Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/365

 inhabitants led lives entirely natural and virtuous, few of them would die without measuring out the whole period of present existence allotted to them; pain and distemper would be unknown among them, and death would come upon them like a sleep, in consequence of no other cause than gradual and unavoidable decay."

I own that I felt myself obliged to draw a very opposite conclusion from the facts advanced in Dr. Price's two volumes. I had for some time been aware, that population and food, increased in different ratios; and a vague opinion had been floating in my mind, that they could only be kept equal by some species of misery or vice; but the perusal of Dr. Price's two volumes of Observations, after that opinion had been conceived, raised it at once to conviction. With so many facts in his view, to prove the