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This great mortality, however will everywhere be found chiefly

among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to

tend them with the same care as those of better station. Though

their marriages are generally more fruitful than those of people

of fashion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at

maturity. In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought

up by parish charities, the mortality is still greater than among

those of the common people.

Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to

the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply

beyond it. But in civilized society, it is only among the

inferior ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can

set limits to the further multiplication of the human species;

and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a great part

of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.