When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.

The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.

Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.

The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.