easy and their food luxurious compared with the class of
labourers. And their sense of dependence is weakened by the
conscious power of changing their masters, if they feel
themselves offended. Thus comfortably situated at present, what
are their prospects in marrying? Without knowledge or capital,
either for business, or farming, and unused and therefore unable,
to earn a subsistence by daily labour, their only refuge seems to
be a miserable alehouse, which certainly offers no very
enchanting prospect of a happy evening to their lives. By much
the greater part, therefore, deterred by this uninviting view of
their future situation, content themselves with remaining single
where they are.

If this sketch of the state of society in England be near the
truth, and I do not conceive that it is exaggerated, it will be
allowed that the preventive check to population in this country
operates, though with varied force, through all the classes of
the community. The same observation will hold true with regard to
all old states. The effects, indeed, of these restraints upon
marriage are but too conspicuous in the consequent vices that are
produced in almost every part of the world, vices that are
continually involving both sexes in inextricable unhappiness.



CHAPTER 5

The second, or positive check to population examined, in England
--The true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the
poor does not better their condition--The powerful tendency of