In China, where the real as well as nominal price of labour is very low, sons are yet obliged by law to support their aged and helpless parents.

Whether such a law would be advisable in this country I will not pretend to determine.

But it seems at any rate highly improper, by positive institutions, which render dependent poverty so general, to weaken that disgrace, which for the best and most humane reasons ought to attach to it.
The mass of happiness among the common people cannot but be diminished when one of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus removed, and when men are thus allured to marry with little or no prospect of being able to maintain a family in independence.

Every obstacle in the way of marriage must undoubtedly be considered as a species of unhappiness.

But as from the laws of our nature some check to population must exist, it is better that it should be checked from a foresight of the difficulties attending a family and the fear of dependent poverty than that it should be encouraged, only to be repressed afterwards by want and sickness.
It should be remembered always that there is an essential difference between food and those wrought commodities, the raw materials of which are in great plenty.