* The scientific part of Malthus' Doctrine of Population is not very clearly or correctly given in the above passages. His great theory, now or generally held by the most eminent political economists, is that the increase of population is always powerfully checked in old countries by the difficulty in increasing the supply of food; that the existing evils of poverty and low wages are really at bottom caused by this check, and are brought about by the pressure of population on the soil, and the continual overstocking of the labor markets with laborers; and hence that the only way in which society can escape from poverty, with all its miseries, is by putting a strong restraint on their natural powers of multiplication. "It is not in the nature of things," he says, "that any permanent and general improvement in the condition of the poor can be effected without an increase in the preventive checks to population."--G. R. Second--_In a social point of view_.--"Is it not notorious that the families of the married often increase beyond which a regard for the young beings coming into the world, and the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate. In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family remain slave throughout their lives, tugging at the oar of incessant labor, toiling to live, and living to toil; when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence? How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant--happy if it be not twins--and compelled to toil on, even at those times when nature imperiously calls for some relief from daily drudgery,--how often is the mother's comfort, health, nay, even her life, thus sacrificed? Or if care and toil have weighed down the spirit, and at length broken the health of the father; how often is the widow left unable, with the most virtuous intentions, to save her fatherless offspring from becoming degraded objects of charity, or profligate votaries of vice!