isadvantages which
arise from the limited nature of our faculties, and the errors which may
insensibly creep upon us in the process. We are further exposed to the
operation of the unevennesses and irregularities that perpetually
occur in external nature, the imperfection of our senses, and of the
instruments we construct to assist our observations, and the discrepancy
which we frequently detect between the actual nature of the things about
us and our impressions respecting them.

This is obvious, whenever we undertake to apply the processes of
arithmetic to the realities of life. Arithmetic, unsubjected to the
impulses of passion and the accidents of created nature, holds on its
course; but, in the phenomena of the actual world, "time and chance
happeneth to them all."

Thus it is, for example, in the arithmetical and geometrical ratios, set
up in political economy by the celebrated Mr. Malthus. His numbers will
go on smoothly enough, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, as representing the principle
of population among mankind, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the means of
subsistence; but restiff and uncomplying nature refuses to conform
herself to his dicta.

Dr. Price has calculated the produce of one penny, put out at the
commencement of the Christian era to five per cent. compound interest,
and finds that in the year 1791 it would have increased to a greater sum
than would be contained in three hundred millions of earths, all solid
gold. But what has this to do with the world in which we live? Did
ever any one put out his penny to interest in this fashion for eighteen
hundred years? And, if he did, where was the gold to be found, to
satisfy his demand?

Morse, in his American Gazetteer, proceeding on the principles of
Malthus, tells us that, if the city of New York goes on increasing for
a century in a certain ratio, it will by that time contain 5,257,493
inhabitants. But does any one, for himself or his posterity, expect to
see this realised?

Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, has observed
that, as every man has two ancestors in the first ascending degree,
and four in the second, so in the twentieth degree he has more than a
million, and in the fortieth the square of that number, or upwards of a
million millions. This statement therefore would have a greater tendency
to prove that mankind in remote ages were numerous, almost beyond the
power of figures to represent, than the opposite doctrine of Malthus,
that th