Mr. Malthus then, following Hippocrates, points out that in the history of every epidemic, it has almost invariably been observed, that the lower classes of people, whose food was poor and insufficient, and who lived crowded together in small and dirty houses, were the principal victims. “In what other manner can nature point out to us, that if we increase too fast for the means of subsistence, so as to render it necessary for a considerable part of the society to live in this miserable manner, we have offended against one of her laws?” After the desire of food, the most powerful and general of our desires is passion between the sexes, taken in an enlarged sense. Mr. Godwin had said, in one of his works: “Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised.” To this Mr. Malthus replies, that Godwin might as well say to a man who admired trees: “Strip them of their spreading branches and lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole?” “The evening meal, the warm house, and the comfortable fire-side would lose half of their interest if we were to exclude the idea of some object of affection with whom they were to be shared.” Few or none, then, of our human passions would admit of being greatly diminished, without narrowing the sources of good more powerfully than the sources of evil. The fecundity of the human species is, in some respects, a distinct consideration from the passion between the sexes. It is strong and general, and apparently would not admit of any very considerable diminution without being inadequate for its object. “It is of the very utmost importance to the happiness of mankind that they should not increase too fast; but it does not appear that the object to be accomplished would admit of any very considerable diminution in the desire for marriage. It is clearly the duty of each individual not to marry until he has a prospect of supporting his children; but it is at the same time to be wished that he should retain undiminished his desire for marriage, in order that he may exert himself to realise this prospect, and be stimulated to make provision for the support of greater numbers. “Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect being able to support our children will appear to deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to these obligations is of more effect in the prevention of misery than all the other virtues combined; and that if, in violation of this duty, it was the general custom to follow the first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in the greatest conceivable degree would fail of rescuing society from the most wretched and deplorable state of want, and all the diseases and famines which usually accompany it.”