THE GOODNESS OK THE DEITY. 
277 
continue to increase till checked by the difficulty of pro¬ 
curing subsistence.* Such difficulty therefore, along with 
its attendant circumstances, must be found in every old 
country: and these circumstances constitute what we call 
poverty, which necessarily imposes labor, servitude, re¬ 
straint. 
It seems impossible to people a country with inhabitants 
who shall be all in easy circumstances. For suppose the 
thing to be done, there would be such marrying and giving 
in marriage amongst them, as would in a few years change 
the face of affairs entirely; i. e. as would increase the con¬ 
sumption of those articles, which supplied the natural or 
habitual wants of the country, to such a degree of scarcity, 
as must leave the greatest part of the inhabitants unable to 
procure them without toilsome endeavours, or, out of the 
different kinds of these articles, to procure any kind except 
that which was most easily produced. And this, in fact, 
describes the condition of the mass of the community in 
all countries; a condition unavoidably, as it should seem, 
resulting from the provision which is made in the human, 
in common with all animal constitutions, for the perpetuity 
and multiplication of the species. 
It need not however dishearten any endeavours for the 
public service, to know that population naturally treads up¬ 
on the heels of improvement. If the condition of a people 
be meliorated, the consequence will be, either that the mean 
happiness will be increased, or a greater number partake of 
it; or, which is most likely to happen, that both effects will 
take place together. There may be limits fixed by nature 
to both, but they are limits, not yet attained, nor even ap¬ 
proached, in any country of the world. 
And when we speak of limits at all, we have respect on¬ 
ly to provisions for animal wants. There are sources, and 
means, and auxiliaries, and augmentations of human hap¬ 
piness, communicable without restriction of numbers; as 
capable of being possessed by a thousand persons as by 
one. Such are those which flow from a mild, contrasted 
with a tyrannic government, whether civil or domestic; 
those which spring from religion; those which grow out 
of a sense of security; those which depend upon habits of 
virtue, sobr:;>ty, moderation, order; those, lastly, which 
are found in the possession of well-directed tastes and de¬ 
sires, con pared with the dominion of tormenting, perni¬ 
cious, co tradictory, unsatisfied, and unsatisfiable passions. 
* See statement of this subject, in a late treatise upon population. 
Z 
