Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/51

45 To suppose, however, that the failure of employment is periodical, or, in other words, that the difficulties of life can be foreseen, would be a concession in favour of the existing state of things far greater than the true nature of the case will warrant. There is in fact a vast degree of uncertainty in the prospects of a labouring man, and the natural consequence is, as I have already intimated, that he must act at random. All the same elements and principles, which are commonly considered essential to the efficacy of punishment, are applicable here. Of these, certainty has always been accounted the chief. In proportion as punishments are uncertain, they will be little regarded, and particularly so when even innocence constitutes no security. In the case of the preventive check, not only is the punishment uncertain, but, what is equally pernicious, there is the like uncertainty as to the character of the offence. Marriage cannot be put even in analogy with crime, except sub modo. It cannot, like crime, be simply and without exception reprobated. And where much depends on chance, there must of course be many cases of actual failure, in which it may be