i 
Dr. Fother gill on Longevity. 363 
in eleven years, near 200,000 of our common 
people have been loft!* If the calculation be 
juft, however alarming it may appear in a 
national view, there is this confolation, when 
confidered in a philofophical light, that without 
partial evil, there can be no general good ; and 
that, what a nation lofes in the fcale of popu¬ 
lation at one period, it gains at another; and 
thus, probably, the average number of inhabit¬ 
ants, on the furface of the globe, continues, at all 
times, nearly the fame. By this medium, the 
world is neither overftocked with inhabitants, 
nor kept too thin, but life and death keep a 
tolerably equal pace. The inhabitants of this 
ifland, comparatively fpeaking, are but as the 
duft of the balance; yet, inftead of being di- 
miniftied, we are aftured by other writers, thar, 
within thefe thirty years, they are great!v in- 
creafed. f 
The defire of felf-prefervation, and of pro- 
trading the fhort fpan of life, is fo intimately 
interwoven with our conftiturion, that it is 
juftly efteemed one of the firft principles of 
our nature, and, in fpite even of pain and mifery, 
feldom quits us to the laft moments of our 
exiftence. It feems, therefore, to be no left 
our duty, than our intereft, to examine minutely 
• * Obfervations on Population, &c. p. 305. 
t The Rev, Mr. Howlet, Mr. Wales, and others. 
into 
