The Principles of Population, and Their Connection with Human Happiness (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ...by fiscal difficulties; which difficulties may perhaps be pretended for political purposes, and are, in fact, often brought on with the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England think that they have constitutional motives, as well as religious, against any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of the state. They tremble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they tremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it were made to depend on any other than the crown. They, therefore, made their church like their king and their nobility, independent. From the united consideration of religion and constitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty, to make a sure provision for the consolation of the feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they have incorporated and identified the estate of the church with the mass of private-property, of which the state is not proprietor, either for use or dominion, but the guardian ouly and the regulator. They have ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions. And as the mass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, they will know that that disrespect which attends on all lay poverty will not depart from the ecclesiastical. Our provident constitution has, therefore, taken care, that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, or be the censors of insolent vice, should neither incur their contempt nor live by their alms; nor will it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their souls. For these reasons, ..