people of England. To prevent the recurrence of misery, is, alas!
beyond the power of man. In the vain endeavour to attain what
in the nature of things is impossible, we now sacrifice not only
possible but certain benefits. We tell the common people that if
they will submit to a code of tyrannical regulations, they shall
never be in want. They do submit to these regulations. They
perform their part of the contract, but we do not, nay cannot,
perform ours, and thus the poor sacrifice the valuable blessing
of liberty and receive nothing that can be called an equivalent
in return.

Notwithstanding, then, the institution of the poor laws in
England, I think it will be allowed that considering the state of
the lower classes altogether, both in the towns and in the
country, the distresses which they suffer from the want of proper
and sufficient food, from hard labour and unwholesome
habitations, must operate as a constant check to incipient
population.

To these two great checks to population, in all long occupied
countries, which I have called the preventive and the positive
checks, may be added vicious customs with respect to women, great
cities, unwholesome manufactures, luxury, pestilence, and war.

All these checks may be fairly resolved into misery and vice.
And that these are the true causes of the slow increase of
population in all the states of modern Europe, will appear
sufficiently evident from the comparatively rapid increase that
has invariably taken place whenever these causes have been in any
considerable degree removed.