23.16. 16. The Concern of the Legislator in the Propagation of the Species.
Regulations on the number of citizens depend greatly on circumstances.
There are countries in which nature does all; the legislator then has
nothing to do. What need is there of inducing men by laws to propagation
when a fruitful climate yields a sufficient number of inhabitants?
Sometimes the climate is more favourable than the soil; the people
multiply, and are destroyed by famine: this is the case of China. Hence
a father sells his daughters and exposes his children. In Tonquin,
[19]
the same causes produce the same effects; so we need not, like the
Arabian travellers mentioned by Renaudot, search for the origin of this
in their sentiments on the metempsychosis.
[20]
For the same reason, the religion of the Isle of Formosa does not
suffer the women to bring their children into the world till they are
thirty-five years of age:
[21]
the priestess, before this age, by
bruising the belly procures abortion.
Footnotes
[19]
Dampier, "Voyages," vol. ii, p. 41.
[21]
See the Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the
Establishment of the East India Company, vol. i, part I, pp. 182, 188.
