usually been supposed that a prudential limitation of families is
rooted in the minds and habits of nearly, though not quite, all
classes of the French nation. An excellent work on France, written by
a sound English observer seven or eight years ago, chances to be lying
before me at the moment, and here is a passage taken almost at random.
"The opinions of thoughtful men seem to tend towards the wish to
introduce into France some of that improvidence which allows English
people to bring large families into the world without first securing
the means of keeping them, and which has peopled the continent of
North America and the Australian colonies with an English-speaking
race" (Richardson's _Corn and Cattle Producing Districts of France_,
p. 47, etc.). Surely this is a well-established fact. It is possible
that denunciations of Malthus may occasionally be found both in
Clerical and Socialistic prints, but then there are reasons for that.
It can hardly be made much of a charge against French democracy that
it tolerates unscientific opinion, so long as it cultivates scientific
practice.

As for our own country, and those whom the multitude permits to lead
it, we cannot forget that by far the most popular and powerful man _in
faece Romuli_--as Sir Henry Maine insists on our putting it in that
polite way--was tried and condemned not many years ago for publishing
a certain pamphlet which made a limitation of population the very
starting-point of social reform. It is not necessary to pronounce an
opinion on the particular counsels of the pamphlet, but the motives
which prompted its circulation (motives admitted to be respectable by
the Chief-Justice who tried the case), and the extraordinary reception
of the pamphlet by the serious portion of the workmen of the towns,
would make a careful writer think twice before feeling sure that
popular bodies will never listen to the truth about population. No