average of only 3¼ children to a family; and that “these workmen were the foremost in France for behavior and dignity of character.” “The question is,” says a distinguished Vice-President of the Malthusian League, Mr. Van Houten, Deputy at the Hague, “whether morality can demand that a married couple shall have offspring immediately after their marriage; that constantly, as soon as the mother, after giving birth to one, is able, a second one should at once succeed the first. The question is, whether those less blessed with worldly goods must restrain their desires and remain celibates, because they are unable, while following the traditional morality, to provide for a family? Or whether those whose inclination for one another, or whose trust in the future was too great when their expectations proved deceptive, must be condemned, in the name of morality, to procreate children who will be insufficiently fed, tended and educated, and can never become energetic citizens, or who, if sickly, are born only to descend speedily to the grave, to be succeeded by others equally unfortunate.” Mr. Van Houten truly says: “An end must be put to our ignorance of physiology. Everyone ought to _know_; and it must be left to his own requirements and to his own judgment what use he will make of his knowledge.” How dangerous such superstitions as those referred to by Mr. Van Houten are to the happiness of mankind is best seen in the old civilisations of Hindostan and China. Owing to certain strange doctrines in those countries as to the importance of children as a religious duty, the unfortunate Hindoo people are so terribly over-peopled that a man will work hard for wages equivalent to six shillings a month. The most learned of Italian medical writers on health, Senator Paulo Mantegazza, mentions that his work was placed on the Index by the Pope of Rome in 1863, because he had ventured to recommend to persons afflicted with hereditary disease, such as insanity or epilepsy, or to excessively poor people, to marry but to have as few children as possible. When two human beings (says that author) love each other, and yet from the bad health of one or both of them there is every likelihood that diseased children will result, is it a greater fault to engender epileptic, insane, or scrofulous children, or to prevent such births? Or when, from the excessive increase of the family itself, human beings are brought into the world almost inexorably condemned to hunger, to degradation, to disease, is it a greater sin to limit the number of children or to increase the sufferings of the human family? What reply ought we to give? Whilst the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh is displaying to the denizens of the end of the 19th century, an amount of ignorance and conventional bigotry which will be incredible to the next generation, it is remarkable that what is usually considered the most benighted Church in Christendom, the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman