republican virtues of the United States, are enough to account for
everything; and Malthus's whole aim is to 'calumniate the people.'
Godwin in 1820 takes up the same taunts. Malthus ought, he thinks, to
welcome war, famine, pestilence, and the gallows.[446] He has taught
the poor that they have no claim to relief, and the rich that, by
indulging in vice, they are conferring a benefit upon the country. The
poor-laws admit a right, and he taunts Malthus for proposing to
abolish it, and refusing food to a poor man on the ground that he had
notice not to come into the world two years before he was born.[447]

Godwin, whose earlier atheism had been superseded by a vague deism,
now thinks with Cobbett that the poor were supported by the piety of
the mediaeval clergy, who fed the hungry and clothed the naked from
their vast revenues, while dooming themselves to spare living.[448] He
appeals to the authority of the Christian religion, which indeed might
be a fair _argumentum ad hominem_ against 'Parson Malthus.' He
declares that Nature takes more care of her work than such irreverent
authors suppose, and 'does not ask our aid to keep down the excess of
population.'[449] In fact, he doubts whether population increases at
all. Malthus's whole theory, he says, rests upon the case of America;
and with the help of Mr. Booth and some very unsatisfactory
statistics, he tries to prove that the increase shown in the American
census has been entirely due to immigration. Malthus safely declined
to take any notice of a production which in fact shows that Godwin
had lost his early vigour. The sound Utilitarian, Francis Place, took
up the challenge, and exploded some of Godwin's statistics. He shows
his Radicalism by admitting that Malthus, to whose general benevolence
he does justice, had not spoken of the poor as one sprung like himself
from the poor would naturally do; and he accepts modes of limiting the
population from which Malthus himself had shrunk. For improvement, he
looks chiefly to the abolition of restrictive laws.

II. SOCIALISM

The arguments of Hazlitt and his allies bring us back to the Socialist
position. Although it was represented by no writer of much literary
position, Owen was becoming conspicuous, and some of his sympathisers
were already laying down principles more familiar to-day. Already, in
the days of the Six Acts, the government was alarmed by certain
'Spencean Philanthropists.' According to Place they were