With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation.

I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.

To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

The constant effort towards population, which is found even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.

THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.

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.