of land which is in the highest state of cultivation, and which is barely sufficient for their subsistence, can increase the population, and become too numerous for the land which they occupy. But if this be true of any given spot of the earth, it must be true of the whole earth. If, then, the surface of the earth be limited, and incapable of extension, while mankind are capable of increase and multiplication and both facts are as clearly declared in the Scriptures as they are enforced by reason and experience-it is difficult to conceive by what argument Mr Malthus's theory can be impugned. That the whole earth has never been fully peopled, is entirely without bearing on the question. The daughters of Danaus, according to the fable, were doomed to pour water into a tub whose bottom was perforated. The check upon an excess of water was at the very bottom of the scale. If there were no perforations, the boundaries of the vessel would limit the quantity, and the surplus would overflow.

But whether the outlet or check to accumulation were at the bottom, at the top, or in any intermediate degree, the part of prudence and wisdom would be to refrain from accumulating, when the element reached the check. To persist beyond that, is the essence of the curse which mythology has assigned as an infernal punishment. Whether the check upon population be raised as high as possible, or be pressed down extremely low, by preposterous policy, the necessity of conforming to the existing check is exactly the

same.

But the question involved in Mr Scarlett's bill is still more easily determined. It is simply, whether it is not unjust and impolitic to oblige the moral, the industrious, and the prudent, who abstain from marriage till they can provide the means of independent subsistence for their families, to support the families of the dissolute, the imprudent, and the idle, who marry without regard to their own character, and get families without regard to the character or fortunes of their offspring. The provision for the poor is not a part of the public revenue. If it were, it would be supposed that it was given

as an equivalent for the unavoidable severity with which a general system of taxation is pressed upon the lower classes. A provision of this nature would, in fact, be tyrannical in its principle, and pernicious in its operation; it would imply an imposition of taxes without due regard to the obligation and the power of paying them; and it would be a waste of public money, by the double charges of original collection and ulterior distribution among the poor; it would ruin the political independence and the moral character of the lower classes, and it would misapply a large part of the national produce. But the poor laws are not founded on such a principle. They form a branch of the mass of abuses which had their origin in the gross notions of charity entertained in a dark and superstitious age. By those laws, the ebullitions of temporary feelings, passions, and caprices, are crystallized, and removed beyond the operation of the ever-rolling tide of human life. Their principle is, to compel, by force of law, that charity which was thought due, according to religion and humanity, from the affluent to the indigent. By the conversion of optional beauty into imperative taxation, many were obliged to pay what they could not afford, and many received what they ought not to have required, and could not enjoy. In consequence of this preposterous legislation, which withered a limb of the body politic, even at the altar of charity, many young men abstain from marriage, because the burden of parish-rates makes a higher income necessary for a family; and many respectable families are, by the same burden, deprived of comforts, and even necessaries, in domestic economy and the education of their children. On the other hand, many young men waste all the savings of their industry in intemperance, and get hastily and disreputably married, because the poor-laws provide an ultimate resource; many poor families, too, indulge in extravagance and waste beyond their means and their character, because the parish presents an asylum to their view. Ought these things to be so? That is the question involved in Mr Scarlett's bill, and answered in the negative.

Will any sane man say, that a workhouse or a parochial provision ought not to be regarded as a degradation? Is it not laudable and meritorious in a young man to abstain from marriage till he has a reasonable prospect of maintaining a family? But it follows inevitably, that it is palpable impolicy to encourage the degradation, or to weaken the motive to laudable and meritorious abstinence; and that it is monstrous cruelty to punish the meritoriously abstinent with the expense of a bounty to the degraded. What should be said of an act of the legislature, compelling the industrious and sober tradesmen, in a particular district, to pay the tavern-bills which a dissolute, idle club in their neighbourhood chose to accumulate, by nightly drunkenness and riot? If the provision for the poor were paid only by persons wallowing in wealth, and wasting more than double that provision in wild extravagance, the injustice to the payers might be regarded with indifference. But it is not so; and no legislation can ever make it so; therefore the oppression of the prudent, the industrious, and the abstinent, for the support of the thoughtless and the profligate, is a flagrant evil in the present system.

But they who are benefited in this way, who inarry, or who exercise less activity and economy because there is a parochial provision accessible to them, are deeply injured by the present system. A young man who encumbers himself with a family, without a reasonable prospect of support ing it, commits a most cruel and a most criminal act. He exposes him self to unavoidable misery, either from honest anxiety, or from moral degradation, and to every temptation which want of sustenance and want of character so copiously supply. He extinguishes virtue in his unhappy wife, by extinguishing her self-respect. He precludes the formation of virtuous spirit or generous wishes in his offspring, by severing their relation as children from their earliest hopes and fears. It is not possible to imagine an innovation more malignant than a bounty upon such a complication of turpitude and misery. It is unaccountable, that every moral feeling in the community is not

roused in hostility to a system which is fairly chargeable even with diminishing the motives for avoiding a course of conduct so interminably pernicious. But the father of a family who dissipates in gambling or drinking what the support of his family requires, is not less criminal. The insanest enemy of Mr Scarlett's bill condemns this conduct. Surely, then, it is barbarous policy to weaken the force of the motives which religion and nature supply, and which enforce prudence in marrying, and activity, sobriety, and vigilance, in providing for a family, or to suggest excuses if not arguments for domestic improvidence and dissipation.

It is a gross and a pernicious fallacy to suppose, that the unrestricted provision of the present system can operate as a resource for the destitute, without affording encouragement to improvidence. In moral struggles, no means of retreat ought ever to be known to the virtuous combatant. Victory or death ought to be his alternative. The passion to be restrained and regulated is one of the strongest implanted in the human frame, and therefore prudence requires the support of every auxiliary in the conflict. The force and power with which nature has clothed the passion, admirably illustrate the wisdom of the great Author of our being; for by its magical persuasions, vigorous exertions, persevering industry, daring enterprizes, and unconquerable resolution and vigilance in guarding character and property, are prompted and sustained with an energy and effect which nature alone can inspire. Yet the whole of this inimitable arrangement is counteracted by any legislative facility for marriage. The elastic spring of virtue and happiness is destroyed.

Pater ipse colendi

Hand facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artem

Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda:

Nec torpere gravi passus sua regna

veterno.

The whole strength of the passion which prompts to marriage is required to conquer the indolence, the thoughtlessness, and the apathy of the human mind; it is therefore most

impious and most wicked to diminish the effect of the salutary stimulus. To grasp at the reward without having performed the conditions on which it is offered, to desire the prize without having conquered in the race, to covet the enjoyment without enduring the labour, may be natural and common, but it is not right or just, and ought not to be encouraged by legislative provisions. To marry rashly and improvidently may be natural and common; but so is cowardice, so is intemperance, so are many frailties and vices. We have no colleges for cowards, no endow ments for drunkards, no pensions for the wounded in duels, tavern broils, or street riots.

The insidious truism, that the poor have as clear a right to the pleasures of marriage as the rich, may be well adapted for the purposes of inflammation, but is entirely foreign to the argument of this subject. The poor have as clear a right to be attended by servants, to ride on horses, and to dwell in commodious houses, as the rich. Sir Francis Burdett has as clear a right to be chosen to represent the city of Edinburgh, as the Right Honourable William Dundas; and the Right Honourable William Dundas has as clear a right to be chosen to represent Westminster, as Sir Francis Burdett. But right of eligibility is not right of election. The poor have not from God, from nature, or from reason, a right to employ a wife or a servant at the expense of others, rich or poor. They have not a right to beget a family, to be fed from the labour of others.

Another artifice frequently resorted to in this controversy, is, to contrast the lowest and the highest ranks of society, leaving out of view all the intermediate gradations. But the pressure of the poor-rates is felt in exact proportion as the class affected by it approximates to the pauper class, and the largest proportion of the burden is borne by those classes, of whom many are restrained from marriage by self-respect, manly spirit, and resolute prudence; and many are long oppressed, and finally thrown down into the class of paupers, by the operation of the poor-laws. What merciless compensation that must be which increases the rigour of taxa

tion, where it is already severely rigorous, in order to afford degraded and mischievous enjoyments to those who no longer bear any taxation! The true state of the question isOught the laborious and the virtuous to be deprived of the fruits of their industry, in order to enable paupers to marry without honour, and to have families without virtue or enjoyment?

The laws of society may be partial in their operation; labour may be ill regulated; taxation may press with unequal vigour on industry, but the increase of the pauper part of the population is a tremendous aggravation of those evils. It may be very desirable to lift higher the burden of taxation, in order to give freer motion to the inferior limbs, and more healthful play to the lungs of the body politic. But to any political improvement, either in taxation or legislation, there cannot be a greater obstruction than the improvident marriages, and the destitute number of the poor. This consideration affords a test for the patriotism of the clamorous opponents of Mr Scarlett's bill.

The direct and avowed object of the bill is, to make the poor independent, to train them to reliance on their own exertions, and thus to inspire them at once with self-confidence and self-respect. It admits not of question, that their immediate happiness is promoted by such discipline. But their political virtue and utility are incalculably advanced by it. Men, of old, surrendered their liberty for bread, and when they did so, they lost half their virtue. Men were never known to have become slaves, in order to have the power of marrying bond-women, and of begetting slaves. Is marriage, with all the evils of slavery, preferable to abstinence, till marriage can be enjoyed in freedom and independence? In the great arrangements of the state, as in the private intercourse of life, insult, and oppression, and injustice, can be prevented only by manly spirit and proper self-respect.

Oft-times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well managed.

Tyrants, usurpers, and desperate adventurers have always found their fittest instruments in the degraded mass who lived by the bounty of others. A mob of paupers invite, and often require, the strong arm of despotism. It is utterly impossible that persons dependent upon the bounty of others can have just views of political independence, or act with wisdom or spirit in any political struggle. The "village Hampden" is one who, "with dauntless breast, withstands the little tyrant of the fields." He who is content to see the wife of his bosom and the pledges of their love fed by the extorted bounty of others, can never feel his heart throb with the manly pride of independence, or lend his sympathy or aid to any liberal and just efforts for promoting public liberty. Having nothing of his own to love or to defend, he can view property only with the eye of a plunderer, and its holders only with the feelings of envy, hatred, or fear. In him, opposition to the hand that feeds him, is criminal ingratitude. He who would act his part, with independence and with spirit, as member of a free community, must possess something of his own, around which he can entwine all his ideas, associations, and hopes, both respect ing himself and his country. Should his whole property be but the tub of Diogenes, it is that property which interests and entities him to forbid the proud intruder to intercept the rays of the sun from his humble state. When this rallying point of personal pride and political independence is wanting, base subserviency is the least criminal course which he can adopt. He is more alien to the state than a foreigner, and any interference on his part with the possessions or the rights of the society on which he hangs, and by whose bounty he lives, is a wicked and detestable invasion. This is a state of degradation the most deplorable in itself, and the most dangerous to a free community. A society, thus encumbered and deformed, is not inaptly represented by the poetical monster, so full of real danger and terror, which, combined with the "human face divine," and the waist of a virgin, the extremities of dogs and dolphins.

Præstat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni Cessantem, longos et circunflectere cursus Quam semel informem vasto vidisse sub

antro

Scyllam, et cœruleis canibus resonantia

saxa.

What shall we think then of the patriotism, or the wisdom of dermagogues, who would approve themselves the champions of liberty, by guarding this nursery of vice and servitude? What shall we think of the religion of those who invoke the authority of God to sanction this system of human misery and crime? "And holy men give scripture for the deed." On this occasion, the people are in the situation of a weak and passionate despot, who receives from his favourites, not the counsels which justice or expediency would prescribe, but the counsels which their interests suggest, and his pre judices are most likely to receive. The oracles of the multitude on the subjects of population and pauperism, prove themselves to be grossly igno rant, or extremely unprincipled, and therefore highly pernicious counsellors. We rejoice, for our country's sake, that a gentleman of Mr Scarlett's legal knowledge, high character, and argumentative eloquence, has had the intrepidity to introduce into parliament, a bill to withdraw the present baneful encouragement to pauper marriages. We believe there is not one member of the legislature so well qualified to propose and support improvements in the poor laws, which are at once so necessary and so obnoxious as this experienced lawyer and enlightened statesman. We trust his success will be equal to his talents and his merits.

THE POWRIS OF MOSEKE,
Ane rychte plesant Ballaunt,

Maide be Maistere Jamis Hougge.

BLYNDE Robene sat on Bowman Hawe,
And houlit upon his horne;
And aye he bummit, and aye he strummit,

Quhille patience wals foreworne;

And the verye hillis in travail seemit,

Thoche noe yung hillis were borne; For they yellit and youtit soe yirlischly

Als their boullis hald bene torne.