108 Of Poor- Laws, continued. Bk. iii. 



If this system were to become universal, and I 

 own it appears to me that the poor-laws naturally 

 lead to it, there is no reason whatever why parish 

 assistance should not by degrees begin earlier and 

 earlier ; and I do not hesitate to assert that, if 

 the government and constitution of the country 

 were in all other respects as perfect as the wildest 

 visionary thinks he could make them ; if parlia- 

 ments were annual, suffrage universal, wars, taxes 

 and pensions unknown, and the civil list fifteen 

 hundred a year, the great body of the community 

 might still be a collection of paupers. 



I have been accused of proposing a law to pro- 

 hibit the poor from marrying. This is not true. 

 So far from proposing such a law, I have distinctly 

 said that, if any person chooses to marry without 

 having a prospect of being able to maintain a 

 family, he ought to have the most perfect liberty 

 so to do ; and whenever any prohibitory propo- 

 sitions have been suggested to me as advisable 

 by persons who have drawn wrong inferences 

 from what I have said, I have steadily and uni- 

 formly reprobated them. I am indeed most de- 

 cidedly of opinion that any positive law to limit 

 the age of marriage would be both unjust and im- 

 moral ; and my greatest objection to a system of 

 equality and the system of the poor-laws (two 

 systems which, however different in their outset, 

 are of a nature calculated to produce the same 

 results) is, that the society in which they are ef- 

 fectively carried into execution, will ultimately 

 be reduced to the miserable alternative of choosing 



