186 Of the Checks to Population in Bk. i. 



It is observed in general that the Christian 

 families consist of a greater number of children 

 than the Mahometan families in which polygamy 

 prevails.* This is an extraordinary fact ; because 

 though polygamy, from the unequal distribution 

 of women which it occasions, be naturally unfa- 

 vourable to the population of a whole country ; 

 yet the individuals who are able to support a plu- 

 rality of wives, ought certainly, in the natural 

 course of things, to have a greater number of chil- 

 dren than those who are confined to one. The 

 way in which Volney principally accounts for this 

 fact is that, from the practice of polygamy, and 

 very early marriages, the Turks are enervated 

 while young, and impotence at thirty is very com- 

 mon, f Eton notices an unnatural vice as prevail- 

 ing in no inconsiderable degree among the com- 

 mon people, and considers it as one of the checks 

 to the population;^: but the five principal causes 

 of depopulation which he enumerates, are, 



1. The plague, from which the empire is never 

 entirely free. 



2. Those terrible disorders which almost always 

 follow it, at least in Asia. 



3. Epidemic and endemic maladies in Asia, 

 which make as dreadful ravages as the plague 

 itself, and which frequently visit that part of the 

 empire. 



4. Famine. 



* Eton's Turkish Emp. c. vii. p. 275. 

 t Voy. de Volney, torn. ii. c. zL p. 44a. 

 \ Eton's Turkish Ernp. c. vii. p. 275. 



