Thomas Malthus：An Essay on the Principle of Population, Excerpt 73

These facts seem to shew that population increases exactly in the proportion that the two great checks to it, misery and vice, are removed, and that there is not a truer criterion of the happiness and innocence of a people than the rapidity of their increase. The unwholesomeness of towns, to which some persons are necessarily driven from the nature of their trades, must be considered as a species of misery, and every the slightest check to marriage, from a prospect of the difficulty of maintaining a family, may be fairly classed under the same head. In short it is difficult to conceive any check to population which does not come under the description of some species of misery or vice.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4239
Locator：Excerpt 73 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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