first book of this treatise, and are drawn from the application of them to the question under discussion. I trust they have been sufficient to prove that, in a tolerably moral and well regulated community, it is perfectly feasible to relieve every distress which may eventually arise to individuals, from the enjoyment of such a system of liberty with respect to the marriage contract.

The object of the seventh chapter is to prove that the effects of the principle of population and of the progress of society have no necessary tendency to diminish the general sum of happiness enjoyed either by the whole community, or by the individuals of which it is composed, but that they only change the nature of the people's enjoyments; providing by a beautiful system of compensation, to all ranks of society, some countervailing advantage of a moral and political nature, for every necessary privation which the new arrangements of the community bring in their train; so that a good citizen will have an equal probability of happiness in every stage of society, in proportion as he discharges the duties which its particular condition imposes upon him.

In the eighth chapter I have endeavcured more fully to illustrate, and to apply to the practical purposes of statesmen, the fundamental truth that the salutary tendency of population, as well as every other condition of the healthy progress of society, will operate in proportion to the general prevalence of religion, morality, liberty, and security of property; that these four blessings, however, are in fact ultimately referable to the two first among them, the influence of which should be forwarded by every method within the power of the state; especially by early

education and legal means for continued and permanent instruction. It follows too from this principle that a patriotic statesman ought not to sit down contented merely with that moderate degree of attainment with respect to these blessings, which is barely sufficient to carry on the progress of society, and is at liberty to relax his attention and exertion when he may think that point has been attained; because such relaxation would immediately afford scope to the natural tendency of human affairs to degenerate, and the healthy progress of society would be checked: but I have ventured to contend that, animated by the conviction that every improvement and increase of those blessings is in itself a source of happiness and prosperity, which can never be carried too far, he should make every attainment the step to a further progress: and though he may never positively reach the exalted point to which he may aspire, he will not only be enabled to counteract the natural tendency of human institutions to decay, but will also be rewarded by a conviction of having bestowed solid accessions of power and happiness on the commonwealth.

CHAPTER X.

On the rational Hopes that may be entertained of a progressive Improvement in the Condition of Mankind.

THERE is no point of view under which the subject discussed in this treatise assumes a higher interest, than in the conclusions which may be drawn from the different hypotheses respecting our rational hopes of future improvement in the condition of mankind. If the conclusions respecting the principle of population which it has been my object to controvert be just, it is evident that very slender hopes indeed can be entertained of any material amelioration. The progress of society according to those conclusions brings with it so many insuperable difficulties, insuperable even by any adherence on the part of the people to the laws of religion and morality, that we are compelled to submit to the disheartening conviction, that the best governed and most moral nation has no sooner reaped the rewards of its conformity with the commands of Providence, in the attainment of a high degree of general happiness and prosperity, than it must, by the inevitable laws of that same Providence, begin to descend in the scale of society, and to endure all those sufferings, which have been observed by political economists to be the constant attendants of such descent, so well described by Dr. Adam Smith as "miserable" and "melancholy." So that the statesman who advances his country the

most rapidly in its career is only approximating it so much the nearer to its fall, and would have served his generation (or at least subsequent generations) better, had he bent his efforts towards repressing all those moral and political energies, by the developement of which a nation emerges from the stationary condition, which has been equally well described as “hard” and “dull." The only prospect of obviating these consequences, even upon the hypothesis of those who differ from the conclusions of this treatise, is to be found in views of society confessed by themselves to be Utopian; or in applying to the great mass of the lower orders of mankind principles and arguments of too refined a nature to possess any general influence, except among the few who constitute the higher classes of society. Involuntary abstinence from marriage attended with moral restraint is to be increased, among the lower orders exclusively, as society advances, and as temptations to a breach of moral restraint consequently increase; and the propriety of this abstinence is enforced by arguments, and justified upon a principle of compensation, which can have no general reference whatsoever, except to the higher classes; such as the refinements of sentimental intercourse, the "distinction of a genuine from a transient passion," and the repression of love for a time" that it may afterwards burn with a brighter, purer, and steadier flame." Nor are the political expectations held out to us less brilliant and beautiful: "war," it is said, that great pest of the human race, would under such circumstances soon cease to extend its ravages so widely and so frequently as it does at present;" for "the ambition of princes would want instruments of destruction, if the distresses

of the lower classes did not drive them under their standards." "Indisposed to a war of offence, in a war of defence such a society would be strong as a rock of adamant." (Malthus, book iv. chap. ii.)

Now, without laying any stress on the utter impossibility of maintaining the lower classes in such a state as is supposed in these quotations, during the necessary fluctuations of the advanced stages of society, I do not think that it is quite consistent with the experience of history to affirm, that nations, existing in the simple states of society which render them incapable of offensive war, have usually been able to oppose "a rock of adamant" to the attacks of more powerful and ambitious rivals; but on the contrary they have usually ended in becoming the victims of their exclusive policy. Such a picture is indeed nothing more than the delineation of the peculiar comforts attending the weaker and less advanced conditions of society: its application, even theoretically, to the more advanced stages, where the loss of these peculiar comforts is, as I have shown, more than compensated by other countervailing advantages, can only lead to error by setting up a false standard of what is desirable. A commercial and manufacturing nation, conducting itself upon such principles, would tend towards its own destruction by every step it should take in a career so obviously incompatible with the rights and the intercourse it is under the necessity of maintaining with respect to other nations. The community, therefore, which should first act upon this system would soon afford an unanswerable practical evidence of the unsoundness of its general principle.

Again, we are informed that the only hopes of