90 Of Poor- Laws, cojitinued. Bk. iii. 



better prospect of maintaining their families than 

 mere parish assistance. The desire of bettering 

 our condition, and the fear of making it worse, 

 like the vis medicati^lv iiatwrce in physics, is the 

 vis 7nedicatrLV reipublicce in politics, and is continu- 

 ally counteracting the disorders arising from nar- 

 row human institutions. In spite of the prejudices 

 in favour of population, and the direct encourage- 

 ments to marriage from the poor-laws, it operates 

 as a preventive check to increase ; and happy for 

 this country is it, that it does so. But besides 

 that spirit of independence and prudence, which 

 checks the frequency of marriage, notwithstand- 

 ing the encouragements of the poor-laws, these 

 laws themselves occasion a check of no inconsi- 

 derable magnitude, and thus counteract with one 

 hand what they encourage with the other. As 

 each parish is obliged to maintain its own poor, 

 it is naturally fearful of increasing their number; 

 and every landholder is in consequence more in- 

 clined to pull down than to build cottages, except 

 when the demand for labourers is really urgent. 

 This deficiency of cottages operates necessarily as 

 a strong check to marriage ; and this check is 

 probably the principal reason why we have been 

 able to continue the system of the poor-laws so 

 long. 



Those who are not prevented for a time from 

 marrying by these causes, are either relieved very 

 scantily at their own homes, where they suffer all 

 the consequences arising from squalid poverty ; or 

 they are crowded together in close and unwhole- 



