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36 among labourers, the natural age for marriage coinciding nearly with the time when their income is the greatest, and when, being in the vigour of their health and strength, they are best able to endure privations, and, if necessary, to increase their exertions, no future opportunity would appear more favourable than the present. The wages of labour being by the hypothesis high, about the maintenance of his family the labourer would have nothing to fear. His individual act could produce no sensible effect on the market of labour, and he might therefore justly expect his children to have the same advantages which he had himself possessed.

Dr. Chalmers follows in the track of Mr. Malthus, and assumes, that by the operation of the moral preventive check, we may hope to see wages kept permanently high. And this effect he proposes to produce, through the means "both of common and Christian education ." It is also to be the immediate fruit, "not of any external or