Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/134

108 and vice, are removed; and that there is not a truer criterion of the happiness and innocence of a people, than the rapidity of their increase. The unwholesomeness of towns, to which some persons are necessarily driven, from the nature of their trades, must be considered as a species of misery; and every the slightest check to marriage, from a prospect of the difficulty of maintaining a family, may be fairly classed under the same head. In short, it is difficult to conceive any check to population, which does not come under the description of some species of misery or vice.

The population of the thirteen American States before the war, was reckoned at about three millions. Nobody imagines, that Great Britain is less populous at present for the emigration of the small parent stock that produced these numbers. Rh