PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION.
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CHAP. VII.
A probable cause of epidemics.—Extracts from Mr Suessmilch's tables.—Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain cases.—Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any country an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of population.—Best criterion of a permanent increase of population.—Great frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and Indostan.—Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr. Pitt's Poor Bill.—Only one proper way of encouraging population.—Causes of the Happiness of nations.—Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which nature represses a redundant population.—The three propositions considered as established.
By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among the secondary causes that produce even sickly seasons and epidemics ought to be ranked a crowded population and unwholesome and insufficient food. I have been led to
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