THE MALTHUSIAD: FANTASIA ECONOMICA 27 
other systems, and it is just there that the change is greatest, 
and you have fared no better than Ricardo and the rest. You 
and he and all of them fell down.” 
SHADE: “I was an early supporter of Factory Acts. Put that 
to my credit.” 
Y. E.: “But a half-hearted repealer of the Corn Laws, if you 
could be called a repealer at all. Your concessions did credit to 
your heart, but they weakened your reasoning; and you did 
not withdraw them, like your precocious young friend, when you 
found them abused. But be comforted. Your other writings, 
books, articles, and letters, tell us much about you and we 
value them accordingly; but we count them all minor alongside 
of the Essay. You spoke of a gradual emendation. Travellers 
have corrected many of your illustrations from savage life, and 
our historians have mended your details of history. There was 
little folklore or archaeology in your day; and medical skill is 
much better now. In fact, Man on the Earth is much better 
known to us than you could know him. Our scientific men, too, 
Udny Yule, Pearl, Virgilii, have even amended your Ratios, 
without absolute agreement, it is true, about the substitute.” 
Supe: “I was quite prepared for that. My main point was a 
disproportion seen as soon as mentioned but hard to reduce to 
exact figures. In the concrete, the population of a country is 
always relative to its conditions, and it is seldom safe to make 
prophecies.” 
Y. E.: “You would applaud a shrewd remark made recently by 
a member of your Statistical Society, that in order to forecast 
population we must first forecast trade and production. Our age 
is ‘grown so picked’ that, instead of discussing ‘room and food’ 
like you, it discusses the optimum, said to be a botanical term 
here used for the number of working inhabitants just enough to 
produce sufficiency under a given standard of living. Relativity is 
thus forced upon our discussions, for the standard may vary 
with groups within the nation.” 
Suape: “I should have revelled in such topics. One soweth 
and another reapeth. I am glad something of my work remains, 
though its new shape makes it hard for me to recognize it. A 
man’s task is given to him from day to day, and he knows not 
which part of it will prosper. I may have wasted time over 
minor matters such as the question of a standard of value.”