A principle which contradicts the laws of nature is obviously false; and the right to subsistence--if claimed not for all who do, but for all who may, exist in a given country--yet more clearly the _droit au travail_ of which this is the practical meaning--involves the demand, that agricultural production shall keep pace with population. But, save for checks all ultimately reducible to the fear of want, checks which it is the essential object of a Poor Law to relax, population would rapidly, in any old country, overtake subsistence. That, were the population of England or France to multiply at an American rate, it would soon lack standing room, is mathematically demonstrable. A poor law then must be attended by checks on population as effective as those of Nature herself; and from their artificial character necessarily more offensive, revolting, and difficult to enforce. None the less, Englishmen familiar as Senior with the ruinous operation of the old Poor Law, Frenchmen confronted like Tocqueville by the terrible theory of the _droit au travail_, the alarming experience of the _ateliers nationaux_, were inclined to regard that admission of the right to subsistence--limited to those actually born--which is the fundamental principle of the present Poor Law, as a most valuable, if not an indispensable, guarantee of social security; a signal instance of that practical English wisdom, which refuses to push admitted principles, sound or false, to consequences undeniably logical, but practically dangerous.