refigurations I have been
alluding to, is yet curious enough to deserve mention. The oak of
Boscobel and its history are matter of household knowledge. It is not
equally well known, that in a medal, struck to commemorate the
installation (about 1636) of Charles II., then Prince of Wales, as a
Knight of the Garter, amongst the decorations was introduced an
oak-tree with the legend--'Seris factura nepotibus umbram.'

[Footnote 24: This is only signed Z in _The London Magazine_, but is
clearly labelled 'DE QUINCEY' in ARCHDEACON HESSEY'S marked copy.--H.]

MEASURE OF VALUE.[25]

(_December, 1823._)

To the reader.--This article was written and printed before the author
heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo.

It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political
Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of
Population), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every
step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and
his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of
his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic.
What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: _he took an
obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren
truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences_. Out of this
position--_That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground
which limited human increase_--united with this other position--_That
there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of population to pass
that limit_, he unfolded a body of most important corollaries. I have
remarked in another article on this subject--how entirely these
corollaries had escaped all Mr. Malthus's[26] predecessors in the same
track. Perhaps the most striking instance of this, which I could have
alleged, is that of the celebrated French work--_L'Ami des Hommes, ou
Traite de la Population_ (written about the middle of the last
century), which sets out deliberately from this principle, expressed
almost in the very words of Mr. Malthus,--'_Que la mesure de la
Subsistance est celle de la Population_;'--beats the bushes in every
direction about it; and yet (with the exception of one corollary on
the supposed depopulating tendency of war and famine) deduces from it
none but erroneous and Anti-Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth
apparently so barren any corollaries were deducible--was reserved for
Mr. Malthus to show. _As_ coroll