Of late years the birth and death-rate in Holland have been much more satisfactory than they were in the days of Malthus: but the extreme poverty of the working classes in South, as compared with North-Holland, has been recently shown by Mr. S. Van Houten to result in a far higher birth-rate and death-rate in the districts adjoining Rotterdam, than occurs among the more prudent and well-fed inhabitants of Groningen. Still, there have been years quite recently in Holland, when the death-rate has been as high as 29 per 1,000 (1871), and even as lately as 1875 it was 25 per 1,000. The standard of comfort has greatly changed in several cities in Germany. Thus, in Leipsig, Malthus mentions that, in 1620, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 82: whilst it fell in 1756 to 1 in 120. He observes that, in countries which have long been fully peopled, and in which no new sources of subsistence are opening, the marriages being regulated principally by the deaths, will generally bear nearly the same proportion to the whole population, at one period as another. In Berlin, at the commencement of this century, the annual marriage-rate was 1 in 110, whilst it was 1 in 137 at Paris. Berlin, then as now, was probably a very unhealthy city. The death-rate of infants there at present is said to amount to one-half of all born in the first year of life in some years. Direct encouragements to marriage are, says Malthus, either perfectly futile, or produce a marriage when there is no place for one, thus increasing the mortality. Montesquieu, Sussmilch, and other authors thought that princes and statesmen would really merit the name of fathers of their people, if from the proportion of 1 in 120–125, they could increase the marriages to the proportion of 1 in 80 or 90. But, says Malthus, as this would greatly raise the death-rate and the poverty in the State, such princes would more justly deserve the title of destroyers of the people. Had Mr. Malthus lived in our day, he would have been aware that a high marriage-rate is not by any means necessarily followed by a high birth-rate, since, in modern France, where there are the greatest number of married women in proportion to population, over the age of 15, of any European state, the birth-rate is _lower_ than in any other European state. But, in Malthus’ day, human beings were still dominated greatly by instinct, and had not begun to allow reason to prevail in the most important of all human acts, that which leads to the addition of new members to society.