turn, I will pursue this important inquiry by another method, which will lead to a similar result. Before doing so, however, I shall anticipate, and obviate, an objection which may, perhaps, be made on the ground that the increased degree of prolificness which this liberation from the supposed operation of the preventive check would occasion, might have the effect of greatly augmenting the proportion of marriages. Those who imagine that such an alteration would have that effect, the physical laws of nature remaining as at present, are mistaken; the positive results would, were such suppositions possibilities, greatly vary, without any corresponding variation in the relative ones, which are, at present, the sole subject of consideration. This, however, as a matter of mere calculation, has been already demonstrated: if the reader will refer to Table XX., in the Third Chapter of this Book', where Dr. Franklin's hypothesis is carried out upwards of two centuries, he will find that the proportion of marriages is not nearly so large as the smallest I have yet mentioned; and even if his suppositions in favour of America should not be deemed sufficiently liberal, those in the first table of the preceding chapter will, undoubtedly, be thought so, where all marry at twenty, and all the married have ten children, out of fifteen, who survive to marry; but, even then, as is shewn in the second table of the same chapter, only 1 annual marriage in 108 could possibly take place.

(10) To revert, then, to another, and a last numerical proof of the nature of Mr. Malthus's hypothesis, that of one marriage out of every sixty inhabitants in this country. Admitting that the registers of births may be defective, (though not to a degree that could at all affect the present dispute,) there is, in the last 1 Page 33. 2 Table XVII., p. 17.

census, information of another kind inserted, and not liable to a similar objection; the ages of the inhabitants, at least a great proportion of them, were obtained, and they are there classed accordingly: and, as it would be unreasonable to doubt but that, as far as they go, the results are substantially accurate, they are, for all purposes of comparison, as satisfactory as though the entire number had been so given. The sum of the persons thus entered, in 1820, was 9,830,461. To revert, then, to the first and infant division; the females, under five, amounted to 725,202, the mean annual number being 145,040; and supposing, in favour of the hypothesis under consideration, every one of these had that year become a bride, at the average age of two-and-a-half years, still, not 1 marriage in 68 could have taken place. But the author alluded to nevertheless anticipates, very nearly, this result, should population receive due encouragement. "Till the "proportion of the marriages," he elsewhere says, "rises from 1 in 123" (that which then prevailed) "to 1 in 80, or 1 in 70, it cannot be said that the

towns draw hard upon the country for population'." The draught would, indeed, be most extraordinary, notwithstanding that his advocacy of the preventive check, and the principle of population dependent upon it, require him to treat it as so natural a possibility; for it would require, on the latter supposition, every female infant of six and under to marry at that age; and even on the former one, the nubile period must be limited to the eleventh year, at the latest, and commencing at the first, in which all in existence must marry to make up the proportion. I call upon this writer, therefore, either to prove the possibility of his assertions, or to withdraw them; not in a tacit and

1 Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 315.

unnoticeable manner, but openly and honestly, as the cause of truth, and the interests of human nature, deeply involved in the important question, imperiously demand. He has ridiculed M. Muret, for supposing the interference of the Deity, on an occasion where it is difficult to believe in his existence, and impossible to credit his providence; if we suppose he would not interfere, namely, in adjusting the numbers of his offspring to his provision for them: and still, in behalf of his own system, he "betakes himself to miracles" indeed. The suppositions regarding matrimony, if unchecked, imply, either that the laws of mortality shall be totally suspended, or that, as human beings grow up to maturity, they shall become androgynous: one or the other is necessary to realize his often-repeated assertions regarding the number of marriages which would take place, except for the intermeddling of his preventive check.

(11) No notice has been taken, in these calculations, of second and third marriages, and none has been hitherto required: it would, indeed, have been ridiculous to apply such comparatively minute rectifications to results which would still have remained a series of absurdities. When the argument is reduced within the limits of possibility and truth, their proportion will be duly attended to, and form a part of the computation.

(12) Such, then, are the great and fundamental errors of the system I am opposing-errors of a magnitude which no explanations whatsoever can reconcile to reality, and which the simplest examination serves to expose. Can mere confidence of assertion continue to impose it upon mankind, or ingenuity protect it from the fate it merits? In a word, I would ask, in the language of Shakspeare, "What trick, what

"device, what starting-hole, can hide it from open and apparent shame?"

(13) But, alas! its shame, after all, is not that arising from miscalculation, however great. It consists in this, that it has eagerly, and on such grounds as these, impugned the ancient and permanent sense of mankind, outraged the holiest feelings of human nature, and arraigned the wisdom of the providence of God; attempting to establish, on behalf of the rich and the powerful ones of the earth, a monopoly of his common benefits, and insulting Him in the person of those whom all religion, natural or revealed, has invested with his jealous protection,-the poor and the destitute, to whom it has dared to deny the claim to the smallest portion of food, and even the right of existence itself.

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CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE METHOD OF CALCULATING THE PREVALENCE OF THE PREVENTIVE CHECK.

(1) SOME of the grosser errors only, in relation to the preventive check, have as yet been examined; there still remain mistakes to be pointed out, in the usual method of estimating its prevalence, quite as fatal to the theory under examination, though of a less flagrant character. And in order to do this, the question already negatively discussed in the last chapter must be resumed, with a view to its actual determination: the possible number of marriages in a community wholly uninfluenced by this often-mentioned restraint must evidently be ascertained, before its existence can be inferred, or its comparative influence estimated.

(2) The utmost number of annual marriages (first ones, at least) that can regularly take place in any community, is obviously limited by the number of its males who yearly arrive at the age capable of forming that connexion, and not physically incapacitated from so doing. When the actual falls short of that possible number, it argues, that in so many instances the marriage union has either been finally prevented, or postponed; and the latter case will become the former one, in proportion to the length of the interval and the corresponding mortality that takes place in it: the other effects of such postponement have been greatly misapprehended, as remains to be shewn. Now, as during the whole term of life, every succeeding year diminishes the number of persons in existence in any community, compared with those in the preceding one,