the revolutionary theorists was to
settle the right without reference to the possibility of making the
right correspond to the fact.

Hence Malthus draws his most emphatic political moral. The admission
that all evil is due to government is the way to tyranny. Make men
believe that government is the one cause of misery, and they will
inevitably throw the whole responsibility upon their rulers; seek for
redress by cures which aggravate the disease; and strengthen the hands
of those who prefer even despotism to anarchy. This, he intimates, is
the explanation of the repressive measures in which the
country-gentlemen had supported Pitt. The people had fancied that by
destroying government they would make bread cheap; government was
forced to be tyrannical in order to resist revolution; while its
supporters were led to 'give up some of the most valuable privileges
of Englishmen.'[271] It is then of vital importance to settle what is
and what is not to be set down to government. Malthus, in fact, holds
that the real evils are due to underlying causes which cannot be
directly removed, though they may be diminished or increased, by
legislators. Government can do something by giving security to
property, and by making laws which will raise the self-respect of the
lower classes. But the effect of such laws must be slow and gradual;
and the error which has most contributed to that delay in the progress
of freedom, which is 'so disheartening to every liberal mind,'[272] is
the confusion as to the true causes of misery. Thus, as he has already
urged, professed economists could still believe, so long after the
publication of Adam Smith's work, that it was 'in the power of the
justices of the peace or even of the omnipotence of parliament to
alter by a _fiat_ the whole circumstances of the country.'[273] Yet
men who saw the absurdity of trying to fix the price of provisions
were ready to propose to fix the rate of wages. They did not see that
one term of the proportion implied the other. Malthus's whole
criticism of the poor-law, already noticed, is a commentary upon this
text. It is connected with a general theory of human nature. The
author of nature, he says, has wisely made 'the passion of self-love
beyond expression stronger than the passion of benevolence.'[274] He
means, as he explains, that every man has to pursue his own welfare
and that of his family as his primary object. Benevolence, of course,
is the 'source of our pure