434 Of our rational Expectations Bk. iv. 



state, which is nothing more than an inference 

 from the general course of the laws of nature, 

 irresistibly forced on each man's attention, the 

 prudential check, to marriage has increased in 

 Europe; and it cannot be unreasonable to con- 

 clude that it will still make further advances. If 

 this take place without any marked and decided 

 increase of a vicious intercourse with the sex, the 

 happiness of society will evidently be promoted 

 by it ; and with regard to the danger of such 

 increase, it is consolatory to remark that those 

 countries in Europe, where marriages are the latest 

 or least frequent, are by no means particularly 

 distinguished by vices of this kind. It has ap- 

 peared, that Norway, Switzerland, England, and 

 Scotland, are above all the rest in the prevalence 

 of the preventive check ; and though I do not 

 mean to insist particularly on the virtuous habits 

 of these countries, yet I think that no person 

 would select them as the countries most marked 

 for profligacy of manners. Indeed, from the little 

 that I know of the continent, I should have been 

 inclined to select them as most distinguished 

 for contrary habits, and as rather above than 

 below their neighbours in the chastity of their 

 women, and consequently in the virtuous habits of 

 their men. Experience therefore seems to teach 

 us that it is possible for moral and physical causes 

 to counteract the effects that might at first be 

 "expected from an increase of the check to mar- 

 riage; but allowing all the weight to these effects 

 which is in any degree probable, it may be safely 



