Page images
PDF
EPUB

"As a previous step," he says, even to any considerable alteration, in the present system of the poor-laws, which would contract or stop the increase of the relief to be given, it appears to me that we are bound in justice and honour formally to disclaim the right of the poor to support." This may be considered as the preamble to the bill which follows, and it is hardly possible to conceive a more offensive or unnecessary paragraph; the style is particularly revolting. "To this end (he continues) I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring, that no child born from any marriage, taking place after the expiration of a year, from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish-assistance."* This is followed by several pages, written in a loose, figurative style, and on which, as well as on the proposal itself, Mr. Godwin has been particularly severe in his remarks, without, however, opposing the proposition on the right grounds.

Mr. Malthus proceeds in an unsatisfactory, inconclusive manner, to condemn the man who, after notice given, may choose to marry without a prospect of being able to support a family."+ Mr. Godwin, in reply to this, has successfully shown that no labourer, and very few artisans, have a prospect of being able to maintain a family; and that, consequently, on Mr. Malthus's hypothesis, scarcely any of them can marry without committing an immoral act. This seems never to have occurred to Mr. Malthus; he appears to have looked only to the consequences of an improvident marriage, in those who might happen to be thrust out, and become at some period of their lives unable to provide food for their children.'

Mr. Place, the able defender of Mr. Malthus's doctrines, has expressed this merited reprobation of the pitiless deductions drawn from them: they would, indeed, produce unexampled and inconceivable wretchedness, if carried into execution. In saying this, we do not impute to Mr. Malthus any intention to injure or degrade the labouring classes: the error is in his judgment, not in his heart. He would gradually abolish the poor-laws, because they degrade the objects who depend on them for support; it cannot be supposed, therefore, that he suggests as a remedy that which he knew would be ten times more afflicting than the disease. We give both to him and to Mr. Scarlett unfeigned credit for the best intentions: but, from a deep persuasion that they are in error as to the consequences of the measures which they advise, we heartily rejoice in their rejection.

Ac

Among the numerous inconsistencies in Mr. Malthus's book, is one which we do not recollect to have seen noticed. cording to him, it is the law of nature that population should

* Essay, vol. iii. p. 178.'

+ Ibid. p. 180.'

increase

increase in a geometrical progression, while food for its subsistence can be raised only in a sluggish arithmetical ratio. The laws of nature are resistless: they know no limitations either of space or time; and human institutions are accordingly represented by him as "light and superficial" in their operation, mere "feathers that float on the surface of affairs in comparison with the evils which result from them." Mr. M. will certainly not deny that an immeasurable difference of fertility exists in different soils; or that, while some are even doomed to stand at the very zero of barrenness, others are at the highest degree of luxuriant productiveness: - but, according to him, population is always pressing against the limits of food in all countries, and has been so doing in all ages; under good or bad governments; in fertile and in sterile soils; in mild as well as rigorous climates; in thinly and in thickly peopled countries. Yet population ought in all countries to be proportioned to the productive powers of the earth; and as these are always the same, so ought population to be, for human institutions are too "light and superficial" to be taken into the account. - Can any thing be more absurd?

Perhaps the most essential difference between Mr. Godwin and Mr. Malthus consists in their opinions on the operation of human institutions with regard to population. Mr. Place has distinctly and repeatedly asserted that the former denies the power of the human race to increase its numbers;' and we have seen what the latter says about the comparative inactivity of civil institutions. The subsequent passage from Mr. Godwin's "Enquiry" will shew what his opinion is, and at the same time convince Mr. Place that his assertion was too hastily made:

"Under a wise and honest administration of human affairs," says Mr. G., " I do not doubt that the power of multiplication in man, however extensive, might, for centuries to come, be rendered the source of an immeasurable increase of happiness on the face of the earth. Indeed, in this point of view, I hold Mr. Malthus as having penned a satire upon the existing constitutions and laws of society, infinitely bitterer than any thing that has yet been produced by all the Utopianists and visionaries that ever existed. Those who possess the direction of human affairs might, if they pleased, by wise concert, by persuasion, by developing grand views of the true interests of civilized man, and by a faithful discharge of the duties of their station, diffuse populousness through every region of the globe, and multiply thirty-fold the number of beings susceptible of human contentment; while by the same operation they would remove our oppressions, and give to every man a degree of competence and independence hitherto unknown." (Godwin's Enquiry, book v. chap. ii. p. 453.)

D 2

If

If this be not an admission of the expansive power of procreation, we must confess ourselves ignorant of the mothertongue. Fanciful as this picture of amelioration may be, — a "Midsummer Night's Dream," perhaps,—it is at least cheerful and exhilarating; and far more pleasing to our taste than that melancholy view of human nature which Mr. Malthus has taken. On his canvas, all is dark and desponding: man is not there seen marching onwards in the road to virtue and happiness, elated with hope, but is represented as a traveller, weary and way-worn, standing still with folded arms and dejected eye, incapable of proceeding on his journey.

In contemplating, with unaffected concern, the practical consequences of the alarm excited by Mr. Malthus's ratios, it is impossible not to advert to the unnatural and horrible suggestion which that alarm has engendered in an amiable and benevolent mind: but we shall merely advert to it.

" Quod factu fœdum est, idem est quoque dictu turpe.” At page 165. Mr. Place has first hinted at the adoption of some physical preventative of conception, provided that it is neither injurious to health nor destructive of female delicacy! This idea is more fully developed in pages 173-177.; and we find that, at some future period, he is fully persuaded that 'the course recommended' will be pursued by the people, even if left to themselves." Is it then to be compulsory, should the feelings of nature revolt at its adoption? Is it to be instilled into a pauper-audience from the pulpit as "the law of nature," and "the will of God?" This prevention of conception is the first step; but the unnatural attempt may not always succeed; the course of nature is not always to be defeated, nor is the effort to be made with impunity. What then? What is the next step? the drug is ineffective as to its object: conception has taken place in spite of it. Does not Mr. Place anticipate another, and another consequence? Does he not see that the next dose must be stronger, that it has a different object in view, to procure abortion! Let us repeat, the course of nature is not always to be defeated, nor is the attempt to counteract it ever made without evil consequences. The drug is again ineffective as to its purport, but not inoperative as to its unhappy subject! then what is the third and last step? Gracious Heaven! the infant is born:but population must be kept down, and the babe must be! Is it possible to pursue this train of thought without shuddering? Mr. Place would surely have felt the flesh crawl on his bones, had these inevitable consequences of such a preventive check presented themselves, in horrible array, before his imagination.

[ocr errors]

ART.

ART. IV. Illustrations, Historical and Critical, of the Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent; with an Appendix of Original and other Documents. By William Roscoe.

4to.

pp. 223.; and Appendix 168. (Also 8vo.) Boards. Cadell. 1822.

THE HE Life of Lorenzo de' Medici by Mr. Roscoe, though he was not a native of that beautiful country,

'Ch' Appenin parte, e'l mar circonda, e l'Alpe,"

and was exercising in a remote part of England a profession which cannot be considered as very auspicious to the cultivation of elegant studies, rose into rapid popularity immediately after its first publication. It has also been translated into several foreign languages; into German by Sprengel; into French by Thurot; into Italian by the Cavaliero Mecherini, a young nobleman of Pisa; and it has considerably outlived the usual period of a mere transient applause, retaining a most respectable rank among the literary histories of Europe.

In selecting for the subject of his labors a personage so remarkable for his civil station, as well as for his learning and accomplishments, and so powerfully influencing the events of the interesting times in which he was born, it could scarcely have been expected that the biographer should not be occasionally misled by the partiality, obvious and natural, which writers insensibly acquire for those on whose lives they are occupied. Middleton acknowleges with much ingenuousness this not illaudable zeal, in his life of Cicero.

"There is one great fault," he says, "which is commonly observed in the writers of particular lives; that they are apt to be partial and prejudiced in favor of their subject, and to give us a panegyric instead of a history. They work up their characters as painters do their portraits; taking the praise of their art to consist, not in copying but in adorning nature, not in drawing a just resemblance, but giving a fine picture, or exalting the man into the hero; and this indeed seems to flow from the nature of the thing itself; where the very inclination to write is generally grounded on prepossession, and an affection already contracted for the person, whose history we are attempting; and when we sit down to it with the disposition of a friend, it is natural for us to cast a shade over his failings, to give the strongest coloring to his virtues; and out of a good character, to endeavor to draw a perfect one. I am sensible that this is the common prejudice of biographers, and have endeavored therefore to divest myself of it as far as I was able; yet dare not take upon me to affirm that I have kept myself wholly clear from it, but shall leave the decision of that point to the judgement of the reader; for I must be so ingenuous as to own, that when I formed the plan of this work, I was previously possessed with a very favorable opinion of Cicero; which, after the strictest

DS

strictest scrutiny, has been greatly confirmed and heightened in me; and in the case of a shining character, it is certainly more pardonable to exceed rather in our praises of it, out of a zeal for illustrious merit, than to be reserved in doing justice to it, through a fear of being thought partial." (Preface.)

We have extracted this passage, as being strictly applicable to the work before us:a work which Mr. Roscoe has deemed necessary to his vindication from the partialities that have been occasionally imputed to him by several writers, who have recently illustrated the political and literary history of Italy. In our opinion, he might have reposed beneath such an authority as that of Middleton, and have considered himself secure from censure, as long as he was conscious of advancing nothing without authentic testimony to support it; for the natural bias which inclines us to extol, in strong though unexaggerated terms, those characters who were great and good in their generation, is a bias arising from the most commendable dispositions of our nature. We must not, however, complain if Mr. R. has deemed the present publication necessary, because it yields us much interesting and additional commentary on the subject of the original history, and that of Italian literature in general. To collect,' he says, and to place under one point of view the information which has thus been acquired; to give some account of the various writers by whom it has been furnished; to demonstrate that Lorenzo de' Medici has a just claim to the elevated station, which he has so long maintained, and to vindicate the fidelity and accuracy of his English biographer against the censures of some foreign writers, the effects of which have extended to this country, are the chief motives which have induced him to give an additional volume to the indulgence of the public.'

6

Mr. Roscoe first notices the animadversion of M. Thurot. the French translator of the Life of Lorenzo; who has charged him with "not having perceived, or having been afraid to assert, that the state of Florence was subject to a radical defect, which caused the destruction of the republics of Greece and Rome, the vice of hereditary succession." Mr. R. has thus concisely and, we think, satisfactorily refuted this imputation :

As M. Thurot seems to have granted me the choice of two imputations, I shall avail myself of his permission to reply to the former only, and shall freely confess, that it never occurred to me that the vice of hereditary succession, as he has chosen to call it, was the cause of the destruction of the liberties of any of the republics to which he has alluded, however it may be considered as the consequence of it. In the state of Florence, in particular, the liberties of the republic had existed under the popular influence of the Medici, in direct opposition as well to an aristocratical as

to

« PreviousContinue »