Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/46

40 The effects deduced from the abstract hypothesis, which I considered in the last Lecture, of children being able to labour from the moment of birth, correspond much more nearly with the existing condition of the labouring classes, than, on a comparison of the data of that hypothesis with their actual powers, a first view would lead us to expect. The natural helplessness of the first years of infancy is a weight in favour of prudential motives, which operates in a certain degree to oppose the consequences resulting from the theory. But then again, on the other hand, there are countervailing circumstances, in the actual condition of