Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/67

Rh It remains to inquire, whether this power can be checked, and its effects kept equal to the means of subsistence, without vice, or misery.

The North American Indians, considered as a people, cannot justly be called free and equal. In all the accounts we have of them, and, indeed, of most other savage nations, the women are represented as much more completely in a state of slavery to the men, than the poor are to the rich in civilized countries. One half the nation appears to act as Helots to the other half: and the misery that checks population falls chiefly, as it always must do, upon that part whose condition is lowest in the scale of society. The infancy of man in the simplest state requires considerable attention; but this necessary attention the women cannot give, condemned Rh