nt of our somewhat narrow conversance with such writers, has ever
been done before by any one who regarded it with equal affection and
reposed in its theories a like faith. This, too, is thoroughly
characteristic of him. He is one of the sanest and sincerest of men.

Thirdly, his inspiring and generative purpose is to lift the science
into serviceable relation to the broad interests of man. Here we come to
the real soul of the book. He accepts its customary limits chiefly that
he may transcend them. He treats of wealth with a philosophical and
cordial perception of its uses; but beyond and above this he is thinking
of man, always of man,--and of man not merely as an eater and drinker,
but as an intelligence and a candidate for moral or personal upbuilding.
A reader would regard the work with a dull eye, who should miss this
commanding feature. Sometimes by special discussions, as in his defence
of peasant-properties in land,--sometimes only by an aroma pervading his
pages, or bypassing expressions,--and always by the general ordering and
culminating tendency of his thought,--one reads this perpetual question,
the true and final question of all politics and economies:--How shall we
secure the greatest number of intelligent and worthy men and women?

But while Mr. Mill's sympathy is with the people, the many, the whole of
humanity, and while his desire for men is that they may attain the
mental elevation which shall make them really _human_ beings, yet a
marked feature of his book is the mild Malthusian element which pervades
it. Let no stigma be therefore fixed upon him. Let honor be rendered to
the courage which steadily inquires, not what representation of the
facts will win applause, but simply what the facts _are_. And
undoubtedly it is true that all considerate men in England have been
compelled to contemplate the _possibility_ of over-population, of an
insupportable pauperism, of a burden of helpless numbers which shall
sink the whole nation into abysses of starvation with all its horrible
accompaniments. It is but a few years since Ireland escaped unexampled
death by famine only by an unexampled exodus. The New World opened its
arms to the misery of the Old, and fed its famine to fatness,--and has
got few thanks. But this rescue cannot be repeated without limit. And
therefore forelooking men in England find the problem of their future
one not too easy to solve. Mr. Carlyle, among others, has grappled with
it. His