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PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION
71
CHAP. V.
The second, or positive check to population examined, in England.—The true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does not better their condition.—The powerful tendency of the poor laws to defeat their own purpose.—Palliative of the distresses of the poor proposed.—The absolute impossibility, from the fixed laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from the lower classes of society.—All the checks to population may be resolved into misery or vice.
The positive check to population, by which I mean, the check that represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly, though not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society. This check is not so obvious to common view as the other I have mentioned; and, to prove distinctly the force and extent of its operation, would require, perhaps, more data than we are in possession of. But I believe it has been
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