to the comfort and happiness of a people upon what political principles the laws and customs of society with respect to the matrimonial contract are established. The vices of either system will outweigh its advantages, without the general prevalence of this ruling principle.

Before the close of this chapter, I must beg leave to contrast its conclusions with those of Mr. Malthus upon the same subject. He states (book iv. chap. 10) that population is plainly redundant, unless the poor are in a condition to maintain all their children. Marriages therefore should be delayed till the parents are in such condition, that is, till the price of labour, joined to their savings, will enable them to support a wife and five or six children, without assistance: and if we cannot attain these objects, all our former efforts will be thrown away. (book iv. chap. 11.) Now surely no one who has traced the effects of the progress of society in the preceding pages will hesitate to admit the utter impossibility, in the more advanced stages, of paying wages to all labourers high enough to enable the married to support so large a family without assistance. According to Mr. Malthus's hypothesis, therefore, either the labouring poor must generally be condemned to celibacy, or the society be thrown back towards the agricultural state.

CHAPTER VII.

On the Influence of the Principle of Population, and of the Progress of Society, upon the individual Virtue and Happiness of the People.

HAVING shown that in some important and controverted points the principle of population leaves the political expediency of moral conduct, and the conditions of public virtue and happiness, precisely where it found them, it now only remains to establish the truth of the same propositions as general axioms. For this purpose we must inquire whether any of those natural arrangements of society, which have been pointed out as contributing to the simultaneous progress of food and population, do, generally speaking, increase the intensity of vice and misery; or whether the result of those arrangements be not rather a general compensation of enjoyments, leaving the increase or decrease of vice and misery entirely dependent upon the general conduct and habits of people, with reference to morals and religion; and lastly, whether we cannot thus establish the glorious conclusion-that an eminently vicious people will at all times destroy itself, and a moderately virtuous one support itself, and flourish. There will then remain, to complete the object of this treatise, only the fourth fundamental principle-that the tendency of population will operate in advancing the happiness and prosperity of a people in proportion to the prevalence of liberty, to the purity of the popular

religion, and the soundness of the public morals, habits, and tastes of the people.

It has I think been somewhere observed, that every attempt to explain the cause or ultimate object of moral evil in the world will fail; and if a new revelation were given to turn this dark inquiry into noon-day, it would make no difference in the actual state of things. An extension of knowledge would not reverse the fact that human nature has through every age displayed the clearest proofs of innate depravity, nor could it weaken the probability that it will still continue to do so, whatever were the reasons for giving a moral agent a constitution, which it was foreseen would soon be found in this condition. I am thankful, therefore, that it is not necessary to entangle ourselves in these depths, but only to be convinced that, cæteris paribus, the average quantity of evil that affects mankind is not necessarily increased as society advances.

It is evident from the preceding chapters, that the classes whose situation in life is changed by the progress of society are the non-reproductive classes, that is, the higher ranks generally, and the lower and middle ranks resident in towns. Among the higher ranks, I think, after what has been stated, that the principle of compensation is so self-evident as not to require any additional illustration in this place. But I am aware that some difficulty may arise from the situation of the people in large towns, which form so considerable and so necessary an ingredient in the composition of an advanced state of society. In order to investigate it fairly, with reference to our present inquiry, it is evidently necessary to distinguish between that quantity of vice

and misery which actually exists in many towns, where no adequate pains have been taken to improve the morals and the police, and that quantity which has been assumed to be necessary to produce the requisite abatement in the progress of population. The last is clearly all that can be justly ascribed to the dispensations of Providence in this argument; and when it has been reduced to its proper quantity, we must proceed (if any remain) to ascertain how far it may be sufficient to counterbalance the superior exertions of virtue, which the state of society producing many towns enables us to make.

Occasion has already been taken to show the high proportion which the average number of deaths to the population in towns bears to that in the country, and that a great portion of this extraordinary mortality takes place among infants and young children. But a certain number of premature deaths occurs in the country as well as in towns, and it is probable that the most favourable condition can hardly reduce it among the lower orders to less than one-third of the number born. As far as my personal experience goes, I should be disposed to think that the average was rather more. Now, as to these individuals themselves, who shall say that their condition (thusearly taken from the world) is not to be envied by those left behind? The principal question, therefore, as to the sum of misery produced by this increase of premature deaths, seems to be the degree in which the parents are affected by it; and the immediate point to be determined in the case before us is, how much more heavily this species of grief presses upon parents residing in towns, than upon those in the country. As this is one of the chief drawbacks which we shall

have to make from the numerous advantages of civilization and commerce, I shall endeavour to investigate its extent with some precision. The number of births produced by each marriage must of course be various in different situations; but there is good reason to believe, that the average of four to a marriage in towns, and six in the country, may not be far from the truth. Now, as half the number born in towns dies in childhood, each married couple must of course lose two children on an average. In the country, where it has been fully proved that the majority of the numbers born live to be married, we will calculate the number of those who die in childhood at one third; for the waste of life among persons who are just adult is very small in the country. But as each married couple here produces six births upon an average, if one-third die in childhood, the loss they sustain is of two children each, as we have seen to be the case in towns; so that the average pressure of grief upon each married couple. is in quantity precisely the same, and the difference between them appears to be in the proportion which the loss of each bears to their whole stock, which in the townsman's case is one half, in the countryman's one third. The loss is in the same proportion as if two men, one possessing an income of 4000/. and the other of 6000l. a year, should each be deprived of 20007. a year. On the face of this account there certainly is a comparative disadvantage on the side of the townsman; but if we consider that both the contract of marriage and the residence in the town are voluntary on the part of the parents suffering the loss, as well as the numerous advantages and enjoyments by which they are tempted to place themselves in that si