which must infallibly produce, at times, feelings to be combated and overcome by nothing short of that ardent affection which first brought the parties together.  So that, talk as long as Parson MALTHUS likes about ‘moral restraint;’ and report as long as the Committees of Parliament please about preventing ’premature and improvident marriages’ amongst the labouring classes, the passion that they would restrain, while it is necessary to the existence of mankind, is the greatest of all the compensations for the inevitable cares, troubles, hardships, and sorrows of life; and, as to the marriages, if they could once be rendered universally provident, every generous sentiment would quickly be banished from the world.

85.  The other description of lovers, with whom it is useless to reason, are those who love according to the rules of arithmetic, or who measure their matrimonial expectations by the chain of the land-surveyor.  These are not love and marriage; they are bargain and sale.  Young men will naturally, and almost necessarily, fix their choice on young women in their own rank in life; because from habit and intercourse they will know them best.  But, if the length of the girl’s purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with the man, or the length of his purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with her, it is an affair of bargain and sale.  I know that kings, princes, and princesses are, in respect of marriage, restrained by the law:  I know that nobles, if not thus restrained by positive law, are restrained, in fact, by the very nature of their order.  And here is a disadvantage which, as far as real enjoyment of life is concerned, more than counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of the community.  This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you descend.  You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride, and thereby providing for themselves an ample supply of misery for life.  By preferring ‘provident marriages’ to marriages of love, they think to secure themselves against all the evils of poverty; but, if poverty come, and come it may, and frequently does, in spite of the best laid plans, and best modes of conduct; if poverty come, then where is the counterbalance for that ardent mutual affection, which troubles, and losses, and crosses always increase rather than diminish, and which, amidst all the calamities that can befall a man, whispers to his heart, that his best possession is still left him unimpaired?  The WORCESTERSHIRE BARONET, who has had to endure the sneers of fools on account of his marriage with a beautiful and virtuous servant maid, would, were the present ruinous measures of the Government to drive him from his mansion to a cottage, still have a source of happiness; while many of those, who might fall in company with him, would, in addition to all their other troubles, have, perhaps, to endure the reproaches of wives to whom poverty, or even humble life, would be insupportable.