The positive checks to population in ancient Greece and Rome are palpable enough. Incessant wars, plagues, and famines prevailed. Livy expresses his surprise that the Volci and Æqui, who were so often destroyed by the Romans, should have been able to bring fresh armies into the field, but when the principle of population is understood, our astonishment ceases. Such conquered tribes, like the ancient Germans, doubtless gave full scope to the powers of procreation, and hence were soon as numerous as before their defeat. And yet it seems clear that the horrible practice of infanticide was very common in Italy, for Romulus was supposed already to have forbidden it, though the constant warfare of the Romans must have lessened the necessity for this check. The Roman population of Italy soon fell off when the land passed into the hands of a few great proprietors, since the other classes, having no means of selling their labour, or competing with the numerous slaves of the wealthy, would have been entirely starved, had it not been for the curious custom which arose of distributing large quantities of corn gratis to the poorer or landless citizens. No less than two hundred thousand were thus fed in Augustus’ reign, and probably had little else to depend upon. Hence the poorer free citizens could not increase, and they are said to have been constantly in the habit of exposing their unfortunate children, since the quantity of food doled out was not enough for a family to subsist upon. The _jus trium liberorum_ (law for rewarding fathers of three children) could effect nothing in such circumstances, in making the poor give birth to large families, although it may occasionally have tempted the landed proprietors to increase their families. Had the poor had large numbers of children in such a miserable state of society, they must have been born only to die of starvation, since the food doled out by the Government was not sufficient to feed all. Positive laws to encourage marriage, says Mr. Malthus, enacted on the urgency of the occasion, and not mixed with religion, as in China and some other countries, are seldom calculated to answer the end they aim at, and therefore generally indicate ignorance in the legislator who proposes them; but the apparent necessity of them almost always indicates a very great degree of moral and political depravity in the State; and in the countries in which they are most strongly insisted on, not only vicious manners will be found to prevail, but political institutions extremely unfavourable to industry, and, consequently, to population.