248 Of the Checks to Population Bk. i. 



impossible to read the speech of Metellus Numi- 

 dicus in his censorship without indignation and 

 disgust. " If it were possible," he says, " entirely 

 " to go without wives, we would deliver ourselves 

 " at once from this evil ; but as the laws of nature 

 " have so ordered it that we can neither live 

 " happy with them nor continue the species with- 

 " out them, we ought to have more regard for our 

 " lasting security than for our transient plea- 

 " sures/'* 



Positive laws to encourage marriage and popu- 

 lation, enacted on the urgency of the occasion, 

 and not mixed with religion, as in China and some 

 other countries, are seldom calculated to answer 

 the end which they aim at, and therefore gene- 

 rally indicate ignorance in the legislator who pro- 

 poses them ; but the apparent necessity of such 

 laws almost invariably indicates a very great de- 

 gree of moral and political depravity in the state ; 

 and in the countries in which they are most 

 strongly insisted on, not only vicious manners 

 will generally be found to prevail, but political 

 institutions extremely unfavourable to industry, 

 and consequently to population. 



On this account I cannot but agree with Wal- 

 lace | in thinking that Hume was wrong in his 

 supposition, that the Roman world was probably 

 the most populous during the long peace under 

 Trajan and the Antonines.J We well know that 



* Aulus Gellius, lib. i. c. 6. 



f Dissertation, Appendix, p. 247. 



% Essay xi. p. 505. 



