Ch. xiv. General Obsei^vations. 245 



profits of the farmer, and often enable him to make 

 permanent improvements; whereas, when the 

 labourer is paid so scantily that his wages will 

 not allow even of any temporary diminution with- 

 out a diminution of population, the increase of 

 cultivation and population must from the first be 

 accompanied with a fall of profits. The preva- 

 lence of the preventive check to population and 

 the good average wages of the labourer will 

 rather promote than prevent that occasional in- 

 crease and decrease of them, which as a stimulus 

 seems to be favourable to the increase both of 

 food and population. 



Among the other prejudices which have pre- 

 vailed on the subject of population, it has been 

 generally thought that, while there is either waste 

 among the rich, or land remaining uncultivated in 

 any country, the complaints for want of food can-' 

 not be justly founded ; or at least that the pressure 

 of distress upon the poor is to be attributed to the 

 ill conduct of the higher classes of society and the 

 bad management of the land. The real effect 

 however of these two circumstances is merely to 

 narrow the limit of the actual population ; but 

 they have little or no influence on what may be 

 called the average pressure of distress on the 

 poorer members of society. If our ancestors had 

 been so frugal and industrious, and had transmitted 

 such habits to their posterity, that nothing super- 

 fluous was now consumed by the higher classes, 

 no horses were used for pleasure, and no land was 

 left uncultivated, a striking difference would 



