, without omitting a single article, and by shrugging up his shoulders, making wry mouths at him, and fairly turning your stomach, excites in you the same loathing and abhorrence of this poor creature that he takes delight in feeling himself. ‘Your very nice people have the nastiest imaginations.’ He triumphs over the calamities and degradation of his fellow-creatures. He lays open all the sores and blotches of humanity with the same calmness and alacrity as a hospital surgeon does those of a diseased body. He turns the world into a charnel-house. Through a dreary space of 300 ‘chill and comfortless’ pages, he ransacks all quarters of the globe only ‘to present a speaking picture of hunger and nakedness, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings, in anxious search of calamities most akin to his invalid imagination,’ and eagerly gropes into every hole and corner of wretchedness to collect evidence in support of his grand misery-scheme, as at the time of an election, you see the city-candidates sneaking into the dirty alleys, and putrid cellars of Shoreditch or Whitechapel, and the candidates for Westminster into those of St. Giles’s, canvassing for votes, their patriotic zeal prevailing over their sense of dignity, and sense of smell.