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women and violated them in the streets, against the resistance of fathers and
brothers who were “inhumanly mangled”; when remonstrances were made to the
French Commander, General Bernadotte (the future king of Sweden), he replied
airily that “these are trifles, which in time of war must be overlooked.”^44
Malthus’ Essay on Population, a more creditable work, first published in 1798,
also formed part of the campaign of dissuasion against the new ideas. Malthus,
though in Anglican orders, was more the type of the French abbé. He came to feel,
like Frederick Eden, a deep and sympathetic interest in the problems of the poor.
He thought, however, that the ideas of Godwin, which he attributed also to the
French Revolution, offered only a treacherous and deceptive hope to the poor
themselves; and his Essay on Population was designed explicitly as an answer to
Condorcet’s Progress of the Human Mind. Malthus, like Eden, had the merit of
emphasizing that the best way to relieve the poor was to raise the productivity of
their labor. He agreed, in 1798, that the existing extremes of inequality of wealth
were bad, that the rich had a greater “facility of combination” than the poor, and
that the poor could live on a seven- hour working day, if only they could “agree.”
These observations disappeared from later editions of the Essay, in which Malthus,
aiming at a clinical objectivity, and harping more on “abstinence” as a check on
overpopulation, produced a classic of the dismal science. Even in 1798, however,
what he had to offer the laboring classes was mostly a lesson in patience. It was
simply a fact, he said, that in the lottery of life some people must draw a blank.^45
The books and pamphlets just mentioned were aimed at persons of at least a
moderate degree of education. This was the first generation, however, of what may
be called the true common reader. The Sunday School movement for a dozen years
had with difficulty been spreading some knowledge of reading among the actual
lower classes. In 1797 there were some 1,086 such schools with 69,000 pupils. The
sponsors of the movement were generally devout people, Evangelicals or Method-
ists, who, against the skepticism or indifference of the more satisfied clergy, had
hoped to spread an acquaintance with the Bible. They were shocked to find their
pupils devouring Thomas Paine. Archdeacon Paley’s Reasons for Contentment was
abundantly distributed in reply. Hannah More, a good lady who had done much
for the lower classes, resolved to put the spread of literacy to better use. Beginning
in 1795, she wrote a series called the “Cheap Repository Tracts.” Funds contrib-
uted by well- wishers, from the Evangelicals of the Clapham Sect to the Bishop of
London and the king’s brother, the Duke of Gloucester, made it possible to sell
them for less than a penny. By March 1796 no less than two million were in circu-
lation. Thomas Paine was engaged on his own ground; perhaps he had even met
his match, though no one can tell what effect these efforts really had. One of Miss
More’s more successful compositions was Village Politics, written in the form of a
dialogue in twenty- four pages. It was a bit different from the Feuille villageoise, one
of the most successful papers of the French Revolution. She published it anony-
44 Anecdotes and characteristic traits respecting the incursion of the French republicans into Franconia in
the year 1796. By an eye- witness. Translated from the German (London, 1798), 20–21, 65. A translation
of Die französen in Franken 1796 (Nuremberg, 1797)·
45 T. R. Malthus, First Essay on Population, 1798, with Notes by James Bonar (London, 1926).