Continuing this line of inquiry, we observe that the most powerful and the only desirable check on population, by which it is habitually restrained from passing the limits which the demand for labour may be regarded as imposing, is that to which political economists give the name of _moral restraint_, by which we know that men and women, in all ranks of society, may frequently, and, to a certain degree, uniformly limit the reproduction of the species greatly within the bounds of its possible increase, rather than allow their progeny to incur any imminent risk of descent in the scale of society, and of abject destitution. If we next inquire what are the circumstances in which this beneficial limitation on our population operates most efficiently, and what are those which counteract its influence, we shall find distinctly and unequivocably--whether we limit our observations to individuals, where we can assure ourselves of the most influential motives of conduct, or extend our views to large communities, and so avoid the fallacies attending partial collections of facts--that the only security for the existence of moral restraint is the habit of comfort, and the feeling of artificial wants which that habit gradually imposes on the human mind; and that those who are brought up in a state of destitution, who are themselves strangers to that habit and feeling in early life, hardly ever look forward to the means of securing the supply of these wants for their children, and yield to the instincts of nature, as to the propagation of their species, almost as blindly and recklessly as animals do. If this be so, it is obvious that the first subject for consideration, as to the social state of any country, and the only means by which we can hope to avert the evils, which the known tendency of human nature to multiply more rapidly than the means of its subsistence would otherwise involve, is to extend and secure the habit of comfort among the poorer classes of society, and preserve them from sinking into those habits of alternate physical suffering and reckless indulgence, which abject destitution implies. And we have the more confidence in this conclusion, as it is in strict accordance with the distinct, authoritative, and frequently repeated injunction of Scripture, as to the duty of those who have the means, to supply the wants of the poor. This being so, the question as to the means of preventing or correcting the evils of redundant population in any country, resolves itself simply into the question, how the lower ranks of society there may be best and most permanently preserved in habits of comfort? And this question, likewise, is held to be sufficiently decided by experience.