POPULAR'ITY, the state of possess. lag the affections and confidence of the people in general. "The man whose ruling principle is duty, is never per plexed with anxious corroding calcula tions of interest and popularity." POPULA"FlON , the aggregate num ber of people in any country. Owing, to the increase of births above that of the deaths, the population is continually in creasing in most parts of the habitable world. "Countries," says Adam Smith, its his Wealth of Nations, "are populous, not in proportion to the number of peo ple whom their produce can clothe and lodge, but in proportion to that of those whom it can feed." The law of population, or of the increase of the human species, has not, till a comparatively recent pe riod, attracted that attention to which it is eminently entitled. It was formerly taken for granted that every increase of population was an advantage, and it was usual for legislators to encourage early marriages, and to bestow rewards on those who brought up the greatest number of children. But recent researches have
shown that every increase in the numbers of a people, occasioned by artificial expe dients. and which is not either accompa nied or preceded by a corresponding in crease of the means of subsistence, can be productive only of misery or of increased mortality; that the difficulty never is to bring human beings into the world, but to feed, clothe, and educate them when there ; that mankind do everywhere in crease their numbers, till their farther multiplication is ,restrained by the diffi culty of providing subsistence, and the poverty of some part of the society; and that, consequently, instead of attempting to strengthen the principle of increase, we should rather endeavor to strengthen the principles by which it is controlled and regulated.