resent.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of
seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100. In France and England,
taking the highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100. Great and
astonishing as this difference is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck
at it as to attribute it to the miraculous interposition of heaven. The
causes of it are not remote, latent and mysterious; but near us, round
about us, and open to the investigation of every inquiring mind. It
accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not
a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of
divine power. But we know from experience that these operations of what
we call nature have been conducted almost invariably according to fixed
laws. And since the world began, the causes of population and
depopulation have probably been as constant as any of the laws of
nature with which we are acquainted.

The passion between the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly
the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a
given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population
from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either
produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and
evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed by the
experience of every age, that we cannot for a moment doubt it. The
different modes which nature takes to prevent or repress a redundant
population do not appear, indeed, to us so certain and regular, but
though we cannot always predict the mode we may with certainty predict
the fact. If the proportion of births to deaths for a few years
indicate an increase of numbers much beyond the proportional increased
or acquired produce of the country, we may be perfectly certain that
unless an emigration takes place, the deaths will shortly exceed the
births; and that the increase that had taken place for a few years
cannot be the real average increase of the population of the country.
Were there no other depopulating causes, every country would, without
doubt, be subject to periodical pestilences or famine.

The only true criterion of a real and permanent increase in the
population of any country is the increase of the means of subsistence.
But even, this criterion is subject to some slight variations which
are, however, completely open to our view and observations. In some
countries population appears