107 



16. Now that such a reduction of the numbers of a people 

 as from a thousand to a hundred, or even to the extinction of the 

 race, should happen, does not seem in any degree probable, ac- 

 cording to our own experience of the tendency of population, 

 which, without specifying proportions which cannot be ascertained, 

 we know to be generally towards a rapid increase. But the state 

 of things, the causes which prevail in our days, may not have pre- 

 vailed in ages past. This, it will be said, is urging a mere possi- 

 bility without data ; but the supposition is not so absurd as to 

 some it might appear. 



1st, We know that the business of population requires the 

 possession of certain faculties allied with the procreative organs. 



2nd, These organs, like all others, are liable to spontaneous 

 disease, by which a function might be impaired, while even the 

 structure is preserved. 



3rd, We know that many (perhaps we may affirm of the pre- 

 disposition, the great bulk) of the diseases to which our organs 

 are liable, are hereditary. In this way, or from these causes, the 

 tendency of population would be to the extinction of the race. 



4th, Independently of spontaneous disease or disorder, to which 

 the organs in question, in common with the rest, are liable, they 

 are exposed to the influence of moral habits, which may be of 

 such a nature and so prevalent at particular periods of the world, 

 as to frustrate that design which nature never appears to have lost 

 sight of, viz. the perpetuation of the species.* It is unnecessary 

 to cite examples here; we may advert, as to a class, to the in- 

 effectual commerce between the dissolute of either sex. A period 

 of the world, the moral condition of which would render prevalent 

 the relations just cited, would tend to a reduction of its inhabi- 

 tants; and a period of the world in which such a relation was 

 universal, would lead to their entire extinction. 



5th, And that the conjecture of these possibilities is not with- 

 out the support of actual experience, appears to be indicated by 

 the facts that there have been found the remains of men, of a size 

 which has given rise to the inference that the existing inhabitants 

 of the earth are no descendants of their's, but belong to another 

 ancestry, and that their race, there being no living remains of it, 

 has become extinct. The same has been observed of other ani- 

 mals, as of the Mamoth, and many strange things exhibited in 

 museums, bearing the traces of animal remains, but of which we 

 have no known examples in the living state. But all the causes 

 above-mentioned cannot well apply to these latter instances; that 

 is, they must be exempt from the influence of moral depravity, but 

 they are not exempt from the influence of physical change. 



17. We find in some districts a peculiar conformation of the 

 thyroid gland, associated with the other phenomena of cretinism. 



* It is said that population in New South-Wales is now (1816) on the 

 decline, owing to the abuse of European habits. 



