( '3 ) 



customed, this benevolence might have been successful. 

 But it is not possible. The establishment of higher 

 standards of living must come by exertion, and by 

 thrift, — not by gratuitous benefits which dispense 

 ■with both. Accordingly this unnatural lowering 

 of rent, by allowing a wholly extraneous produce to 

 stand in lieu of it, — and all this consequent temporary 

 abundance had the reverse effect. It did not produce 

 wealth or comfort, but, on the contrary, only poverty 

 and indigence. It removed every check upon the law 

 under which population tends to press upon the limits 

 of subsistence. It supplied an insuperable temptation 

 and encouragement to an improvident multiplication 

 of the people, to wasteful habits, and to a systematic 

 breach of the conditions against the reckless subdi- 

 vision of farms or crofts. When it is remembered 

 further that the period I have now reviewed was con- 

 temporary with the introduction and spread of the 

 potato, and of inoculation, which put an end to the 

 old ravages of smallpox, w^e can readily understand the 

 results which followed. 



Accordingly, we find that the population of the 

 Island, which so late as 1 769 had only amounted to 

 1676 persons, had in 1802 multiplied to a total of 

 2776. And the same rate of multiplication was then 

 going on, and w^as even rising. The parish registers 

 have been lost up to 1784. But from that year (in- 

 clusive) to the end of the century, we have a list; of the 

 yearly births and of the yearly marriages. The births 

 in the year 1800 were 116, and the marriages were 

 41. The last is a far higher rate of marriages to 

 population than now prevails in the most thrivino- 

 cities of the country. 



