cal error in all this: Mr. Malthus may consistently rely upon
moral restraint for getting rid, suppose, of ninety cases out of every
hundred which at present tend to produce an excessive population, and
yet maintain that even this tenth of the former excess would be
sufficient, at a certain stage of population, to reproduce famines,
&c., _i. e._ to reproduce as much misery and vice as had been got rid
of. Here there is an absolute increase of moral restraint, but still
insufficient for the purpose of preventing misery, &c. For, as soon as
the maximum of population is attained, even one single birth in excess
(_i. e._ which does more than replace the existing numbers)--_a
fortiori_, then, one-tenth of the present excess (though implying that
the other nine-tenths had been got rid of by moral restraint) would
yet be sufficient to prevent the attainment of a state of perfection.
And, if Mr. Malthus had so shaped his argument, whether wrong or
right--he would not have offended in point of _logic_: his logical
error lies in supposing a state of perfection already existing and yet
as brought to nothing by this excess of births: whereas it is clear
that such an excess may operate to prevent, but cannot operate to
destroy a state of perfection; because in such a state no excess could
ever arise; for, though an excess may co-exist with a vast increase of
moral restraint, it cannot co-exist with entire and perfect moral
restraint; and nothing less than _that_ is involved in the term
'perfection.' A perfect state, which allows the possibility of the
excess here spoken of, is already an imperfect state. Now, if Mr.
Hazlitt says that this is exactly what he means, I answer that I
believe it is; because I can in no other way explain his sixth
sentence--from the words 'but it is shifting the question' to the end
of that sentence. Yet again the seventh sentence (the last) is so
expressed as to be unintelligible to me. And all that precedes the
sixth sentence, though very intelligible, yet seems the precise
objection which I have stated above, and which I think untenable. Nay,
it is still less tenable in Mr. Hazlitt's way of putting it than as
usually put: for to represent Mr. Malthus as saying that, 'if reason
should ever get the mastery over all our actions, we shall then be
governed _entirely_ by our physical appetites' (which are Mr.
Hazlitt's words), would be objected to even by an opponent of Mr.
Malthus: why '_entirely_?' why more