Ch. i. the Increase of Population and Food. 5 



an early attachment to one woman ; and where 

 there were no impediments of any kind in the way 

 of an union to which such an attachment would 

 lead, and no causes of depopulation afterwards, 

 the increase of the human species would be evi- 

 dently much greater than any increase which has 

 been hitherto known. 



In the northern states of America, where the 

 means of subsistence have been more ample, the 

 manners of the people more pure, and the checks 

 to early marriages fewer, than in any of the mo- 

 dern states of Europe, the population has been 

 found to double itself, for above a century and 

 a half successively, in less than twenty-five years.* 

 Yet, even during these periods, in some of the 

 towns, the deaths exceeded the births,^ a circum- 

 stance which clearly proves that, in those parts 

 of the country which supplied this deficiency, the 

 increase must have been much more rapid than 

 the general average. 



In the back settlements, where the sole em- 

 ployment is agriculture, and vicious customs and 

 unwholesome occupations are little known, the 

 population has been found to double itself in fif- 

 teen years.J Even this extraordinary rate of in- 

 crease is probably short of the utmost power of 



* It appears, from some recent calculations and estimates, that 

 from the first settlement of America, to the year 1 800, the periods 

 of doubling have been but very little above twenty years. See 

 a note on the increase of American population in Book ii. chap. xi. 



t Price's Observ. on Revers. Pay. vol. i. p. 274. 4th edit. 



t Id. p. 282. 



