Ch. i. Of moral Restraint. 269 



the object to be accomplished would admit of any 

 considerable diminution in the desire of marriage. 

 It is clearly the duty of each individual not to 

 marry till he has a prospect of supporting his 

 children; but it is at the same time to be wished 

 that he should retain undiminished his desire of 

 marriage, in order that he may exert himself to 

 realize this prospect, and be stimulated to make 

 provision for the support of greater numbers. 



It is evidently therefore regulation and direction 

 which are required with regard to the principle 

 of population, not diminution or alteration. And 

 if moral restraint be the only virtuous mode of 

 avoiding the incidental evils arising from this 

 principle, our obligation to practise it will evi- 

 dently rest exactly upon the same foundation as 

 our obligation to practise any of the other virtues. 



Whatever indulgence we may be disposed to 

 allow to occasional failures in the discharge of a 

 duty of acknowledged difficulty, yet of the strict 

 line of duty we cannot doubt. Our obligation 

 not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being 

 able to support our children will appear to deserve 

 the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved 

 that an attention to this obligation is of most 

 powerful effect in the prevention of misery ; and 

 that, if it were the general custom to follow the 

 first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of 

 puberty, the universal prevalence of every known 

 virtue in the greatest conceivable degree, would 

 fail of rescuing society from the most wretched 

 and desperate state of want, and all the diseases 

 and famines which usually accompany it. 



