Economics is known as “the dismal science.” People incorrectly assume this stems from Malthus (I used to think this).
The reason why Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics as dismal was because early economists like JS Mill used economics to state that all men were equal. From a GMU professor who studied this in depth:
Carlyle attacked Mill, not for supporting Malthus's predictions about the dire consequences of population growth, but for supporting the emancipation of slaves. It was this fact—that economics assumed that people were basically all the same, and thus all entitled to liberty—that led Carlyle to label economics "the dismal science."
Carlyle was not alone in denouncing economics for making its radical claims about the equality of all men. Others who joined him included Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. The connection was so well known throughout the 19th century, that even cartoonists could refer to it, knowing that their audience would get the reference.
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