Our author continues: “Powerful as may be the temptations to a breach of chastity, I am inclined to think that they are impotent, in comparison with the temptations arising from continued distress. A large class of women and many men, I have no doubt, pass a considerable part of their lives in chastity; but I believe there will be found very few who pass through the ordeal of squalid and hopeless poverty, or even of long-continued embarrassed circumstances without a considerable degradation of character.... Add to this that squalid poverty, particularly when joined with idleness, is a state the most unfavorable to character that can well be conceived. The passion is as strong, or nearly so, as in other situations, and every restraint on it from personal respect or a sense of morality is generally removed. There is a degree of squalid poverty in which, if a girl was brought up, I should say that her being really modest at twenty was an absolute miracle. Those persons must have extraordinary minds indeed, and such as are not usually found under similar circumstances, who can continue to respect themselves when no other person whatever respects them. If the children thus brought up were even to marry at twenty, it is probable that they would have passed some years in vicious habits before that period.” Had Mr. Malthus been alive at this moment, and travelled as he did in his lifetime through the rural districts of France, he would have been the first to admit that the French have given the only solution of the problem he states so clearly, that has ever been given by any nation. “If (says our author) statesmen will not encourage late marriages, but rather the opposite, then to act consistently they should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in causing a great infantile mortality. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, they should cultivate contrary habits. If by these and similar means, the annual mortality were increased from 1 in 36 or 40, to 1 in 18 or 20, we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty, and yet few be absolutely starved. If, however, we all marry at this age, and yet still continue our exertions to impede the operations of nature, we may rest assured that all our efforts will be vain. Nature will not, and cannot be defeated in her purposes. The necessary mortality must come, in some form or other: and the extirpation of one disease will only be the signal for the birth of another perhaps more fatal. We cannot lower the waters of rivers by pressing them down in different places, which must necessarily make them rise somewhere else; the only way in which we can hope to effect our purpose is by drawing them off.”