Foundling Hospitals, it is clear, in Paris, Vienna, and in all countries, tend to cause women to become thoughtless and heartless. Malthus, indeed, makes a remark which we have recently heard paralleled in Vienna. “An English merchant at Saint Petersburg told me that a Russian girl, living in his family, under a mistress who was considered as very strict, had sent six children to the Foundling hospital, without the loss of her place. And with regard to the moral feelings of a nation, it is very difficult to conceive that they must not be very sensibly impaired by encouraging mothers to desert their offspring, and endeavouring to teach them that their love for their new-born infants is a prejudice, which it is the interest of their country to eradicate.” Malthus mentions that the population of Russia, in 1796, was 36,000,000. At present it is computed at eighty-five and a half millions, only seven millions of which is found in Asia, and the rest in Europe. A Government that had a true sense of what was advantageous for its subjects would, instead of offering _encouragements_ to population, and incentives to thoughtlessness on the part of parents, such as foundling hospitals and other charities, encourage, by all means in its power, the feeling of parental responsibility among all classes. To do this, the most direct way would be, to show by some slight fine on the production of large families, that there is no possibility of attaining comfort and a low death-rate without _conjugal prudence_. In Chapter ix. of Book ii., Malthus treats on the Checks to Population in the Middle parts of Europe at the beginning of this century. He makes the observation that there are few countries where the poorer classes have so much foresight as to defer marriage till they have a fair prospect of being able to support properly all their children: and in all countries, he adds, a great mortality, whether arising from the too great frequency of marriage, or occasioned by the number of towns and the natural unhealthiness of the situation, will necessarily produce a great frequency of marriage. In Holland, in the registers of twenty-two villages, Sussmilch noted one marriage to every 64 persons living, the usual rate being about 1 in 120. Malthus says he was for some time puzzled at this high annual marriage-rate, until he found that the mortality in these villages was actually 45 per 1,000 of the population. The extraordinary number of marriages was merely produced by the rapid dissolution of the old marriages by death, and the consequent vacancy of some employment by which a family might be supported. In Norway the mortality in his day was only 22 per 1,000, and the annual marriage-rate 1 in 130. This is a notable contrast with the figures relating to Holland just quoted.