kindness between
betrothed parties was carried too far,' and 'the betrothed became a
mother before she was a wife.'

We quit this painful phase of peasant proprietorship with the
observation that, notwithstanding a still wider diffusion of property
and of moral qualities which, according to Mr. Laing, that diffusion is
calculated to engender, 8.38[8] per cent. of the live children born in
Norway between 1866 and 1870 were born out of wedlock, the corresponding
proportion in 1836 having been 7.07 per cent. It is natural to find,
under these circumstances, that the marriage rate was 6.84 per 1000 of
the population in 1866-75 against 7.31 per 1000 between 1834 and 1836,
with a fractional decrease of the total number of births in the former
period, the average per family remaining slightly over four.

The ancient Allodial Right and the happy social system based upon it,
Mr. Laing found jealously guarded by the yeomanry, 'who have not only
the legislative power and the election of the Storthing' (or Parliament)
'almost entirely in their own hands, but also the whole civil business
of the community.' He may, therefore, well say, without fear of
contradiction, that 'the Norwegian people enjoy a greater share of
liberty, have the framing and administering of their own laws more
entirely in their own hands, than any European nation of the present
time;' and, further, that 'it is not a little extraordinary that almost
the only result' of the universal delirium of 1790,[9] 'which approaches
in reality to the theories of that period, has been the Norwegian
Constitution.'

The paramount influence of the agrarian class over the destinies of the
kingdom may be judged by the circumstances that the rural districts are
permanently represented in the Storthing by two-thirds of the total
number of members, limited by the Constitution to 114; and that
practically the suffrage is now universal, the principal conditions of
its possession being, under recent legislation, a qualification of age
(25 years) and a residence of five years in the country. It is well
known that the Parliament thus elected (under a system of double
election), with its _de facto_ single Chamber, subdivided for the more
rapid and effective discharge of certain business into what Mr. Laing
chooses to call an 'Upper House' and a 'House of Commons,' has, within
very recent days, in virtue of the largely predominant rural, radical
vote, exercised its power of impeaching