TIRE T. 
351 
a field, which affords ample scope for ingenious and fanciful specu¬ 
lation; but under such circumstances, all the efforts of the speculatist, 
frequently tend only to raise new doubts, and involve the subject of 
inquiry in still more mysterious obscurity. Whether or not, at some 
remote period of time, when population was in its infancy, from the 
operation of some unknown cause, there existed so great a proportion 
of males to females in this nation, as rendered the single possession of 
one woman, a blessing too great for any individual to aspire to, and, 
in consequence, this compromise may have been adopted by general 
consent; or whether a too numerous population may have overbur 
dened a meagre soil; I will leave to the determination of others, more 
able to decide on such a question. It is sufficient for me to mark 
manners as I find them. 
But it certainly appears, that superabundant population, in an un¬ 
fertile country, must be the greatest of all calamities, and produce eter¬ 
nal warfare, or eternal want. Either the most active, and the most able 
part of the community, must be compelled to emigrate, and to become 
soldiers of fortune, or merchants of chance; or else, if they remain at 
home, be liable to fall a prey to famine, in consequence of some acci¬ 
dental failure in their scanty crops. By thus linking whole families 
together in the matrimonial yoke, the too rapid increase of population 
was perhaps checked, and an alarm prevented, capable of pervading 
the most fertile region upon earth, and of giving birth to the most 
inhuman and unnatural practice, in the richest, the most productive, 
and the most populous country in the world. I allude to the empire of 
China; where a mother, not foreseeing the means of raising, or pro* 
