ipated
me: in the passage relating to the geometric and arithmetic ratios, it
is clear that he has: in the other passage, which objects to Mr.
Malthus's use of the term _perfection_, that he has represented it
under contradictory predicates, it is not equally clear; for I do not
find my own meaning so rigorously expressed as to exclude another[28]
interpretation even now when I know what to look for; and, without
knowing what to look for, I should certainly not have found it: on
the whole, however, I am disposed to think that Mr. Hazlitt's meaning
is the same as my own. So much for the _matter_ of Mr. Hazlitt's
communication: as to the _manner_, I am sorry that it is liable to a
construction which perhaps was not intended. Mr. Hazlitt says--'I do
not wish to bring any charge of plagiarism in this case;' words which
are better fitted to express his own forbearance, than to exonerate me
from the dishonour of such an act. But I am unwilling to suppose that
Mr. Hazlitt has designedly given this negative form to his words. He
says also--'as I have been a good deal abused for my scepticism on
that subject, I do not feel quite disposed that any one else should
run away with the credit of it.' Here again I cannot allow myself to
think that Mr. Hazlitt meant deliberately to bring me before the
reader's mind under the odious image of a person who was 'running
away' with the credit of another. As to 'credit,' Mr. Hazlitt must
permit me to smile when I read that word used in that sense: I can
assure him that not any abstract consideration of credit, but the
abstract idea of a credi_tor_ (often putting on a concrete shape, and
sometimes the odious concrete of a dun) has for some time past been
the animating principle of my labours. Credit therefore, except in the
sense of twelve months' credit where now alas! I have only six, is no
object of my search: in fact I abhor it: for to be a 'noted' man is
the next bad thing to being a 'protested' man. Seriously, however, I
sent you this as the first of four notes which I had written on the
logical blunders of Mr. Malthus (the other three being taken not from
his Essay on Population, but from works more expressly within the
field of Political Economy): not having met with it elsewhere, I
supposed it my own and sent it to complete the series: but the very
first sentence, which parodies the words of Chancellor Oxenstiern--('Go
and see--how _little_ logic is required,' &c.), sufficiently shows