Ch. xiii. Principles on this Subject. 429 



lence of such prudential habits among the poor, as 

 would prevent them from marrying, when the 

 actual price of labour, joined to what they might 

 have saved in their single state, would not give 

 them the prospect of being able to support a wife 

 and five or six children without assistance. And 

 undoubtedly such a degree of prudential restraint 

 would produce a very striking melioration in the 

 condition of the lower classes of people. 



It may be said, perhaps, that even this degree 

 of prudence might not always avail, as when a 

 man marries he cannot tell what number of chil- 

 dren he shall have, and many have more than six. 

 This is certainly true ; and in this case I do not 

 think that any evil would result from making a 

 certain allowance to every child above this num- 

 ber ; not with a view of rewarding a man for his 

 large family, but merely of relieving him from a 

 species of distress which it would be unreasonable 

 in us to expect that he should calculate upon. 

 And with this view, the relief should be merely such 

 as to place him exactly in the same situation as if 

 he had had six children. Montesquieu disap- 

 proves of an edict of Lewis the Fourteenth, which 

 gave certain pensions to those who had ten and 

 twelve children, as being of no use in encouraging 

 population.* For the very reason that he dis- 

 approves of it, I should think that some law of the 

 kind might be adopted without danger, and might 

 relieve particular individuals from a very pressing 



* Esprit (Ics Loix, li\ . xxiii. c. xxvii. 



