Page:Two Lectures on the Checks to Population.pdf/59

53 they to separate themselves from their father's family without an adequate independency, would be immediately obliged to forego many enjoyments to which they had been accustomed, and to which habit would have given, in their estimation, almost the character of necessaries. This circumstance, though in itself apparently of less importance than a positive inability to maintain a family, would perhaps of the two have the greatest influence on the conduct. Quitting a comfortable home involves consequences obvious and immediate. The difficulty of maintaining a future family is distant and uncertain. But distant futurity, like a distant object, is diminished to our perceptions; and seldom sufficiently awakens our fears, or fixes our attention.

Both the benefits, which I have mentioned, have depended on an increase of the external motives. A third, connected chiefly with the disposition to prudence, is as follows:

The younger members of society receiving from their parents so many more benefits than the children of the lower classes receive at present, and being also actually dependent on them in much