Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/25

19 each person will view the future consequences, expected to result from an increase or relaxation of his own exertions, in the same light as he would any other benefit or injury extending indifferently to the whole community.

Again, suppose two persons to have a common purse, to which each may freely resort. The ordinary source of motives for economy is a foresight of the diminution in the means of future enjoyment depending on each act of present expenditure. If a man takes a guinea out of his own purse, the remainder, which he can spend afterwards, is diminished by a guinea. But not so, if he takes it from a fund, to which he and another have an equal right of access. The loss falling upon both, he spends a guinea with as little consideration as he would use in spending half a guinea, were the fund divided. Each determines his expenditure as if the whole of the joint stock were his own. Consequently, in a multitude of partners, where the diminution effected by each separate act of expenditure is insensible, the motive for economy entirely vanishes.

It may here be asked, what has this to do with the preventive check? It merely serves to