"
From the point of view of political economy these propositions
are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such
alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the
point of view of the conditions of social science, these same
propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.
The error of Malthus, or rather of political economy, does not
consist in saying that a man who has nothing to eat must die; or
in maintaining that, under the system of individual
appropriation, there is no course for him who has neither labor
nor income but to withdraw from life by suicide, unless he
prefers to be driven from it by starvation: such is, on the one
hand, the law of our existence; such is, on the other, the
consequence of property; and M. Rossi has taken altogether too
much trouble to justify the good sense of Malthus on this point.
I suspect, indeed, that M. Rossi, in making so lengthy and loving
an apology for Malthus, intended to recommend political economy
in the same way that his fellow-countryman Machiavel, in his book
entitled "The Prince," recommended despotism to the
admiration of the world.
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