Ch. vii. Of Poor -Laws, continued. 113 



earns a dollar a day, and the English labourer 

 earns two shillings, is that the English labourer 

 pays a great part of these two shillings in taxes. 



Some of these doctrines are so grossly absurd 

 that I have no doubt they are rejected at once 

 by the common sense of many of the labouring 

 classes. It cannot but strike them that, if their 

 main dependence for the support of their children 

 is to be on the parish, they can only expect 

 parish fare, parish clothing, parish furniture, a 

 parish house, and parish government, and they 

 must know that persons living in this way cannot 

 possibly be in a happy and prosperous state. 



It can scarcely escape the notice of the com- 

 mon mechanic, that the scarcer workmen are 

 upon any occasion the greater share do they re- 

 tain of the value of what they produce for their 

 masters ; and it is a most natural inference, that 

 prudence in marriage, which is the only moral 

 means of preventing an excess of workmen above 

 the demand, can be the only mode of giving to 

 the poor permanently a large share of all that is 

 produced in the country. 



A common man, who has read his Bible, must 

 be convinced that a command given to a rational 

 being by a merciful God cannot be intended so to 

 be interpreted as to produce only disease and 

 death instead of muliiplication ; and a plain 

 sound understanding would make him see that, 

 if, in a country in which little or no increase of 

 food is to be obtained, every man were to marry 

 at eighteen or twenty, when he generally feels 



VOL. 11. I 



