APTENDIX. 



459 



may have collected new facts. But I still think it not quite 

 allowable in the same publication : and yet it appears that 

 in the very paper, in which he has so severely condemned 

 my scheme, the same arguments, which he has used to re- 

 probate it, are applicable with equal force against his own 

 proposal, as there explained. 



He allows that his plan can provide only for a certain 

 number of families, and has nothing to do with the increase 

 from them ;* but in allowing this, he allows that it does not 

 reach the grand difficulty attending a provision for the poor. 

 In this most essential point, after reprobating me for saying, 

 that the poor have no claim of right to support, he is com- 

 pelled to adopt the very same conclusion ; and to own that 

 " it might be prudent to consider the misery to which the 

 " progressive population might be subject, when there was 

 " not a sufficient demand for them in towns and manufac- 

 " tures, as an evil which it was absolutely and physically 

 " impossible to prevent." Now the sole reason why I say 

 that the poor have no claim of right to support, is the phy- 

 sical impossibility of relieving this progressive population. 

 Mr. Young expressly acknowledges this physical impossi- 

 bility ; yet with an inconsistency scarcely credible still de- 

 claims against my declaration. 



The power, which the society may possess of relieving 

 a certain portion of the poor, is a consideration perfectly 

 distinct from the general question ; and I am quite sure [ 

 have never said that it is not our duty to do all the good that 

 is practicable. But this limited power of assisting indivi- 

 duals cannot possibly establish a general right. If the poor 

 have really a natural right to support, and if our present 

 laws be only a confirmaition of this right, it ought certainly 

 to extend unimpaired to all who are in distress, to the in- 

 crease from the cottagers as well as to the cottagers them- 

 selves ; and it would be a palpable injustice in the society, 

 to adopt Mr. Young's plan, and purchase from the present 

 generation the disfranchisement of their posterity. 



Mr. Young objects very strongly to that passage of the 

 Essay,t in which I observe that a man, who plunges him- 

 self into poverty and dependence by marrying without any 

 prospect of being able to maintain his family, has more 



• Annals of Agriculture, No. 3r,9, p. 2t9. 



t Book iv. c. iii. p. 506, -Ito. edit. vol. ii. pp. C86, 287 of this edition. 



