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CHAP. VIII. 



Of the Checks to Population in England. 



Th e most cursory view of society in this country 

 must convince us, that throughout all ranks the 

 preventive check to population prevails in a con- 

 siderable degree. Those among the higher classes, 

 who live principally in towns, often want the in- 

 clination to marry, from the facility with which 

 they can indulge themselves in an illicit inter- 

 course with the sex. And others are deterred 

 from marrying by the idea of the expenses that 

 they must retrench, and the pleasures of which 

 they must deprive themselves, on the supposition 

 of having a family. When the fortune is large, 

 these considerations are certainly trivial ; but a 

 preventive foresight of this kind has objects of 

 much greater weight for its contemplation as we 

 go lower. 



A man of liberal education, with an income 

 only just sufficient to enable him to associate in 

 the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely cer- 

 tain that, if he marry and have a family, he shall 

 be obliged to give up all his former connexions. 

 The woman, whom a man of education would 

 naturally make the object of his choice, is one 

 brought up in the same habits and sentiments 

 with himself, and used to the familiar intercourse 

 of a society totally different from that to which 



