Ch. i. Of moral Restraint. 259 



houses, were the principal victims. In what other 

 manner can Nature point out to us that, if we 

 increase too fast for the means of subsistence, so 

 as to render it necessary for a considerable part 

 of the society to live in this miserable manner, 

 we have offended against one of her laws ? This 

 law she has declared exactly in the same manner 

 as she declares that intemperance in eating and 

 drinking will be followed by ill health ; and that, 

 however grateful it may be to us at the moment to 

 indulge this propensity to excess, such indulgence 

 will ultimately produce unhappiness. It is as 

 much a law of nature that repletion is bad for the 

 human frame, as that eating and drinking, unat- 

 tended with this consequence, are good for it. 



An implicit obedience to the impulses of our 

 natural passions would lead us into the wildest 

 and most fatal extravagancies ; and yet we have 

 the strongest reasons for believing that all these 

 passions are so necessary to our being, that they 

 could not be generally weakened or diminished, 

 without injuring our happiness. The most power- 

 ful and universal of all our desires is the desire 

 of food, and of those things, such as clothing, 

 houses, &c, which are immediately necessary to 

 relieve us from the pains of hunger and cold. It 

 is acknowledged by all, that these desires put in 

 motion the greatest part of that activity, from 

 which the multiplied improvements and advan- 

 tages of civilized life are derived ; and that the 

 pursuit of these objects, and the gratification of 

 these desires, form the principal happiness of the 



s 2 



