the Norman conquest was about two million.
In five hundred years it had scarcely doubled. It may be supposed that
this stationary condition was to some extent induced by the papal policy
of the enforcement of celibacy in the clergy. The "legal generative
force" was doubtless affected by that policy, the "actual generative
force" was not. For those who have made this subject their study have
long ago been satisfied that public celibacy is private wickedness. This
mainly determined the laity, as well as the government in England, to
suppress the monasteries. It was openly asserted that there were one
hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy.

In my history of the "American Civil War," I have presented some
reflections on this point, which I will take the liberty of quoting
here: "What, then, does this stationary condition of the population
mean? It means, food obtained with hardship, insufficient clothing,
personal uncleanness, cabins that could not keep out the weather,
the destructive effects of cold and heat, miasm, want of sanitary
provisions, absence of physicians, uselessness of shrine-cure, the
deceptiveness of miracles, in which society was putting its trust; or,
to sum up a long catalogue of sorrows, wants, and sufferings, in one
term--it means a high death-rate.

"But more; it means deficient births. And what does that point out?
Marriage postponed, licentious life, private wickedness, demoralized
society.

"To an American, who lives in a country that was yesterday an
interminable and impenetrable desert, but which to-day is filling with
a population doubling itself every twenty-five years at the prescribed
rate, this awful waste of actual and contingent life cannot but be a
most surprising fact. His curiosity will lead him to inquire what kind
of system that could have been which was pretending to guide and
develop society, but which must be held responsible for this prodigious
destruction, excelling, in its insidious result, war, pestilence, and
famine combined; insidious, for men were actually believing that it
secured their highest temporal interests. How different now! In England,
the same geographical surface is sustaining ten times the population
of that day, and sending forth its emigrating swarms. Let him, who looks
back, with veneration on the past, settle in his own mind what such a
system could have been worth."

These variations in the population of Europe have been attend