It appears then, upon the whole, that no moral impediment to the progress of society, or to the natural tendency of population to keep within due bounds, is to be apprehended from as general a prevalence of matrimonial connexions as the existing state of society will admit; nay that a perfect liberty in this respect is essential to a healthy progress. We perceive that the principle of population introduces no new duty, nor any necessary increase of vice and misery as society advances, and the land arrives nearer to its point of complete cultivation.

I must here be permitted to remark, that a general attention to the moral duties is as necessary to connect the happiness of the people and the public prosperity with the propositions established in this chapter, as with any of those which have preceded them. If husbands or wives be drunken, idle, and profligate, whether they be young or old, their families will be in some way or other a burthen to the

state.

But I think upon the whole that an early marriage, and a young family, is a strong incentive to sobriety, industry, and decency, in a poor man, whereever his moral and religious instructors come in aid of his natural feelings of affection towards his wife and children. I have seldom seen the workings of good advice upon natural affections fail in their effect, except in old and very hardened profligates; and I have very frequently beheld the combination of the two effectual in reclaiming a loose and thoughtless character.

I should be sorry however to be so far misunderstood, as to be thought to assert that it would be consistent with the good of the state, to afford to

every idle and abandoned stripling the means of entering into the marriage contract, although he possess neither the will nor the intention of labouring for the support of his family, nor. be in a capacity to have set before him in a forcible manner his duties in these respects. For truly I have never yet been able to discover, nor should I be very industrious in searching for, any scheme of polity which can enable the machinery of society to work freely and profitably, notwithstanding the general neglect of moral habits and precautions.

But my meaning and intention in this chapter have been to prove that, where fair and reasonable attention has been paid to the moral education of the lower orders, and a fair and reasonable provision made for renewing in their minds, by the aid of an able and faithful ministry, the fading impressions of their early instruction; there it is not only consistent with the welfare of the state, and the comfortable subsistence of the people, but absolutely essential to a due progress in wealth, population, and prosperity, that individuals should be left at perfect liberty to form their resolutions as to the contract of marriage upon grounds entirely distinct from political considerations, and that it is perfectly feasible to relieve every distress which may eventually arise from the effects of the principle of population upon such a system of liberty, in the whole country as well as in particular families, parishes, and districts.

I must be excused, therefore, for again reminding the reader that Christian morality is, after all, the hinge upon which the argument must turn in this as in every other part of our inquiry; that without this support it is a matter of perfect indifference

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

A

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 ne cessary to distinguish between that quantity of vice