volves. The servants who live in the families of the rich
have yet stronger inducements to forego matrimony. They live in
comparative comfort and luxury, which as married men they could not
enjoy.

The prolific power of nature is very far from being called fully into
action in Great Britain. And yet, when we contemplate the insufficiency
of the price of labour to maintain a large family, and the amount of
mortality which arises directly and indirectly from poverty, and add to
this the crowds of children prematurely cut off in large towns, we shall
be compelled to acknowledge that, if the number born annually were not
greatly thinned by this premature mortality, the funds for the
maintenance of labour must increase with much greater rapidity than they
have ever hitherto done in order to find work and food for the
additional numbers that would then grow up to manhood.

Those, therefore, who live single, or marry late, do not by such conduct
contribute in any degree to diminish the actual population, but merely
to diminish the proportion of premature mortality, which would otherwise
be excessive; and consequently, from this point of view, do not seem to
deserve any very severe reprobation or punishment.

It has been usual to consider a great proportion of births as the surest
sign of a vigorous and flourishing state. But this is erroneous. Only
after great mortality, or under very especial social conditions, is a
large proportion of births a favourable symptom. In the average state of
a well-peopled territory there cannot be a worse sign than a large
proportion of births, nor a better sign than a small proportion. A small
proportion of births is a decided proof of a very small mortality, since
the supply always equals the demand for population. In despotic,
miserable, or naturally unhealthy countries, the proportion of births to
the whole population will generally be found very great.

In Scotland emigration is a potent cause of depopulation, but any
thinning out from this cause is quickly neutralised by an increased
proportion of births.

In Ireland the details of population fluctuations are little known; but
the cheapness of potatoes, and the ignorance and depressed, indifferent
state of the people, have encouraged marriage to such a degree that the
population is pushed much beyond the resources of the country, and the
consequence, naturally, is that the lower classes of the people are in
the most impoverished and m