In the supposition I have made, I have undoubtedly taken the increase of population smaller, and the increase of produce greater, than they really would be.  No reason can be assigned why, under the circumstances I have supposed, population should not increase faster than in any known instance.  If then we were to take the period of doubling at fifteen years, instead of twenty-five years, and reflect upon the labour necessary to double the produce in so short a time, even if we allow it possible, we may venture to pronounce with certainty that if Mr Godwin’s system of society was established in its utmost perfection, instead of myriads of centuries, not thirty years could elapse before its utter destruction from the simple principle of population.

I have taken no notice of emigration for obvious reasons.  If such societies were instituted in other parts of Europe, these countries would be under the same difficulties with regard to population, and could admit no fresh members into their bosoms.  If this beautiful society were confined to this island, it must have degenerated strangely from its original purity, and administer but a very small portion of the happiness it proposed; in short, its essential principle must be completely destroyed, before any of its members would voluntarily consent to leave it, and live under such governments as at present exist in Europe, or submit to the extreme hardships of first settlers in new regions.  We well know, from repeated experience, how much misery and hardship men will undergo in their own country, before they can determine to desert it; and how often the most tempting proposals of embarking for new settlements have been rejected by people who appeared to be almost starving.

CHAPTER 11

Mr Godwin’s conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion between the sexes—­Little apparent grounds for such a conjecture—­Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or virtue.

We have supported Mr Godwin’s system of society once completely established.  But it is supposing an impossibility.  The same causes in nature which would destroy it so rapidly, were it once established, would prevent the possibility of its establishment.  And upon what grounds we can presume a change in these natural causes, I am utterly at a loss to conjecture.  No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.  Men in the decline of life have in all ages declaimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel, but with as little reason as success.  Those who from coldness of constitutional temperament have never felt what love is, will surely be allowed to be very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this passion to contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life.  Those who have spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for themselves, as the