thus
regards vice and misery as blessings, and prove that population does
not 'tend' to increase too rapidly. Jarrold apparently accepts the
doctrine which Malthus attributes to Suessmilch, that lives have been
shortened since the days of the patriarchs, and the reproductive
forces diminished as the world has grown fuller. Grahame believes in a
providential 'ordeal,' constituted by infant mortality, which is not,
like war and vice, due to human corruption, but a beneficent
regulating force which correlates fertility with the state of society.
This might be taken by Malthus as merely amounting to another version
of his checks. Such books, in fact, simply show, what does not require
to be further emphasised, that Malthus had put his version of the
struggle for existence into a form which seemed scandalous to the
average orthodox person. The vagueness of Malthus himself and the
confused argument of such opponents makes it doubtful whether they are
really answering his theories or reducing them to a less repulsive
form of statement.

In other directions, the Malthusian doctrine roused keen feeling on
both sides, and the line taken by different parties is significant.
Malthus had appeared as an antagonist of the revolutionary party. He
had laid down what he took to be an insuperable obstacle to the
realisation of their dreams. Yet his views were adopted and extended
by those who called themselves thorough Radicals. As, in our days,
Darwinism has been claimed as supporting both individualist and
socialistic conclusions, the theory of his predecessor, Malthus, might
be applied in a Radical or a Conservative sense. In point of fact,
Malthus was at once adopted by the Whigs, as represented by the
_Edinburgh Review_. They were followers of Adam Smith and Dugald
Stewart; they piqued themselves, and, as even James Mill admitted,
with justice, upon economic orthodoxy. They were at the same time
predisposed to a theory which condemned the revolutionary Utopias. It
provided them with an effective weapon against the agitators whom they
especially dreaded. The Tories might be a little restrained by
orthodox qualms. In 1812 Southey was permitted to make an onslaught
upon Malthus in the _Quarterly_;[393] but more complimentary
allusions followed, and five years later the essay was elaborately
defended in an able article.[394] An apology was even insinuated for
the previous assault, though the blame was thrown upon Malthus for
putting hi