to be gratified as the appetite of hunger, and a man can no more exist without propagating his species than he can live without eating.  Were it so, neither of these passions would admit of any excuses, any delay, any restraint from reason or foresight; and the only checks to the principle of population must be vice and misery.  The argument would be triumphant and complete.  But there is no analogy, no parity in the two cases, such as our author here assumes.  No man can live for any length of time without food; many persons live all their lives without gratifying the other sense.  The longer the craving after food is unsatisfied, the more violent, imperious, and uncontroulable the desire becomes; whereas the longer the gratification of the sexual passion is resisted, the greater force does habit and resolution acquire over it; and, generally speaking, it is a well-known fact, attested by all observation and history, that this latter passion is subject more or less to controul from personal feelings and character, from public opinions and the institutions of society, so as to lead either to a lawful and regulated indulgence, or to partial or total abstinence, according to the dictates of moral restraint, which latter check to the inordinate excesses and unheard-of consequences of the principle of population, our author, having no longer an extreme case to make out, admits and is willing to patronize in addition to the two former and exclusive ones of vice and misery, in the second and remaining editions of his work.  Mr. Malthus has shewn some awkwardness or even reluctance in softening down the harshness of his first peremptory decision.  He sometimes grants his grand exception cordially, proceeds to argue stoutly, and to try conclusions upon it; at other times he seems disposed to cavil about or retract it:—­“the influence of moral restraint is very inconsiderable, or none at all.”  It is indeed difficult (more particularly for so formal and nice a reasoner as Mr. Malthus) to piece such contradictions plausibly or gracefully together.  We wonder how he manages it—­how any one should attempt it!  The whole question, the gist of the argument of his early volume turned upon this, “Whether vice and misery were the only actual or possible checks to the principle of population?” He then said they were, and farewell to building castles in the air:  he now says that moral restraint is to be coupled with these, and that its influence depends greatly on the state of laws and manners—­and Utopia stands where it did, a great way off indeed, but not turned topsy-turvy by our magician’s wand!  Should we ever arrive there, that is, attain to a state of perfect moral restraint, we shall not be driven headlong back into Epicurus’s stye for want of the only possible checks to population, vice and misery; and in proportion as we advance that way, that is, as the influence of moral restraint is extended, the necessity for vice and misery will