Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/19

 .—The powerful tendency of the poor laws to defeat their own purpose.—Palliative of the distresses of the poor proposed.—The absolute impossibility from the fixed laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from the lower classes of society.—All the checks to population may be resolved into misery or vice.p..

A probable cause of epidemics.—Extracts from Mr. Susmilch'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