“Will you have the kindness to insert in the Lion’s Head the two following passages from a work of mine published some time since? They exhibit rather a striking coincidence with the reasonings of the ‘Opium-Eater’ in your late number on the discoveries of Mr. Malthus, and as I have been a good deal abused for my scepticism on that subject, I do not feel quite disposed that any one else should run away with the credit of it. I do not wish to bring any charge of plagiarism in this case; I only beg to put in my own claim of priority. The first passage I shall trouble you with relates to tho geometrical and arithmetical series. . . . [Here comes the passage.*] This passage, allowing for the difference of style, accords pretty nearly with the reasoning in the ‘Notes from the Pocket-Book of an Opium-Eater.’ I should really like to know what answer Mr. Malthus has to this objection, if he would deign one—or whether he thinks it best to impose upon the public by his silence? So much for his mathematics: now for his logic, which the Opium-Eater has
* Hazlitt’s ‘Political Essays,’ 1819, p. 403; but the article had already appeared in the ‘Reply to Malthus,’ 1807. The passage begins with—“Both the principle of the necessary increase,” &c., down to “his mathematics are altogether spurious.” |
| 184 | KNITTING-UP OF THE |
“This, Mr. Editor, is the writer whom ‘our full senate call all-in-all-sufficient.’ There must be a tolerably large bonus offered to men’s interests and prejudices to make them swallow incongruities such as those here alluded to; and I am glad to find that our ingenious and studious friend the Opium-Eater agrees with me on this point too, almost in so many words.
