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"for a family;" and, in consequence, the young men and women remain with the farmer as unmarried servants, and forming part of his household, till a houseman's place becomes vacant. Thus the condition of unmarried labourers, and their hope of succession to a houseman's place, is analogous to fellowships and succession to livings in this university. A houseman's place is in the nature of a benefice. This simple constitution seems to secure the efficacy of the preventive check in nearly the full degree which nature requires. On the sea-coast, however, which furnishes hopes of an adequate supply of food from fishing, at source of subsistence possessed in common, prudential restraint is much less prevalent. And there, accordingly, the people are very poor and wretched, and beyond comparison in a worse state than the peasants in the interior of the country[1].
- ↑ Dr. Chalmers considers, that fewer and later marriages will be the slow but sure product of education working on the habits and inclinations of the common people, and begetting a higher cast of character, and a higher standard of enjoyment; whence he tells us, that, as in Norway, we may expect to behold the cheerful spectacle of a thriving, independent, and respectable peasantry (p. 552). Education is beyond all question of great importance. It does not however appear, as a
