a Then nature was my kingdom; and I stood Rich in the wealth of all beneath the pole ; Awaked the transport of my soul. And ice-flakes melted from the green-tipp'd spray; On tribes of flowers that laugh'd in day ! Thou heldst high festival : thy storms arose, Of hail-blasts, hurricanes, and snows. How have I loved to see the radiance run O'er the calm ocean from an azure sky; Gaze down with burning eye! Thy waves, O sea! rolld gathering from afar; As storm-lash'd surges strove in war. My love has sought thee in the musing hour; Thy fir-tree depths my shadowing bower. How, when I saw thy lofty scenes unfold, My soul sprang forth, transported at the sight! Enthusiasm there shook its wings of gold, And bore me up from height to height: My bounding step o'er-vaulted summits high, Where resting clouds had check'd their soaring pride, With eagles swooping at my side. Thy pencil'd outlines desolate and grand ! Beneath my re-creating hand. Those days so beautiful, when the bright flame The noble pang of fame. EXTRACT FROM THE GENIUS OF MAN. CANTO III. “ But how compute th’immeasurable height a Dispense the night that shrouds thy majesty, Obscure blasphemer! can thy scoffs exclude O ye, who make a faith in God your scorn, What succour bring ye to the poor forlorn ? What promise to the care-bent wretch impart, Who feels despair, an arrow in his heart? How ease of long remorse the guilty load, When, spurn’d of man, the soul would lean on God ? Inhuman! thus to rend all hope away From hearts where sin's assailing sufferings prey ; To break that anchor of the soul, where grief Has fix'd her hand impatient of relief! No judge absolves, if God be snatch'd away, To innocence no father, grief no stay; O Faith! our want! our refuge in distress ! Without thee life were gall and weariness! Man girds himself with Fortune's gifts in vain ; Her splendour brings satiety and pain. Let God in awful banishment depart, Life's tedium steeps in heaviness the heart; God's absence still prolong'd within the soul, Despair has reach'd him and possest him whole. This state endures not: with no arm to save, The reprobate has plunged within his grave. a Lord of his lot, 'tis man alone who dles, For him alone life's pleasures fade around; 'Tis his own heart has dealt th' assassin's wound; The spark immortal and divine disown, Whatever social ills may press us round, And tunest his lips to confidence and praise. Grand thought of God! to which, 'midst pleasures vain, MEASURE OF VALUE. To the reader. This article was written and printed before the author heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo. It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of Populalation), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic. What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: he took an obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences. Out of this position That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground which limited human increase-united with this other position-That there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of population to pass that limit, he unfolded a body of most important corollaries. I have remarked in another article on this subject-how entirely these corollaries had escaped all Mr. Malthus's* predecessors in the same track. Per * In a slight article on Mr. Malthus, lately published, I omitted to take any notice of the recent controversy between this gentleman -Mr. Godwin-and Mr. Booth; my reason for which was-that I have not yet found time to read it. But, if Mr. Lowe has rightly represented this principle of Mr. Booth's argument in his late work on the Statistics of England, it is a most erroneous one: for Mr. Booth is there described as alleging against Mr. Malthus that, in his view of the tendencies of the principle of population, he has relied too much on the case of the United States-which Mr. Booth will have to be an extreme case, and not according to the general rule. But of what consequence is this to Mr. Malthus? And how is he interested in relying on the case of America rather than that of the oldest European country? Because he assumes a perpetual nisus in the principle of human increase to pass a certain limit, he does not therefore hold that this limit ever is passed either in the new countries or in old (or only for a moment, and inevitably to be thrown back within it). Let this limit be placed where it may, it can no more be passed in America than in Europe; and America is not at all more favourable to Mr. Malthus's theory than Europe. Births, it must be remembered, are more in excess in Europe than in America: though they do not make so much positive addition to the population. a haps the most striking instance of guide at the sad bewilderment into this, which I could have alleged, is which they have both strayed. It tends that of the celebrated French work much to heighten the sense of Mr. – L'Ami des Hommes, ou Traité Malthus's helplessness in this partide la Population,” (written about the cular point—that of late years he has middle of the last century), which given himself the air too much of sets out deliberately from this prin- teazing Mr. Ricardo, one of the ciple, expressed almost in the very“ ugliest customers” in point of logic words of Mr. Malthus, -" Que la that ever entered the ring. Mr. Ricarmésure de la Subsistance est celle de la do is a most “ dangerous” man; and Population ;"_beats the bushes in Mr. Malthus would do well not to every direction about it; and yet meddle with so “ vicioue” a subject, (with the exception of one corollary whose arm (like Neate's) gives a on the supposed depopulating ten- blow like the kick of a horse. He dency of war and famine) deduces has hitherto contented himself very from it none but erroneous and Anti- goodnaturedly with gently laying Malthusian doctrines. That from a Mr. Malthus on his back ; but, if he truth apparently so barren any corol- should once turn round with a serious laries were deducible was reserved determination to “ take the conceit" for Mr. Malthus to show. As corol- out of him, Mr. Malthus would aslaries, it may be supposed that they suredly be “ put into chancery,” and imply a logical act of the understand- suffer a ~ punishment” that must ing. In some small degree, no doubt; distress his friends.—Amongst those but no more than necessarily accom- whom Mr. Malthus has perplexed by panies every exercise of reason. his logic, I am not one : in matter of Though inferences, they are not re- logic, I hold myself impeccable; and, mote inferences, but immediate and to say nothing of my sober days, i proximate; and not dependent upon defy the devil and all the powers of each other, but collateral. Not lo- darkness to get any advantage over gic but a judicious choice of his me, even on those days when I am ground placed Mr. Malthus at once drunk, in relation to - Barbara, Cein a station from which he command- larent, Darii, or Ferio." ed the whole truth at a glance-with “ Avoid, old Satanas !” I exclaim, a lucky dispensation from all neces- if any man attempts to fling dust in sity of continuous logical processes. my eyes by false syllogism, or any But such a dispensation is a privilege mode of dialectic sophism. And 'in indulged to few other parts of Politi- relation to this particular subject of cal Economy, and least of all to that value, I flatter myself that in a pawhich is the foundation of all Politi- per expressly applied to the exposure cal Economy, viz. the doctrine of of Mr. Malthus's blunders in his Povalue. Having therefore repeatedly litical Economy, I have made it chosen to tamper with this difficult impossible for Mr. Malthus, even subject, Mr. Malthus has just made though he should take to his assistso many exposures of his intellectual ance seven worse logicians than biminfirmities--which, but for this vo- self, to put down my light with their lunteer display, we might never have darkness. Meantime, as a labour of known. Of all the men of talents, shorter compass, I will call the readwhose writings I have read up to er's attention to the following blunder, this hour, Mr. Malthus has the most in a later work of Mr. Malthus's perplexed understanding. He is not viz. a pamphlet of 80 pages, entitled, only confused himself, but is the “ The Measure of Value, stated and cause that confusion is in other men. applied,” (published in the spring of Logical perplexity is shockingly con- the present year). The question tagious: and he, who takes Mr. Mal- proposed in this work is the same as thus for his guide through any tan- that already discussed in his Political gled question, ought to be able to Economy-viz. What is the measure box the compass very well; or before of value? But the answer to it is he has read 10 pages he will find different: in the Political Economy, himself (as the Westmorland guides the measure of value was determined express it) “maffled,”—and disposed to be a mean between com and lato sit down and fall a crying with his bour; in this pamphlet, Mr. Mal thus retracts that opinion, and (finally, let us hope) settles it to his own satisfaction that the true measure is labour; not the quantity of labour, observe, which will produce X, but the quantity which X will command. Upon these two answers, and the delusions which lie at their root, I shall here forbear to comment; because I am now chasing Mr. Malthus's bogical blunders; and these delusions are not so much logical as economic: what I now wish the reader to attend to-is the blunder involved in the question itself; because that blunder is not economic, but logical. The question is-what is the measure of value? I say then that the phrase " measure of value" is an equivocal phrase; and, in Mr. Malthus's use of it, means indifferently that which determines value, in relation to the principium essendi, and that which determines value, in relation to the principium cognoscendi. Here, perhaps, the reader will exclaim" Avoid, Satanas!" to me, falsely supposing that I have some design upon his eyes, and wish to blind them with learned dust. But, if he thinks that, he is in the wrong box: I must and will express scholastic notions by scholastic phrases; but, having once done this, I am then ready to descend into the arena with no other weapons than plain English can furnish. Let us therefore translate "measure of value" into "that which determines value:" and, in this shape, we shall detect the ambiguity of which I complain. For I say, that the word determines may be taken subjectively for what determines X in relation to our knowledge, or objectively for what determines X in relation to itself. Thus, if I were to ask-" what determined the length of the racecourse?" And the answer were"The convenience of the spectators who could not have seen the horses at a greater distance," or "The choice of the subscribers," then it is plain that by the word "determined," I was understood to mean "determined objectively," i. e. in relation to the existence of the object; in other words, what caused the racecourse to be this length rather than another length: but, if the answer were" An actual admeasurement," it would then be plain that by the word "determined,” I had been understood to mean "determined subjectively," i. e. in relation to our knowledge;-what ascertained it?-Now, in the objective sense of the phrase "determiner of value," the measure of value will mean the ground of value: in the subjective sense, it will mean the criterion of value. Mr. Malthus will allege that he is at liberty to use it in which sense he pleases. Grant that he is, but not therefore in both. Has he then used it in both? He will, perhaps, deny that he has, and will contend that he has used it in the latter sense as equivalent to the ascertainer or criterion of value. I answer-No: for, omitting a more particular examination of his use in this place, I say that his use of any word is peremptorily and in defiance of his private explanation to be extorted from the use of the corresponding term in him whom he is opposing. Now he is opposing Mr. Ricardo: his labour which X commands-is opposed to Mr. Ricardo's quantity of labour which will produce X. Call the first A, the last B. Now, in making B the determiner of value, Mr. Ricardo means that B is the ground of value: i. e. that B is the answer to the question-what makes this hat of more value than this pair of shoes? But, if Mr. Malthus means by A the same thing, then by his own confession he has used the term measure of value in two senses on the other hand, if he does not mean the same thing, but simply the criterion of value, then he has not used the word in any sense which opposes him to Mr. Ricardo. And yet he advances the whole on that footing. On either ground, therefore, he is guilty of a logical error, which implies that, so far from answering his own question, he did not know what his own question was. X. Y. Z. |