ABSTRACT
Besides Anti-Reformers, whether moderate or radical, who profess and intend to improve the Constitution of the House of Commons, there are men who are continually praying for changes of a different nature. All that is true of Mr. Malthus’s doctrine, is this, that the tendency of population to increase remains after the power of the earth to produce more food is gone; that the one is limited, the other unlimited. This is enough for the morality of the question: his mathematics are altogether spurious. This chapter discusses the conduct of the radical reformers, and of the ministerial and opposition parties in parliament. The progress of the Reformers was rapid beyond example: the number of persons able to pronounce a judgment on the question had been so prodigiously increased, that the demand was likely to become, not figuratively, but actually universal, among all but the privileged classes, and the dependents on the Government.
