Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/369

 they were in subjection to England; but we may be perfectly sure, that population will not long continue to increase with the same rapidity as it did then.

A person who contemplated the happy state of the lower classes of people in America twenty years ago, would naturally wish to retain them for ever in that state; and might think, perhaps, that by preventing the introduction of manufactures and luxury, he might effect his purpose: but he might as reasonably expect to prevent a wife or mistress from growing old by never exposing her to the sun or air. The situation of new colonies, well governed, is a bloom of youth that no efforts can arrest. There are, indeed, many modes of treatment in the political, as well as animal body, that contribute to accelerate or retard the approaches of age: