Note 14 — PART I. OF THE GENERAL CAUSES OF DISEASES.

If it were made the interest of the poor to keep their children alive, we should lose very few of them. A small premium given annually to each poor family, for every child they have alive at the year’s end, would save more infant lives than if the whole revenue of the crown were expended on hospitals for this purpose. This would make the poor esteem fertility a blessing; whereas many of them think it the greatest curse that can befal them; and in place of wishing their children to live, so far does poverty get the better of natural affection, that they are often very happy when they die.