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check is a motive for procrastination, and this can only be looked for in the assured prospect of an advance in circumstances with the advance in age. A curate, who is without hopes of further advancement, settles his mind to his condition, and marries at once upon his curacy. But, if he has reasonable expectation of preferment, he is apt to feed himself with hope, and, raising his ideas of comfort, and of the rank in society which he would wish his wife and family to hold, to the standard of his future prospects, to postpone his marriage until these prospects can be realized. The same principles are calculated equally to operate throughout all ranks of society[1].
- ↑ A point of difference, which has not been expressly noticed in the Lecture, between the labouring and the other classes of society, unfavourable to prudential motives among the former, is the following:
Among labourers, it is an actual family only, and not the mere state of matrimony, which occasions any considerable expense. They have no servants or establishment to maintain. And, as to their own maintenance, now that females are so much employed, the husband and the wife commonly earn it, independently of each other, or nearly so, as in the single state. They have indeed to pay house-rent; but, when single, they not unfrequently have to pay for lodging, even while living with their parents. Thus the expense, which marriage
