supposing the produce of the earth absolutely unlimited, and the
yearly increase greater than the boldest speculator can imagine.

This is undoubtedly a very different view of the difficulty
arising from population from that which Mr Godwin gives, when he
says, 'Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may
pass away, and the earth be still found sufficient for the
subsistence of its inhabitants.'

I am sufficiently aware that the redundant twenty-eight
millions, or seventy-seven millions, that I have mentioned, could
never have existed. It is a perfectly just observation of Mr
Godwin, that, 'There is a principle in human society, by which
population is perpetually kept down to the level of the means of
subsistence.' The sole question is, what is this principle? is it
some obscure and occult cause? Is it some mysterious interference
of heaven which, at a certain period, strikes the men with
impotence, and the women with barrenness? Or is it a cause, open
to our researches, within our view, a cause, which has constantly
been observed to operate, though with varied force, in every
state in which man has been placed? Is it not a degree of misery,
the necessary and inevitable result of the laws of nature, which
human institutions, so far from aggravating, have tended
considerably to mitigate, though they never can remove?

It may be curious to observe, in the case that we have been
supposing, how some of the laws which at present govern civilized
society, would be successively dictated by the most imperious
necessity. As man, according to Mr Godwin, is the creature of the
impressions to which he is subject, the goadings of want could