Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/36

14 far from recruiting their regiment, they have never been able to supply it with fifes and drums, from all the soldiers' children that were born in it.

This slow increase of the people may be supposed by some to be not wholly attributable to the difficulties attending the rearing of the children of the poor, and consequent mortality; and that it might be in part owing to these difficulties being foreseen and dreaded, by the more prudent part of the poor; and their being, from that consideration, prevented from marrying. This, no doubt, may happen sometimes; but prudence is not the virtue of the youthful, especially when opposed by a passion the strongest and most difficult to be checked that human nature is subject to. We are not warranted by any direct facts to ascribe much to this cause. When the masters of sheep-flocks are short of keep, from backward springs, poor land, or other causes; when the milk of the ewes is in small quantities, and a great loss of lambs follows; do they impute the slow increase of their flock to the ewes not taking the ram? The other cause of the slow increase of the people is more obvious. We see half of the children born, die before they are two years and a half old; and a very great part of the remainder drop off before they are seven. We have, therefore, no occasion to look for other causes. The Earl of