adler is careless in the collection of facts,--that
he is incapable of reasoning on facts when he has collected them,--that
he does not understand the simplest terms of science,--that he has
enounced a proposition of which he does not know the meaning,--that
the proposition which he means to enounce, and which he tries to prove,
leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impious
and immoral,--and that, from the very documents to which he has himself
appealed, it may be demonstrated that his theory is false. We may,
perhaps, resume the subject when his next volume appears. Meanwhile, we
hope that he will delay its publication until he has learned a little
arithmetic, and unlearned a great deal of eloquence.
*****
SADLER'S REFUTATION REFUTED. (January 1831.)
"A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No.
CII.) entitled, 'Sadler's Law of Population, and disproof of
Human Superfecundity;' containing also Additional Proofs of
the Principle enunciated in that Treatise, founded on the
Censuses of different Countries recently published." By
Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P. 8vo. London: 1830.
"Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare
myself for a storm coming against it, it being resolved by some men
that it was necessary that book of mine should, as it is phrased, be run
down."--John Locke.
We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr Sadler's
title-page from top to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied
between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on
Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with
mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a dramatic piece,
entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's
victory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr Sadler is,
and now as much forgotten as Mr Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His
piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, "as it is phrased," in
the second act; but the author, thinking that it had been unfairly and
unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to shame,
with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this mark--that the dunces are all in confederacy
against him." We remember another anecdote, which may perhaps be
acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr Sadler. A certain Antinomian
preacher, the ora
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