To that objection to the Neo-Malthusian propaganda which is usually successful with timid people, that incontinence would be increased if the means recommended by New-Malthusians were adopted, Mr. Place says: “I am of opinion it would not; so much depends on manners, that it seems to be by no means an unreasonable expectation that, if these were so improved as greatly to increase the prudential habits, and to encourage the love of distinction, the master-spring of public prosperity, and if, in consequence of the course recommended, all could marry early, there would be less debauchery of any kind. An improvement in manners would be an improvement in morals; and it seems absurd to suppose an increase of vice with improved morals.” Mr. James Mill, a friend of Mr. Place, writing also in 1820, (article “Colony,” _Encyclop. Brit._) speaks of the question of checking population rationally as “the most important practical problem to which the wisdom of the politician and the moralist can be applied.” “If,” he says, “the superstitions of the nursery were discarded, and the principles of utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be difficult to be found, and the means of drying up one of the most copious sources of human evil—a source which, if all other sources of evil were taken away, would alone suffice to retain the great mass of human beings in misery, might be seen to be neither doubtful nor difficult to be applied.” Mr. Francis Place and Mr. James Mill exhibited in these utterances one of the qualities of true men of science—that is, they were enabled to foretell truly what has taken place before the end of the century in civilised countries like England and France. The truth of their prophecies is shown in the fact that the inhabitants of France, who, at the commencement of this century, had a birth-rate of 33 children annually per 1000 of inhabitants, have now one of 26 per 1000; while the West End of London shows a still lower birth-rate than this—in Kensington of 20, in St. George, Hanover Square, of 19, and in Hampstead Parish of 22 per 1000. In France, the low birth-rate is due, as every intelligent person now knows, to Neo-Malthusian practices and not to celibacy, for France contains, in every 1000 inhabitants, 140 married women between the ages of fifteen and fifty, against 133 in this country and under 128 in Prussia. This prudence among the French population, since the time of the French Revolution, seems to have been due to a certain extent to the acquisition of landed property by the masses of the population, and also to the law of equal inheritance in France, which prohibits parents from leaving their real or personal estates to one person. The extreme desire to keep the land in the hands of a few descendants has made the more respectable of the French peasants the most careful of Europeans. Thus we find, from an essay by the late Dr. Bertillon, that in the thirty departments of France where there are the