The second was a stronger reason;—in the language of Kant, the claim allowed (with little qualification[706]) by the English Poor Laws was a claim that could not be made universal without contradiction. If every one exercised the supposed right of demanding relief, no community could fulfil the supposed duty of granting it.[707] If it could have been fulfilled, Malthus thinks, the obligation would have held; and, instead of declaring “I cannot, therefore I ought not,” he would have confessed, “I can, therefore I ought.”[708] As the case stands, he agrees with Sir Frederick Eden in thinking the giving of legal relief impracticable, and therefore no duty, and also that, “upon the whole, the sum of good to be expected from a compulsory maintenance of the poor will be far outbalanced by the sum of evil which it will inevitably create.”[709] It relieved individual suffering at the cost of making the suffering general. It created the poor which it maintained, for it led men to marry with the certainty of parish assistance. It thereby increased the population without increasing the food of the country, and it has to a large extent broken down the ancient spirit of independence. “Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.”[710] High wages and independence and moral restraint are better than low wages with a parish supplement and a pauper family. “I feel persuaded that if the Poor Laws had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few more instances of very severe distress, the aggregate mass of happiness among the common people would have been much greater than it is at present.”[711] This was his belief to the end.[712]