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multiplication of the population, (by too early, rash, and im-prudent marriages), whence ensues that over abundance of la.bourers, and consequent competition for employment, whichbeats down the real recompense of labour to that very straitenedand wretched subsistence, even in ordinary seasons of plenty,from which no abatement can possibly be made, without abso-lute want, and from which no descent remains to any inferiorsubstitute, upon the occurrence of the least deficiency. It issuperfluous to quote Malthus upon a subject which he has beenthe first to place in a clear light. A population, thus restrain-ed, might be numerically fewer, but it would be of more worth;the average duration of life would be higher: and as the popu-lation would be supported by the permanence of individuals,more than by their rapid succession,—by diminution of deaths,rather than by augmentation of births,—at any given time therewould be a much greater proportion of the population in a stateof full maturity and vigour. The advantages of such a state ofthings, in point of individual happiness, and of national strength,—in the absence of crimes arising from desperate circumsances,and of the dangerous revolutionary spirit, founded in the hopeof bettering those circumstances which could not be renderedworse by any change,—in the prevalence of knowledge, and ofan enlightened spirit of liberty ; these advantages are fully illus-trated by this enlightened author, in the Fourth Book of hisEssay on the Principles of Population.
It may be worth observing, that these measures, intended toprocure for agricultural produce the encouragement of an artifi-cially extended market, and enhanced price, could in no shapeaffect the interest of farmers, excepting merely such whose leaseswere current at the time of their first institution. For it is per-fectly obvious, that rent is given for land, upon consideration ofprices ; but that prices can in no shape be regulated accordingto rent. The profit would, therefore, like that of every improve-ment in agriculture, rest ultimately with the landed proprietor.
The obstructions to the free manufacture of corn from thir-lage or adstriction to mills, is considered in Appendix 5.
II,
Op Facilities to Interchange, by Fairs, Markets, Regu-lation op Weights and Measures, &c.
Public Fairs and Markets would not seem entitled to a sepa-rate discussion, after what has been already observed in regardto wholesale and retail merchants, were it not that a very undueimportance has been sometimes ascribed to their institution andregulation. Misled, seemingly, by the mere similarity of names,some would seem to conceive, that to proclaim a market or Jair }