Ch. ii. and Ike Mode of their Operation. 17 



The sum of all these preventive and positive 

 checks, taken together, forms the immediate 

 check to population; and it is evident that, in 

 every country where the whole of the procreative 

 power cannot be called into action, the preventive 

 and the positive checks must vary inversely as 

 each other ; that is, in countries either naturally 

 unhealthy, or subject to a great mortality, from 

 whatever cause it may arise, the preventive check 

 will prevail very little. In those countries, on 

 the contrary, which are naturally healthy, and 

 where the preventive check is found to prevail 

 with considerable force, the positive check will 

 prevail very little, or the mortality be very small. 



In every country some of these checks are, 

 with more or less force, in constant operation; yet, 

 notwithstanding their general prevalence, there 

 are few states in which there is not a constant ef- 

 fort in the population to increase beyond the means 

 of subsistence. This constant effort as constantly 

 tends to subject the lower classes of society to dis- 

 tress, and to prevent any great permanent melio- 

 ration of their condition. 



same denomination. There may have been some irregular con- 

 nexions with women, which have added to the happiness of both 

 parties, and have injured no one. These individual actions, there- 

 fore, cannot come under the head of misery. But they are still 

 evidently vicious, because an action is so denominated, which vio- 

 lates an express precept, founded upon its general tendency to 

 produce misery, whatever maybe its individual effect; and no 

 person can doubt the general tendency of an illicit intercuorse 

 between the sexes, to injure the happiness of society. 



VOL. I. C 



