decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time
tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the
same as he did before. During this season of distress, the
discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a
family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean
time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the
necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage
cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up
fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is
already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence
become in the same proportion to the population as at the period
from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then
again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in
some degree loosened, and the same retrograde and progressive
movements with respect to happiness are repeated.

This sort of oscillation will not be remarked by superficial
observers, and it may be difficult even for the most penetrating
mind to calculate its periods. Yet that in all old states some
such vibration does exist, though from various transverse causes,
in a much less marked, and in a much more irregular manner than I
have described it, no reflecting man who considers the subject
deeply can well doubt.

Many reasons occur why this oscillation has been less
obvious, and less decidedly confirmed by experience, than might
naturally be expected.

One principal reason is that the histories of mankind that we
possess are histories only of the higher classes. We have but few