378 Different Plans of improving the Bk. iv. 



the demand for labour, and punishes a young man 

 for his prudence in refraining from marriage, at 

 a time, perhaps, when this demand may be so 

 small, that the wages of labour are totally inade- 

 quate to the support of a family; I should be 

 averse to any compulsory system whatever for 

 the poor ; but certainly if single men were com- 

 pelled to pay a contribution for the future con- 

 tingencies of the married state, they ought injus- 

 tice to receive a benefit proportioned to the period 

 of their privation ; and the man who had contri- 

 buted a fourth of his earnings for merely one year, 

 ought not to be put upon a level with him who had 

 contributed this proportion for ten years. 



Mr. Arthur Young, in most of his works, ap- 

 pears clearly to understand the principle of popu- 

 lation, and is fully aware of the evils which must 

 necessarily result from an increase of people be- 

 yond the demand for labour, and the means of 

 comfortable subsistence. In his Tour throusfh 

 France he has particularly laboured this point, 

 and shewn most forcibly the misery which results 

 in that country from the excess of population oc- 

 casioned by the too great division of property. 

 Such an increase he justly calls merely a multi- 

 plication of wretchedness. " Couples marry and 

 *' procreate on the idea, not the reality, of a 

 *' maintenance; they increase beyond the demand 

 " of towns and manufactures ; and the conse- 

 " quence is, distress, and numbers dying of 

 " diseases arising from insufficient nourishment."* 



* Travels in France, vol. i. c, xii. p. 408. 



