urgent distress, as they will doubtless occur in all societies, so they are the best provided for where the population is the fullest. The preservation of those lives, which in former days would have been deemed utterly worthless, and which there is an effort among our political economists still to represent as such, is, in all the Christian communities of the earth, attended to, by innumerable foundations of charity; and in our own and many others by a national establishment of mercy, which renders it as unlawful to let a fellowcreature perish from hunger, or from a want of the other necessaries of life, as it is to murder him; a view of the subject which was universally taken by the primitive church. Death through abject poverty, or, as it may be called, individual famine, can, therefore, no longer be deemed one of the checks to population here, nor, I would fain hope, in any Christian nation, though in barbarous times and ages it was indeed a most powerful one. The reader, however, will be spared the sickening proofs of its prevalence at those periods ; while we pass on to the consideration of the last of the " positive checks," as they are termed.

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(22) Lastly, then, do epidemics or pestilence become more frequent, and more fatal," as the population multiplies? Again we answer;-directly the

reverse. :

(23) It may be safely asserted, that most of the pestilences and famines which have afflicted mankind, and have greatly lessened the number of human beings, have been produced by wars. As the latter, therefore, have diminished in their frequency, shortened in their duration, and, above all, have been greatly mitigated in their ferocity, hardly affecting, as has been already observed, the mass of mankind; it is certain, that, with this happy change, famines and

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pestilence, so far as they are caused by that great pest of the human race, must have been similarly abated, if not entirely removed. But if those famines, which have afflicted the earth, have been generally attributable to that master check, which, according to the theory I am opposing, is calculated to produce plenty, some of the epidemics, which have also had their share in thinning the human race, have had, I admit, a different origin. But I contend, that even epidemics are neither so frequent nor so fatal, where the population has progressively advanced.

(24) The page of history again verifies this highly interesting fact. Epidemics, both in their frequency and fatality, have diminished greatly, as the earth has become better peopled. The annals of every country in Europe bear testimony to the truth of this statement. When the inhabitants were, compared with their present number, inconsiderable, then was it that these fatal pests, in different forms, and under different denominations, were matter of _lamentably common occurrence, as will be exemplified in a sketch of the history of our own country, in reference to the present subject: as the people have multiplied, these pests have, in a great measure, disappeared. This check, therefore, has lost ground, instead of being more fatally forward in regulating the population, as it multiplied; and it has now happily disappeared in its more fatal forms, almost altogether.

(25) How it should have been imagined, that this check could "increase in frequency and fatality," as the population advance, is strange; for it is to such advance, that that universal and superior culture of the earth is unquestionably owing, which has not only beautified its surface, but has meliorated its very climates, dispensing not only plenty, in far greater shares, amongst the inhabitants at large, but increasing the measure of its enjoyment, by the universal improvement of health and longevity.

(26) But it is surely unnecessary to prove, that those plagues and other strange and fatal epidemics, which dreadfully prevailed in Europe, in past periods, have abated or disappeared, as its inhabitants have increased. I shall only particularize one of these, long the most fatal pest, probably, that ever visited the civilized world, as conclusive on this subject, the small-pox. This, it has been calculated, carried off a considerable portion of the human race, and principally in their early infancy. If there were a real redundancy in the fecundity of mankind, it was unquestionably the best means that nature could have devised of correcting the error. It was a general infanticide without guilt, and it almost always took place at a period of life, in which it inflicted the least suffering and sorrow. In its consequences, (still supposing the truth of the theory opposed,) it rendered what are called the positive checks in a great measure unnecessary; or mitigated, at all events, their terrible inflictions; and forced upon mankind smaller doses of that "moral restraint," as it is called, still worse than suffering, whose nature and effects remain to be considered. I am sure I shall take the sense, and even the feeling of my readers with me, when I assert, that if the notion of this superfluity of human beings is true, a principle, which, as it develops itself, is to be checked by all the horrible expedients already noticed, or by the still more disgusting ones yet to be considered, then the discovery of vaccination is, to speak plainly but most truly, one of the greatest curses that ever befell the human race. Rather than

that " vicious habits regarding the sex should become more common;" "that wars," or (in this view of warfare) murders " should be more frequent and more fatal;" epidemics more constant and mortal;" it were better that Nature herself should have continued to demand the sacrifice which was to rectify her own errors, in her accustomed mode, and when life had the least unconsciousness, and was invested, as it respected others, with the least importance. I repeat, that if these " drains" of population, as they are called, are to be taken from another portion of the community; namely, adults, generally speaking, instead of infants, then, reasoning as a Christian, feeling as a man and as a patriot, I cannot hesitate. In the sacrifice still to be demanded, according to the principle I am opposing, guilt will often have to be substituted for spotless innocence; the anguish of reluctant death, for an unconscious exit; the stay of the domestic scene, in whom the deepest interest, as well as the strongest affections are united, for an infant of a span, which has but just awakened the affections, while the consequences of the change would, on the same system, be degradation and guilt, so general, as probably to contaminate the whole community. Vaccination, according to the modern theory of population, is a positive and inevitable

curse.

(27) The author to whom I have so frequently alluded, has expressed himself very intelligibly on the subject of both the small-pox and vaccination. In regard to the first, noticing Dr. Haygarth's opinions and calculations respecting the very pernicious effects which that fatal malady has had upon population, in conformity with his theory, which always breeds up to subsistence, he says, "were its devastations many

"thousand degrees greater than the plague, I should " still doubt whether the average population of the "earth had been diminished by them a single unit. "The small-pox is certainly one of the channels, and " a very broad one, which Nature has opened for the "last thousand years to keep down population to the "level of the means of subsistence; but had that been " closed, others would have become wider, or new ones " would have been formed 1." After shewing that the small-pox took the place of the more fatal wars and plagues of antiquity, which observation he thinks ought to awaken our attention and animate us to patient and persevering investigation, he adds, "For my own

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part, I feel not the slightest doubt, that, if the in"troduction of the cow-pox should extirpate the smallpox, and yet the number of marriages continue the same, we shall find a very perceptible difference in "the increased mortality of some other diseases. No"thing could prevent this effect but a sudden start " in our agriculture," which will not be owing to "the number of children saved from death by the cow-pox, but to the alarms amongst the people of property by the late scarcities, and to the increased gains of the farmers, which have been so absurdly "reprobated. I am strongly, however, inclined to " believe, that the number of marriages will not, in " this case, remain the same2;" but, as he goes on to make it out, moral restraint is to make the extinction of a mortal disorder "a real blessing to us." Intimating, consequently, that should this not take effect, it will be no "real blessing."

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(28) I have quoted this author so much at length, to give, on the subject more especially under our notice, a specimen of that boldness of assertion and