There is a principle in human society, by which population is
perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence.
Thus among the wandering tribes of America and Asia, we never
find through the lapse of ages that population has so increased
as to render necessary the cultivation of the earth.

This principle, which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some
mysterious and occult cause and which he does not attempt to
investigate, will be found to be the grinding law of necessity,
misery, and the fear of misery.

The great error under which Mr Godwin labours throughout his
whole work is the attributing almost all the vices and misery
that are seen in civil society to human institutions. Political
regulations and the established administration of property are
with him the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the
crimes that degrade mankind. Were this really a true state of the
case, it would not seem a hopeless task to remove evil completely
from the world, and reason seems to be the proper and adequate
instrument for effecting so great a purpose. But the truth is,
that though human institutions appear to be the obvious and
obtrusive causes of much mischief to mankind, yet in reality they
are light and superficial, they are mere feathers that float on
the surface, in comparison with those deeper seated causes of
impurity that corrupt the springs and render turbid the whole
stream of human life.

Mr Godwin, in his chapter on the benefits attendant on a
system of equality, says: