The labourer who earns eighteen pence a day and lives with some degree of comfort as a single man, will hesitate a little before he divides that pittance among four or five, which seems to be but just sufficient for one.  Harder fare and harder labour he would submit to for the sake of living with the woman that he loves, but he must feel conscious, if he thinks at all, that should he have a large family, and any ill luck whatever, no degree of frugality, no possible exertion of his manual strength could preserve him from the heart-rending sensation of seeing his children starve, or of forfeiting his independence, and being obliged to the parish for their support.  The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to be erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.

The servants who live in gentlemen’s families have restraints that are yet stronger to break through in venturing upon marriage.  They possess the necessaries, and even the comforts of life, almost in as great plenty as their masters.  Their work is easy and their food luxurious compared with the class of labourers.  And their sense of dependence is weakened by the conscious power of changing their masters, if they feel themselves offended.  Thus comfortably situated at present, what are their prospects in marrying?  Without knowledge or capital, either for business, or farming, and unused and therefore unable, to earn a subsistence by daily labour, their only refuge seems to be a miserable alehouse, which certainly offers no very enchanting prospect of a happy evening to their lives.  By much the greater part, therefore, deterred by this uninviting view of their future situation, content themselves with remaining single where they are.

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the truth, and I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be allowed that the preventive check to population in this country operates, though with varied force, through all the classes of the community.  The same observation will hold true with regard to all old states.  The effects, indeed, of these restraints upon marriage are but too conspicuous in the consequent vices that are produced in almost every part of the world, vices that are continually involving both sexes in inextricable unhappiness.

CHAPTER 5

The second, or positive check to population examined, in England —­The true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does not better their condition—­The powerful tendency of the poor laws to defeat their own purpose—­Palliative of the distresses of the poor proposed—­The absolute impossibility, from the fixed laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from the lower classes of society—­ All the checks to population may be resolved into misery or vice.