ands and of
Ireland are more than enough to show, that this last is not a
motive on which the legislator can place reliance, as influencing
the conduct of young persons in extreme poverty. No legislation
can take from them the resource of mendicity, of one kind or
another, as a safeguard, in ordinary circumstances, against death
by famine; and _experience shows_ that those who are brought up in
habits of mendicity, or of continued association with mendicants,
will trust to this resource, and marry and rear families, where no
other prospect of their maintenance can be perceived; whereas
those who have been brought up in habits of comparative comfort,
and accustomed to artificial wants, will look to bettering their
condition, and be influenced by the preventive check of moral
restraint, to a degree, as Mr Farr--judging from the general
results of the registration of marriages in England--expresses it,
which 'will hardly be credited when stated in figures.'

"I have repeatedly stated likewise, that I consider an efficient
poor law, extending to all forms of destitution, as affording a
salutary preventive check on early marriages and excessive
population in another way, which is easily illustrated by
statistical facts, viz. by making it obviously the interest of
landed proprietors always to throw obstacles in the way of such
marriages among persons who are likely to become burdensome on the
poor rates, _i. e._ among all who have no clear prospect of
profitable employment. The number of crofters, and still more of
cotters, living _en parasite_ on the occupiers of the soil in the
Highlands, is the theme of continual lamentation; but the question
seldom occurs to those who make this complaint,--would such a
population be allowed to settle on the lands of an English
proprietor, who is familiar with the operation of the poor-rate?"

The following remarks also are well deserving of attention:--

"But, setting aside the argument of Malthus against effective Poor
Laws, the chief resource of the opponents of such laws has of late
years been the assertion, that a legal provision against
destitution leads naturally to relaxation of industry; that
idleness, if not improvidence, is thus fostered among the poor,
and that in this manner, the improvement of a country, necessarily
dependent on th