great in proportion to the fertility of the land and that there was scarcely room and food for more.  The number of footmen, housemaids, and other persons remaining unmarried in modern states, Hume allows to be rather an argument against their population.  I should rather draw a contrary inference and consider it an argument of their fullness, though this inference is not certain, because there are many thinly inhabited states that are yet stationary in their population.  To speak, therefore, correctly, perhaps it may be said that the number of unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, existing at different periods, in the same or different states will enable us to judge whether population at these periods was increasing, stationary, or decreasing, but will form no criterion by which we can determine the actual population.

There is, however, a circumstance taken notice of in most of the accounts we have of China that it seems difficult to reconcile with this reasoning.  It is said that early marriages very generally prevail through all the ranks of the Chinese.  Yet Dr Adam Smith supposes that population in China is stationary.  These two circumstances appear to be irreconcilable.  It certainly seems very little probable that the population of China is fast increasing.  Every acre of land has been so long in cultivation that we can hardly conceive there is any great yearly addition to the average produce.  The fact, perhaps, of the universality of early marriages may not be sufficiently ascertained.  If it be supposed true, the only way of accounting for the difficulty, with our present knowledge of the subject, appears to be that the redundant population, necessarily occasioned by the prevalence of early marriages, must be repressed by occasional famines, and by the custom of exposing children, which, in times of distress, is probably more frequent than is ever acknowledged to Europeans.  Relative to this barbarous practice, it is difficult to avoid remarking, that there cannot be a stronger proof of the distresses that have been felt by mankind for want of food, than the existence of a custom that thus violates the most natural principle of the human heart.  It appears to have been very general among ancient nations, and certainly tended rather to increase population.

In examining the principal states of modern Europe, we shall find that though they have increased very considerably in population since they were nations of shepherds, yet that at present their progress is but slow, and instead of doubling their numbers every twenty-five years they require three or four hundred years, or more, for that purpose.  Some, indeed, may be absolutely stationary, and others even retrograde.  The cause of this slow progress in population cannot be traced to a decay of the passion between the sexes.  We have sufficient reason to think that this natural propensity exists still in undiminished vigour.  Why then do not its effects appear in a rapid increase