Ch. xiii. preceding View of Society. 529 



dreadful shock, the proportion of births to deaths 

 would rise much above the usual average in either 

 country during the last century. 



In New Jersey the proportion of births to deaths, 

 on an average of 7 years, ending with 1743, was 

 300 to 100. In France and England the average 

 proportion cannot be reckoned at more than 120 

 to 100. Great and astonishing as this difference 

 is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck at it, as 

 to attribute it to the miraculous interposition of 

 Heaven. The causes of it are not remote, latent 

 and mysterious, but near us, round about us, and 

 open to the investigation of every inquiring mind. 

 It accords with the most liberal spirit of philoso- 

 phy to believe that no stone can fall, or plant rise, 

 without the immediate agency of divine power. 

 But we know from experience, that these opera- 

 tions of what we call nature have been conducted 

 almost invariably according to fixed laws. And 

 since the world began, the causes of population 

 and depopulation have been probably as constant 

 as any of the laws of nature with which we are 

 acquainted. 



The passion between the sexes has appeared in 

 every age to be so nearly the same, that it may 

 always be considered, in algebraic language, as 

 a given quantity. The great law of necessity, 

 which prevents population from increasing in any 

 country beyond the food which it can either pro- 

 duce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so 

 obvious and evident to our understandings, that 



VOL. I. M ftl 



