Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/70

44 was in greater plenty; and that, putting vice out of the question among savages, misery is the check that represses the superior power of population, and keeps its effects equal to the means of subsistence. Actual observation and experience, tell us that this check, with a few local and temporary exceptions, is constantly acting now upon all savage nations; and the theory indicates that it probably acted with nearly equal strength a thousand years ago, and it may not be much greater a thousand years hence.

Of the manners and habits that prevail among nations of shepherds, the next state of mankind, we are even more ignorant than of the savage state. But that these nations could not escape the general lot of misery arising from the want of subsistence, Europe, and