malaria a respecter of
persons? It infests Rome. Does it infest London? There are complaints
peculiar to the tropical countries. There are others which are found
only in mountainous districts; others which are confined to marshy
regions; others again which run in particular families. Is not this
partiality? Why is it more inconsistent with the divine goodness that
poor men should suffer an evil from which rich men are exempt, than that
a particular portion of the community should inherit gout, scrofula,
insanity, and other maladies? And are there no miseries under which, in
fact, the poor alone are suffering? Mr Sadler himself acknowledges, in
this very paragraph, that there are such; but he tells us that these
calamities are the effects of misgovernment, and that this misgovernment
is the effect of political economy. Be it so. But does he not see that
he is only removing the difficulty one step further? Why does Providence
suffer men, whose minds are filled with false and pernicious notions, to
have power in the state? For good ends, we doubt not, if the fact be so;
but for ends inscrutable to us, who see only a small part of the vast
scheme, and who see that small part only for a short period. Does Mr
Sadler doubt that the Supreme Being has power as absolute over the
revolutions of political as over the organisation of natural bodies?
Surely not: and, if not, we do not see that he vindicates the ways
of Providence by attributing the distresses, which the poor, as he
confesses, endure, to an error in legislation rather than to a law of
physiology. Turn the question as we may, disguise it as we may, we shall
find that it at last resolves itself into the same great enigma,--the
origin of physical and moral evil: an enigma which the highest human
intellects have given up in despair, but which Mr Sadler thinks himself
perfectly able to solve.

He next accuses us of having paused long on verbal criticism. We
certainly did object to his improper use of the words "inverse
variation." Mr Sadler complains of this with his usual bitterness.

"Now what is the Reviewer's quarrel with me on this occasion? That he
does not understand the meaning of my terms? No. He acknowledges the
contrary. That I have not fully explained the sense in which I have used
them? No. An explanation, he knows, is immediately subjoined, though
he has carefully suppressed it. That I have varied the sense in which I
have applied them? No. I challenge him t