534 General Deductions from the Bk. ii. 



These checks, and the checks which keep the 

 population down to the level of the means of sub- 

 sistence, are moral restraint, vice, and misery ? 



In comparing the state of society which has 

 been considered in this second book with that 

 which formed the subject of the first, I think it 

 appears that in modern Europe the positive 

 checks to population prevail less, and the preven- 

 tive checks more than in past times, and in the 

 more uncivilized parts of the world. 



War, the predominant check to the population 

 of savage nations, has certainly abated, even in- 

 cluding the late unhappy revolutionary contests ; 

 and since the prevalence of a greater degree of 

 personal cleanliness, of better modes of clearing 

 and building towns, and of a more equable distri- 

 bution of the products of the soil from improving 

 knowledge in political economy, plagues, violent 

 diseases and famines have been certainly miti- 

 gated, and have become less frequent. 



With regard to the preventive check to popula- 

 tion, though it must be acknowledged that that 

 branch of it which comes under the head of moral 

 restraint,* does not at present prevail much 

 among the male part of society; yet I am 

 strongly disposed to believe that it prevails more 

 than in those states which were first considered ; 

 and it can scarcely be doubted that in modern 

 Europe a much larger proportion of women pass 



* The. reader will recollect the confined sense in which I use 

 this term. 



