40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



unhealthy, or ill-governed, is to a constant increase, up to the 

 limit of their producing power. 



If it be true, that our race is advancing in civilization, 

 knowledge, virtue and power, then the increase of the world's 

 population will go on in an accelerated ratio. If men live more 

 justly, temperately and virtuously, they will live longer, thrive 

 better, and rear larger families. If wars ever cease, one 

 important check to the growth of population will be abolished. 

 If oppression ceases, and good government obtains, prosperity 

 will prevail, and where there* is prosperity, population rapidly 

 advances. If humanity and charity increase in the world, the 

 poorer classes will be better cared for, better fed, better clothed, 

 better housed, more healthy, more long-lived and more prolific. 

 If sanitary and medical science advances, diseases will be less 

 frequent and less fatal, and the average term of human life will 

 be continually lengthening. These causes are already producing 

 these results ; mortality is decreasing ; the average duration of 

 human life is advancing, in the countries that have made most 

 progress in civilization, good government, and benevolence. 

 All these signs point to the approaching fulfilment of the 

 prophecy of Isaiah : " There shall be no more thence an infant 

 of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days : for the 

 child shall die an hundred years old ; and he that misses of an 

 hundred years (so some understand the latter part of the verse,) 

 shall be reckoned accursed," — ' shall be regarded as cut off 

 prematurely by a divine judgment.' In view of all these 

 considerations, we are justified in expecting, if the world lasts, 

 and mankind advances, a more rapid increase in the world's 

 population than has ever taken place in the past. 



Will the earth be able to feed so many new mouths ? or is " the 

 good time coming" darkened by the serious drawback of a 

 prospective and permanent famine ? We can hardly be much 

 troubled by this apprehension. An all-wise Providence never 

 lacks the means of adapting one part of its merciful arrange- 

 ments to another ; and if it be decreed that a happy period of 

 health, longevity, and populousness shall dawn upon this 

 suffering world, the food needful to support that population 

 will not be wanting. Some pious political economist has said, 

 in view of such a period of dense population, that should the 

 exigency require it, no doubt God would bring another empty 



