Observe of late years there has been a slight decline of the marriage-rate and a certain retardation of marriage, consequently the birth-rate has fallen, but says Dr. Ogle, “so also has the death-rate, and almost in equal amount; so that the balance between the two, or natural increment of the population, has practically scarcely changed. We may,” he observes, “dismiss altogether the notion that any adequate check to the increase of population is hereafter to be found in retardation of marriage. Such retardation may defer the day when a stationary population will be necessary, but, when that day has come, will be insufficient to prevent further growth. If a stationary population is to be obtained by simple diminution of the marriage-rate, that rate would have to be reduced 45 per cent. below the lowest point it has ever yet reached. In short, almost one-half of those who marry would have to remain permanently celibate. This seems as hopeless a remedy as the retardation.” He makes clearer still this important matter: “If one-quarter of the women who now marry were to remain permanently celibate, and the remaining three-quarters were to retard their marriages for five years, the birth-rate would be reduced to the level of the present death-rate. It is manifest that if the growth of population is hereafter to be arrested ... by increase of permanent celibacy, or by retardation of marriage, these remedies will have to be applied on a scale so enormously in excess of any experience as to amount to a social revolution.” What, then, is the present position? Population tends to increase faster than actual subsistence. Obviously it cannot outrun the supply of food because people cannot live upon nothing. There ensues therefore a state of chronic starvation among the most helpless, and premature deaths keep population reduced to the means of subsistence. Let us glance at facts concerning London alone. London now contains over 4,300,000 persons. Three hundred thousand of these earn less than 18s. per week per family, and live in a chronic state of want. One person in every five will die in the workhouse, hospital, or lunatic asylum. Moreover, the percentage is increasing. Considering that comparatively few of the deaths are those of children, it is probable that one of every four London adults will be driven into these refuges to die. One in every eleven of the whole population is a pauper. One in every five of persons over 65 is a pauper. The appalling statistics of the pauperism of the aged are carefully concealed in all official returns. In 1885 Canon Blackley found that 42·7 per cent. of deaths of persons over 60 in twenty-five rural parishes were those of paupers. Very many children in the Board Schools go to school without sufficient food unless supplied gratuitously. Over 30,000 persons in London have no home but the fourpenny “doss-house” or the causal ward. (_Fabian Tracts_, Nos. 10 and 17.)