Philosophy, with antidotes to liberty and
humanity, with abusive Histories of the Greek and Roman republics, with
fulsome panegyrics on the Roman Emperors (at the very time when we were
reviling Buonaparte for his strides to universal empire) with the slime
and offal of desperate servility--and we cannot but consider the
Essay as one of the poisonous ingredients thrown into the cauldron of
Legitimacy "to make it thick and slab." Our author has, indeed, so
far done service to the cause of truth, that he has counteracted
many capital errors formerly prevailing as to the universal and
indiscriminate encouragement of population under all circumstances; but
he has countenanced opposite errors, which if adopted in theory and
practice would be even more mischievous, and has left it to future
philosophers to follow up the principle, that some check must be
provided for the unrestrained progress of population, into a set of
wiser and more humane consequences. Mr. Godwin has lately attempted an
answer to the Essay (thus giving Mr. Malthus a _Roland for his Oliver_)
but we think he has judged ill in endeavouring to invalidate the
principle, instead of confining himself to point out the misapplication
of it. There is one argument introduced in this Reply, which will,
perhaps, amuse the reader as a sort of metaphysical puzzle.

"It has sometimes occurred to me whether Mr. Malthus did not catch the
first hint of his geometrical ratio from a curious passage of Judge
Blackstone, on consanguinity, which is as follows:--

"The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious;
but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal
ancestors which every man has within no very great number of degrees:
and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as
he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending
degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his
father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the
parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same
rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh;
a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or
the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of
ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate.

"This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the
increasing power of progress