According to the latest account, this group of islands contains 22,379 inhabitants, among whom are about twenty considerable proprietors, and a great many small ones. The whole land-rent amounts to about £5000 per annum, which is a small sum when compared with the profits the proprietors make by the fisheries, in which they are all concerned. This business is carried on by the tenants: an affair which tends much to affect the state of the common people at large. The landlords, as before mentioned, make their lands subservient to this trade, by setting them in small portions to fishermen; and, in order the more to propagate the human species for the purpose of fishing, the young men get premiums of small subdivisions of land, (though without lease,) on their taking wives. The poor, who thus swallow the matrimonial bait, getting more numerous families than they can maintain, and having no way of supporting themselves but by the fish which they take; (and which they are obliged to sell to their landlords at a fixed price,) are often necessitated, either to go on board such merchant vessels as call in here, or to enter voluntarily into his Majesty’s navy. In many places, three or four families are found on a farm which, thirty or forty years ago, was possessed only by one. Unmarried men have another inducement to enter into matrimony; for when government requires a number of men for the Navy, the proprietors take good care to send off those who are unmarried. By these factitious regulations, the population has become superabundant, insomuch that the produce of the islands does not support their inhabitants more than seven or eight months in the year. Before the proprietors of land became so deeply engaged in the fishing business, juvenile or premature marriages were, in these islands, looked on as next to a crime, because thereby the population might increase to such a degree as to become ruinous and oppressive to the whole community. For this reason, a regulation was made against marriage, unless when the parties could produce evidence that they possessed L.40 Scots, or L.3, 6s. 8d. Sterling. This salutary law is now never enforced, to the great prejudice of the whole inhabitants. It is curious to observe how the principles of Mr. Malthus accommodate themselves to, and receive illustration from, the smallest societies.