382 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



this part of the work too much, and of falling al- 

 most unavoidably into too many repetitions, from 

 the necessity of drawing the same kind of infer- 



fact of the meliorated condition of agricultural labourers in gene- 

 ral, necessarily arising from the acknowledged high price of labour 

 and comparative cheapness of corn ; and it is from this part of the 

 society that the effective population of a country is principally sup- 

 plied. If the poor's rates of England were suddenly abolished, 

 there would undoubtedly be the most complicated distress among 

 those who were before supported by them ; but I should not ex- 

 pect that either the condition of the labouring part of the society 

 in general, or the population of the country, would suffer from it. 

 As the proportion of illegitimate children in France has risen so 

 extraordinarily as from -£j of all the births to -^- T , it is evident that 

 more might be abandoned in hospitals, and more out of these die 

 than usual, and yet a more than usual number be reared at home, 

 and escape the mortality of those dreadful receptacles. It appears 

 that from the low state of the funds in the hospitals the proper 

 nurses could not be paid, and numbers of children died from abso- 

 lute famine. Some of the hospitals at last very properly refused 

 to receive any more. 



The reports, upon the whole, do not present a favourable picture 

 of the internal state of France ; but something is undoubtedly to 

 be attributed to the nature of these reports, which, consisting as 

 they do of observations explaining the state of the different depart- 

 ments, and of particular demands, with a view to obtain assistance 

 or relief from government, it is to be expected that they should 

 lean rather to the unfavourable side. When the question is respect- 

 ing the imposition of new taxes, or the relief from old ones, people 

 will generally complain of their poverty. On the subject of taxes, 

 indeed, it would appear, as if the French government must be a 

 little puzzled. For though it very properly recommended to the 

 Cunseils generaux not to indulge in vague complaints, but to men- 

 tion specific grievances, and propose specific remedies, and parti- 

 cularly not to advise the abolition of one tax without suggesting 

 another ; yet all the taxes appear to me to be reprobated, and most 

 frequently in general terms, without the proposal of any substitute. 



