NOTES.
41
other European writers, contemporary with Franklin, alarmed at the ratio of the increase of population over that of the means of subsistence, advocate late marriages as the safest method of keeping down this increase. So, we see, if necessity is the mother of invention she is also the mother of political economy. If Franklin were living now, he would probably think of something he then forgot, namely, that if a man marries very "early," he had better have a small fortune, or some well-paying trade, occupation, or profession to start with. It's a hard question to settle; but my own opinion as to age is that some men had better marry early, others later on, and some again—never; and this is just what they have been doing, time out of mind, and will continue to do until time is no more, the advice of poets and philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding. Only, it's sometimes the wrong men who marry, and the right men who don't.
