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An Essay on the Principle of Population by T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus
page 19 of 192 (09%)
accounts that can be depended upon of the manners and customs of
that part of mankind where these retrograde and progressive
movements chiefly take place. A satisfactory history of this
kind, on one people, and of one period, would require the
constant and minute attention of an observing mind during a long
life. Some of the objects of inquiry would be, in what proportion
to the number of adults was the number of marriages, to what
extent vicious customs prevailed in consequence of the restraints
upon matrimony, what was the comparative mortality among the
children of the most distressed part of the community and those
who lived rather more at their ease, what were the variations in
the real price of labour, and what were the observable
differences in the state of the lower classes of society with
respect to ease and happiness, at different times during a
certain period.

Such a history would tend greatly to elucidate the manner in
which the constant check upon population acts and would probably
prove the existence of the retrograde and progressive movements
that have been mentioned, though the times of their vibrations
must necessarily be rendered irregular from the operation of many
interrupting causes, such as the introduction or failure of
certain manufactures, a greater or less prevalent spirit of
agricultural enterprise, years of plenty, or years of scarcity,
wars and pestilence, poor laws, the invention of processes for
shortening labour without the proportional extension of the
market for the commodity, and, particularly, the difference
between the nominal and real price of labour, a circumstance
which has perhaps more than any other contributed to conceal this
oscillation from common view.
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