The positive check to population, by which I mean the check that represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly, though not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society.

This check is not so obvious to common view as the other I have mentioned, and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its operation would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession of.  But I believe it has been very generally remarked by those who have attended to bills of mortality that of the number of children who die annually, much too great a proportion belongs to those who may be supposed unable to give their offspring proper food and attention, exposed as they are occasionally to severe distress and confined, perhaps, to unwholesome habitations and hard labour.  This mortality among the children of the poor has been constantly taken notice of in all towns.  It certainly does not prevail in an equal degree in the country, but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in proportion among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among those of the middling and higher classes.  Indeed, it seems difficult to suppose that a labourer’s wife who has six children, and who is sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them the food and attention necessary to support life.  The sons and daughters of peasants will not be found such rosy cherubs in real life as they are described to be in romances.  It cannot fail to be remarked by those who live much in the country that the sons of labourers are very apt to be stunted in their growth, and are a long while arriving at maturity.  Boys that you would guess to be fourteen or fifteen are, upon inquiry, frequently found to be eighteen or nineteen.  And the lads who drive plough, which must certainly be a healthy exercise, are very rarely seen with any appearance of calves to their legs:  a circumstance which can only be attributed to a want either of proper or of sufficient nourishment.

To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared, that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface.  It is a subject often started in conversation and mentioned always as a matter of great surprise that, notwithstanding the immense sum that is annually collected for the poor in England, there is still so much distress among them.  Some think that the money must be embezzled, others that the church-wardens and overseers consume the greater part of it in dinners.  All agree that somehow or other it must be very ill-managed.  In short the fact that nearly three millions are collected annually for the poor and yet that their distresses are not removed is the subject of continual astonishment.  But a man who sees a little below the surface of things would be very much more astonished if the fact were otherwise than it is observed to be, or even if a collection universally of eighteen shillings in the pound, instead of four, were materially to alter it.  I will state a case which I hope will elucidate my meaning.