82 Of the Checks to Population in Bk. i. 



would continue to spread devastation, long after 

 the original inconvenience, which might have 

 prompted them, had ceased to be felt.* The dis- 

 tresses experienced from one or two unfavourable 

 seasons, operating on a crowded population, 

 which was before living with the greatest econo- 

 my, and pressing hard against the limits of its 

 food, would, in such a state of society, occasion 

 the more general prevalence of infanticide and 

 promiscuous intercourse ;t and these depopula- 

 ting causes would in the same manner continue to 

 act with increased force, for some time after the 

 occasion which had aggravated them was at an 

 end. A change of habits to a certain degree, 

 gradually produced by a change of circumstances, 

 would soon restore the population, which could 

 not long be kept below its natural level without 

 the most extreme violence. How far European 

 contact may operate in Otaheite with this extreme 

 violence, and prevent it from recovering its former 

 population, is a point which experience only can de- 

 termine. But, should this be the case, I have no 

 doubt that, on tracing the causes of it, we shall find 

 them to be aggravated vice and misery. 



Of the other islands in the Pacific Ocean we 

 have a less intimate knowledge than of Otaheite ; 



* Missionary Voy. p. 225 * 



t 1 hope I may never be misunderstood with regard to some of 

 these preventive causes of over-population, and be supposed to im- 

 ply the slightest approbation of them, merely because I relate their 

 effects. A cause, which may prevent any particular evil, may be 

 beyond all comparison worse than the evil itself. 



