Religion never has encouraged early marriages; and the kind of PRUDENCE which it condemns is that described in this Latin sentence from Sanchez,--_An licet ob metum liberorum semen extra vas ejicere_?
Destutt de Tracy seems to dislike prudence in either form.

He says: "I confess that I no more share the desire of the moralists to diminish and restrain our pleasures, than that of the politicians to increase our procreative powers, and accelerate reproduction." He believes, then, that we should love and marry when and as we please.

Widespread misery results from love and marriage, but this our philosopher does not heed.
True to the dogma of the necessity of evil, to evil he looks for the solution of all problems.

He adds: "The multiplication of men continuing in all classes of society, the surplus members of the upper classes are supported by the lower classes, and those of the latter are destroyed by poverty." This philosophy has few avowed partisans; but it has over every other the indisputable advantage of demonstration in practice.

Not long since France heard it advocated in the Chamber of Deputies, in the course of the discussion on the electoral reform,--POVERTY WILL ALWAYS EXIST.