Ch. xiii. preceding View of Society. 523 



ferent diseases he observes that those which are 

 occasioned by bad and unwholesome food gene- 

 rally last the longest.* 



We know from constant experience, that fevers 

 are generated in our jails, our manufactories, our 

 crowded workhouses and in the narrow and close 

 streets of our large towns ; all which situations 

 appear to be similar in their effects to squalid 

 poverty ; and we cannot doubt that causes of this 

 kind, aggravated in degree, contributed to the 

 production and prevalence of those great and 

 wasting plagues formerly so common in Europe, 

 but which now, from the mitigation of these 

 causes, are every where considerably abated, and 

 in many places appear to be completely extir- 

 pated. 



Of the other great scourge of mankind, famine, 

 it may be observed that it is not in the nature of 

 things, that the increase of population should 

 absolutely produce one. This increase, though 

 rapid, is necessarily gradual ; and as the human 

 frame cannot be supported, even for a very short 

 time, without food, it is evident, that no more 

 human beings can grow up than there is provision 

 to maintain. But though the principle of po- 

 pulation cannot absolutely produce a famine, it 

 prepares the way for one ; and by frequently 

 obliging the lower classes of people to subsist 

 nearly on the smallest quantity of food that will 



* New Observ. p. 108. 



