at Saint Petersburg told me that a Russian girl, living in his family, under a mistress who was considered as very strict, had sent six children to the Foundling hospital, without the loss of her place. And with regard to the moral feelings of a nation, it is very difficult to conceive that they must not be very sensibly impaired by encouraging mothers to desert their offspring, and endeavouring to teach them that their love for their new-born infants is a prejudice, which it is the interest of their country to eradicate."

Malthus mentions that the population of Russia, in 1796, was 36,000,000. At present it is computed at eighty-five and a half millions, only seven millions of which is found in Asia, and the rest in Europe.

A Government that had a true sense of what was advantageous for its subjects would, instead of offering encouragements to population, and incentives to thoughtlessness on the part of parents, such as foundling hospitals and other charities, encourage, by all means in its power, the feeling of parental responsibility among all classes. To do this, the most direct way would be, to show by some slight fine on the production of large families, that there is no possibility of attaining comfort and a low death-rate without conjugal prudence.

In Chapter ix. of Book ii., Malthus treats on the Checks to Population in the Middle parts of Europe at the beginning of this century. He makes the observation that there are few countries where the poorer classes have so much foresight as to defer marriage till they have a fair prospect of being able to support properly all their children and in all countries, he adds, a great mortality, whether arising from the too great frequency of marriage, or occasioned by the number of towns and the natural unhealthiness of the situation, will necessarily produce a great frequency of marriage.

In Holland, in the registers of twenty-two villages, Sussmilch noted one marriage to every 64 persons living, the usual rate being about 1 in 120. Malthus says he was for some time puzzled at this high annual marriage rate, until he found that the mortality in these villages was actually 45 per 1,000 of the population. The extraordinary number of marriages was merely produced by the rapid dissolution of the old marriages by death, and the consequent vacancy of some employment by which a family might be supported. In Norway the mortality in his day was only 22 per 1,000, and the annual marriage rate 1 in 130. This is a notable contrast with the figures relating to Holland just quoted.

Of late years the birth and death-rate in Holland have been much more satisfactory than they were in the days of Malthus: but the extreme poverty of the working classes in South, as compared with North-Holland, has been recently shown by Mr. S. Van Houten to result in a far higher birth-rate and death-rate in the districts adjoining Rotterdam, than occurs among the more prudent and well-fed inhabitants of Groningen. Still, there have been years quite recently in Holland, when the death-rate has been as high as 29 per 1,000 (1871) and even as lately as 1875 it was 25 per 1,000.

The standard of comfort has greatly changed in several cities in Germany. Thus, in Leipsig, Malthus mentions that,. in 1620, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 82: whilst it fell in 1756 to 1 in 120. He observes that, in countries which have long been fully peopled, and in which no new sources of subsistence are opening, the marriages being regulated princi-pally by the deaths, will generally bear nearly the same proportion to the whole population, at one period as another. In Berlin, at the commencement of this century, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 110, whilst it was 1 in 137 at Paris. Berlin, then as now, was probably a very unhealthy city. The death-rate of infants there at present is said to amount to one-half of all born in the first year of life in some years.

Direct encouragements to marriage are, says Malthus, either perfectly futile, or produce a marriage when there is no place for one, thus increasing the mortality. Montesquieu, Sussmilch, and other authors thought that princes and statesmen would really merit the name of fathers of their people, if from the proportion of 1 in 120-125, they could increase the marriages to the proportion of 1 in 80 or 90. But, says Malthus, as this would greatly raise the death-rate and the poverty in the State, such princes would more justly deserve the title of destroyers of the people. Had Mr. Malthus lived in our day, he would have been aware that a high marriage-rate is not by any means necessarily followed by a high birth-rate, since, in modern France, where there are the greatest number of married women in proportion to population, over the age of 15, of any European state, the birth rate is lower than in any other European state. But, in Malthus' day, human beings were still dominated greatly by instinct, and had not begun to allow reason to prevail in the most important of all human acts, that which leads to the addition of new members to Society.

Mr. Malthus mentions that it had been calculated in his time

that, when the proportion of the people in towns in any State was to those in the country as 1 to 3, then the mortality wasabout 28 per 1,000, rising to 32 in 1,000, when the proportion of townsmen to countrymen was as 3 to 7; and falling below 28 per 1,000 when the townsmen are to the countrymen as 1 to 4. This holds true in principle in modern times: and it is out of the question to expect to have the death-rate of large cities as low as it is in country districts inhabited by well-fed peasants.

In chapter vi. our author speaks of the checks to population in Switzerland. From statistics existing in Geneva, it seems that in that town, during the sixteenth century, the probability of life, or the age to which half of those born live, was only 4.88, or rather less than 5; and the mean life was about 18 years. In the seventeenth century the probability of life was 11, and the mean life 231. In the eighteenth century the probability of life had increased to 27, and the mean life to 32.

M. Muret, a Swiss clergyman of Vevey, in the eighteenth century, mentions the case of a village called Leyzin, with a population of 400 persons, where there were only eight births. a year. The probability of life in this model parish appeared to be so extraordinarily high as to reach 61 years. And the average number of the births having been for 30 years almost accurately equal to the number of deaths, clearly proved that the habits of the people had not led them to emigrate, and that the resources of the parish for the support of the population had remained nearly stationary. As the marriages in this parish would, with few exceptions, be very late, it is evident that a very large proportion of the subsisting marriages would be among persons so far advanced in life that the women had ceased to bear. The births were only about 1 in 49 of the population or much fewer than in France of modern days (1 in 40). In England they are 1 in 28 of the population at present.

M. Muret made some calculations at Vevey respecting the fecundity of marriages. He found that 375 mothers had produced 2,093 children: ., about six children each: and he also found that there were 20 sterile women out of 478, or about 1 in 23 wives. Taking this into account, the average number of children to a family at Vevey was 53. In modern France it is about 3, in Prussia 4 68, and in England about 4. In those days, the proportion of annual marriages topopulation was lower in the Canton de Vaud than even in Norway, being only 1 in 140. In the model village of Leyzin.

only one-fifth of the total mortality was among persons under fifteen. Such were the results of what Mr. Malthus considered as the only true "moral restraint," late marriages. All these calculations of M. Muret imply the operation of the preventive check to population in a very great degree in the Canton de Vaud. In the town of Berne, the proportion of unmarried persons, including widows and widowers, was considerably above the half of the adults, and the proportion of the living below sixteen to those above was nearly as 1 to 3 in the beginning of this century. The peasants in Berne were noted for comfort and wealth, doubtless owing to the low birth-rate in that country. A law there prevented those who had no means from marrying.

:

Mr. Malthus gives an amusing account of a conversation he had with a peasant who went with him from the Lac de Joux to the sources of the river Orbe. This man said that the habit if early marriage might be really said to be the vice of the country and he was so strongly impressed with the necessary and unavoidable wretchedness that must result from it, that he thought a law ought to be made restricting men from entering into the married state before they were forty years of age, and then allowing it only with old maids, who might bear them two or three children instead of six or eight. That peasant would have been, we doubt not, one of the most zealous advocates of the two children system, so wonderfully carred out in many of the most flourishing districts of France, and probably would have abandoned all desire to keep prudent couples like those in these French districts from marrying. We hold with that simple peasant of the Jura, who had learnt the truths he expounded by sad and cruel expérience, he having married himself when very young, and with his family, suffered much from poverty, that governments are culpable when they do not attempt to lessen high birth-rates. To forbid early marriage, indeed, is to encourage prostitution and cause many other evils; but to affix a stigma on those who produce large families is, as far as we can see, a plan which can only produce good and need produce no evil results. It is an utter misunderstanding of the rights of the individual to suppose that each man and woman ought to have the right to cause misery to their unfortunate children, and at the same time produce a pressure upon the powers of the soil and lessen the productive powers of past and present labour. That this will ere long be seen to be the truth arising out of the discoveries of the great English professor we cannot for a moment doubt.

IN

CHAPTER V.

OF THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN FRANCE.

N the sixth chapter of Book II., Mr. Malthus gives us some account of the checks to population which existed in France at the end of last century, which might convince the most sceptical of modern pessimists of the vast strides which a nation may take in a short period towards the attainment of comfort and well-being.

The population of France, before the beginning of the war, says Malthus, was estimated by the Constituent Assembly at 261 millions. Necker estimated the yearly births, in 1780, to be above a million, and it is curious, as we shall soon see, that France, in 1874, had not a million of births with a population of 36 millions. Malthus estimated that, out of that million, 600,000 would attain the age of 18; and, considering that nearly as many persons are to be found in a given society, unmarried as married, he amply accounts for the seeming paradox that, whilst France was supposed to have lost 2 millions by actual war and its consequences, at the time of the Revolution, the population was found to have increased, in 1800, as compared with 1790.

6.

At all times." says Malthus, "the number of small farmers and proprietors in France was great: and though such a state of things is by no means favourable to the clear surplus produce or disposable wealth of a nation, yet sometimes it is not unfavourable to the absolute produce, and it has always a tendency to encourage population." This last remark of Mr. Malthus has not been verified. In no country does the population tend to increase so slowly as in modern France -the land par excellence of peasant proprietors. In all probability, the rapid increase of population at the time of the French Revolution arose from the lower death-rate which always follows a sudden amelioration of the position of the humbler classes, such as that which took place where landed property came into their possession.

The average proportion of births to population in all France, before the Revolution was, according to Necker, 39 per 1000. It has singularly altered since that time, and is now only 26 per 1,000, or the lowest birth-rate in Europe. The death-rate