522 General Deductions from the Bk. ii. 



How far these " terrible correctives to the 

 redundance of mankind" have been occasioned 

 by the too rapid increase of population, is a point 

 which it would be very difficult to determine with 

 any degree of precision. The causes of most of 

 our diseases appear to us to be so mysterious, 

 and probably are really so various, that it would 

 be rashness to lay too much stress on any single 

 one ; but it will not perhaps be too much to say, 

 that among these causes we ought certainly to 

 rank crowded houses and insufficient or unwhole- 

 some food, which are the natural consequences of 

 an increase of population faster than the accom- 

 modations of a country with respect to habitations 

 and food will allow. 



Almost all the histories of epidemics, which we 

 possess, tend to confirm this supposition, by 

 describing them in general as making their prin- 

 cipal ravages among the lower classes of people. 

 In Dr. Short's tables this circumstance is fre- 

 quently mentioned ;* and it further appears that 

 a very considerable proportion of the epidemic 

 years either followed or were accompanied by 

 seasons of dearth and bad food.t In other 

 places he also mentions great plagues as dimi- 

 nishing particularly the numbers of the lower or 

 servile sort of people ; \ and in speaking of dif- 



* Hist, of Air, Seasons, &c. vol. ii. p. 206. et seq. 

 t Id. vol. ii. p. 206. et seq. and 336. 

 % New Observ. p. 125. 



