358 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



nued, they should always be wretched and dis- 

 tressed for subsistence. 



The peasant, who afterwards conducted us to 

 the source of the Orbe, entered more fully into 

 the subject, and appeared to understand the 

 principle of population almost as well as any man 

 I ever met with. He said, that the women were 

 prolific, and the air of the mountains so pure and 

 healthy, that very few children died, except from 

 the consequences of absolute want ; that the soil, 

 being barren, was inadequate to yield employ- 

 ment and food for the numbers that were yearly 

 growing up to manhood; that the wages of labour 

 were consequently very low, and totally insuffi- 

 cient for the decent support of a family ; but that 

 the misery and starving condition of the greater 

 part of the society did not operate properly as a 

 warning to others, who still continued to marry, 

 and to produce a numerous offspring which they 

 could not support. This habit of early marriages 

 might really, he said, be called le vice du pays ; 

 and he was so strongly impressed with the neces- 

 sary and unavoidable wretchedness that must 

 result from it, that he thought a law ought to be 

 made, restricting men from entering into the mar- 

 riage state before they were forty years of age, 

 and then allowing it only with " des vieilles Jitles" 

 who might bear them two or three children in- 

 stead of six or eight. 



I could not help being diverted with the earn- 

 estness of his oratory on this subject, and parti- 



