nearly to the average produce of each country. The
discouragements to marriage, the consequent vicious habits, war,
luxury, the silent though certain depopulation of large towns,
and the close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the
poor, prevent population from increasing beyond the means of
subsistence; and, if I may use an expression which certainly at
first appears strange, supercede the necessity of great and
ravaging epidemics to repress what is redundant. Were a wasting
plague to sweep off two millions in England, and six millions in
France, there can be no doubt whatever that, after the
inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the proportion
of births to burials would be much above what it is in either
country at present.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an
average of seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In
France and England, taking the highest proportion, it is as 117
to 100. Great and astonishing as this difference is, we ought not
to be so wonder-struck at it as to attribute it to the miraculous
interposition of heaven. The causes of it are not remote, latent
and mysterious; but near us, round about us, and open to the
investigation of every inquiring mind. It accords with the most
liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can
fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine
power. But we know from experience that these operations of what
we call nature have been conducted almost invariably according to
fixed laws. And since the world began, the causes of population
and depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the
laws of nature with which we are acquainted.