, urging him to the further
cultivation of the earth, and to enable it, consequently, to support a
more extended population. But it is impossible that this law can
operate, and produce the effects apparently intended by the Supreme
Being, without occasioning partial evil. Unless the principle of
population were to be altered according to the circumstances of each
separate country (which would not only be contrary to our universal
experience, with regard to the laws of nature, but would contradict
even our own reason, which sees the absolute necessity of general laws
for the formation of intellect), it is evident that the same principle
which, seconded by industry, will people a fertile region in a few
years must produce distress in countries that have been long inhabited.

It seems, however, every way probable that even the acknowledged
difficulties occasioned by the law of population tend rather to promote
than impede the general purpose of Providence. They excite universal
exertion and contribute to that infinite variety of situations, and
consequently of impressions, which seems upon the whole favourable to
the growth of mind. It is probable, that too great or too little
excitement, extreme poverty, or too great riches may be alike
unfavourable in this respect. The middle regions of society seem to be
best suited to intellectual improvement, but it is contrary to the
analogy of all nature to expect that the whole of society can be a
middle region. The temperate zones of the earth seem to be the most
favourable to the mental and corporal energies of man, but all cannot
be temperate zones. A world, warmed and enlightened but by one sun,
must from the laws of matter have some parts chilled by perpetual
frosts and others scorched by perpetual heats. Every piece of matter
lying on a surface must have an upper and an under side, all the
particles cannot be in the middle. The most valuable parts of an oak,
to a timber merchant, are not either the roots or the branches, but
these are absolutely necessary to the existence of the middle part, or
stem, which is the object in request. The timber merchant could not
possibly expect to make an oak grow without roots or branches, but if
he could find out a mode of cultivation which would cause more of the
substance to go to stem, and less to root and branch, he would be right
to exert himself in bringing such a system into general use.

In the same manner, though we cannot possibly