for the support of the mother with a large family. The children
are sickly from insufficient food. The rosy flush of health gives
place to the pallid cheek and hollow eye of misery. Benevolence,
yet lingering in a few bosoms, makes some faint expiring
struggles, till at length self-love resumes his wonted empire and
lords it triumphant over the world.

No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of
which Mr Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. (Bk
VIII, ch. 3; in the third edition, Vol. II, p. 462) No opposition
had been produced by them between public and private good. No
monopoly had been created of those advantages which reason
directs to be left in common. No man had been goaded to the
breach of order by unjust laws. Benevolence had established her
reign in all hearts: and yet in so short a period as within fifty
years, violence, oppression, falsehood, misery, every hateful
vice, and every form of distress, which degrade and sadden the
present state of society, seem to have been generated by the most
imperious circumstances, by laws inherent in the nature of man,
and absolutely independent of it human regulations.

If we are not yet too well convinced of the reality of this
melancholy picture, let us but look for a moment into the next
period of twenty-five years; and we shall see twenty-eight
millions of human beings without the means of support; and before
the conclusion of the first century, the population would be one
hundred and twelve millions, and the food only sufficient for
thirty-five millions, leaving seventy-seven millions unprovided
for. In these ages want would be indeed triumphant, and rapine
and murder must reign at large: and yet all this time we are