THE LAW OF POPULATION 149 



and, in the second place, by the incomes which they 

 yield, they go to the distribution of wealth, more 

 especially in expenditure upon the luxuries of life. 



Wherever such fortunes exist, the condition of the 

 labouring classes is raised in proportion to their 

 number and size. They support the more highly paid 

 forms of skilled labour, and certain kinds of industry 

 specially created for the use and gratification of 

 luxury. The wages thus accruing to highly skilled 

 workmen and other ministers of luxury are again 

 distributed in supporting ordinary tradesmen and 

 labourers. 



In the economy of our interdependent lives no man 

 lives or can live for himself alone. 



Accordingly, whoever is in possession of means that 

 enable him to marry, from the king to the humblest 

 cobbler, whether he obtains these means from the 

 labour of his own hands or by the industry of others, 

 may be said, in the sense in which I use the term, to 

 occupy a post of employment that places marriage 

 within his reach. Even the deleterious classes, such 

 as professional thieves and burglars, must be placed in 

 our category, though they are destroyers rather than 

 producers of wealth ; for if they marry, as some 

 of them do, it is because they find their gains suffice 

 for the married life. If there do now and again take 

 place marriages which are not justified by those who 

 marry seeing how to procure the means of providing 

 for themselves, either in the present or in the future, 

 these idiotic transactions are so rare as not to disturb 



