serving and improving one virtue is made the indispensable condition, and the means of practising, many others; for without early marriage, how can a parent hope properly to fulfil the various duties of education, maintenance, and provision for his children. Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; having them in subjection with all gravity:" (Ephes. vi. 4.) "If any provide not for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel:" (1 Tim. v. 8.) There are many other commands to the same purpose given to parents, a compliance with which requires much of the undivided attention of a great portion of life, and can hardly be performed by those who marry when they have yet but few active years remaining. Enough, however, has been said to prove the positive nature of the scripture doctrine upon this subject, and to show that there is no room to misapply the opinion* quoted from Dr. Paley, (Mor. Phil. b. ii. c. 4.) by stating that, according to the genuine principles of moral science, "the method of coming at the will of God by the light of nature is, to inquire into the tendency of an action to promote or diminish the general happiness." Indeed this passage should never have been quoted, without the qualification given to it in an early part of the same chapter of the "Moral Philosophy," that such a method is merely recommended as the best remaining to discover the will of God, when we cannot come at his express declarations, which must always guide us when they are to be had, and which must be sought for in Scrip

* Malthus's Essay, b. iv. c. 2.

ture. (Paley, Mor. Phil. b. ii. c. 4.) When these are express, as we find in the case before us, there is no further room for controversy. Nor can a more dangerous road to scepticism be marked out, than to set up against them, or in explanation of them, any thing so very variable and doubtful as the opinion of philosophers concerning "the tendency of an action to promote or diminish the general happiness." The arguments of this treatise, for example, and those to which they are opposed, arrive at precisely contrary conclusions as to this tendency in the case before us. How far the latter can stand the test of that criterion by which, according to Dr. Paley they should be tried, it is for the candid reader to determine. I will only remark in confirmation of my own reasoning that, during a long and attentive observation of the habits and manners of the poor in England, I have never observed a moral and prudent young man, of whatever number of children he may have been the father, in a state of misery. On the contrary, I have generally found the numerous families of moral, healthy, and youthful parents in a satisfactory state as to external circumstances, and greatly superior in these respects to the peasantry of any of the foreign countries in which it has been my lot to travel, or of whom I can obtain any authentic account. So strictly true in politics is the saying of the Psalmist: "I have been young, and now am old; and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread."

In the mean time, I think myself justified in remarking that, such being the difficulties and inconsistencies of the opinions respecting population which I am now opposing, when connected with the subject

of marriage, it may be worth while to inquire how far the system adopted in this treatise will alter the conclusions to be drawn, and bring them more into unison with the apparent equity of the Divine dispensations, with our sense of natural justice, and with the express commands and unqualified permissions of Scripture on the subject:-and whether this combined inquiry will not prove that every man, in every station of life, has equally the option of contracting matrimony, if upon a due consideration of his temporal circumstances and moral feelings he may think proper to do so, without any necessary injury, from the principle of population, to the society in which he lives.

We have seen that, as civilization advances, the number of those who spontaneously prefer the advantages of celibacy to those of the married state continually increases; and that the power of propagating their species in many of those who choose the other alternative is at the same time continually diminishing. We have seen that, in proportion as these effects arise, the necessity increases that the re-productive part of the people should remain at least as fruitful as before. The re-productive part of the people are principally the lower orders, who, while the agricultural state of society existed, married early, and reared as large families as they could procreate, because progeny in that state of society is equivalent to wealth: they must, therefore, do the same now in order to make up for the deficiencies left by the non-reproductive part of the people. But the lower orders are precisely the persons who, in a well-regulated government, would most wish to enter early into the contract of marriage, because

the blessings arising from it are almost the only innocent enjoyments within their reach. According to the system of this treatise, therefore, it is not only possible for the lower orders generally to marry early, without any evil consequence from the prin ciple of population; but it is absolutely necessary that many of them should follow their natural inclinations in this respect, in order to produce that salutary increase of people which is connected with the prosperity and industry of a nation. Therefore to leave without inquietude" every man to his own free choice," though evidently insufficient to guard against evil, according to the opposite principles, is fully so according to those maintained in these pages. I venture to assert as a general position that, in a well constituted and industrious community, every man who chooses it may marry without prejudice to the state, as soon as he can procure a decent habi tation, and perceives a fair probability that the regular fruits of his exertions will enable him to maintain a wife and two children at the least; and I will further express my belief that, in no stage of society through which such a community passes, will the reasonable exertions of an industrious youth fail of affording him such an average return. Occasional fluctuations in the demand for labour must of course be allowed for, and temporary relief provided by laws enacted for that purpose.

To give any positive encouragement to marriage further than to point it out to the people as their legitimate resource against irregular indulgence, must depend upon the particular situation of polity in which a country may happen to be placed; but never to discourage it directly or indirectly appears as

consistent with sound policy as it is with the dispensations of Providence, and the commands of religion. Providence does not seem to have intended any restraint upon the higher and middle classes in the exercise of their option as to marriage or celibacy, but leaves to every one his power of selecting his own method of passing through his state of probation in this respect. He doubtless foresaw the election that a large portion of them would make, and has converted it into the means of balancing more equally the temporal advantages and happiness of each rank, and the several temptations to which each should be exposed. The reasoning, therefore, is by no means impaired by the consideration (to the limited extent in which it is true) that, if those who now voluntarily abstain from marriage from the above-mentioned causes should choose the other alternative, population might have a tendency to advance too rapidly for the diminished power of the earth to supply it with food. Such a supposition is nothing more than an assertion that, if the world and the dispositions of mankind were differently constituted, affairs would not go on so well; a proposition which I should of course be among the last to deny. But as the truth now stands, we observe that, by a beautiful arrangement, so common in the dispensations of Providence, a provision is made to arise from the silent and unobserved operation of man's propensity to better his condition, which at, once ensures the political welfare of the community by keeping up the population, and enabling it to make a further progress, while it facilitates alike to the poor and the rich the practice of virtue, by exposing neither to 4 degree of temptation from which the other is exempt.