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nearly the only portion of a prudential motive, which now remains to the agricultural labourer, is to be found in the difficulty of obtaining a house, and accumulating a little money to buy furniture.
Meanwhile, the progress of medicine, the increased healthiness of the country, through the destruction of the woods, the draining of marshes, the improvements in the police of cities, and their better ventilation, all tending to the prolongation of life generally, and especially to the preservation of infant life, render the necessity for moral restraint more urgent and intense than ever.
Let me, however, not be understood, as reprobating manufactures, or machinery, or the accumulation of farms, but only as noticing some evil, though certainly very serious, consequences, which are mingled with the good, as is commonly the case in all human affairs. I consider even infant schools, notwithstanding their acknowledged excellency in respect of their primary and obvious effects, to be liable to the same objection. The relief they give to mothers, must, infallibly, in the long run, be turned to the increase of labour, and the increase of the competition for food, since it is
