The next passage shows how immensely ameliorated is the condition of modern France, as compared with that before the Revolution. “At all times,” says our author, “the number of males of a military age in France was small in proportion to the population, on account of the tendency to marriage (1 to 113 of the population, according to Necker), and the _great number of children_. Necker takes particular notice of this circumstance. He observes that the effect of the very great misery of the peasantry is to produce a dreadful mortality of infants under three or four years of age; and the consequence is that the number of young children will always be in too great a proportion to the number of grown-up people. A million of individuals, he justly observes, will, in this case, neither present the same military force, nor the same capacity of labour, as an equal number of individuals in a country where the people are less miserable. Switzerland, before the Revolution, could have brought into the field, or have employed in labour appropriate to grown-up persons, one-third more in proportion to her population, than France at the same period.” How strikingly all this has been altered by the prudent habits with regard to families, induced by the peasant holdings in France, is clearly seen by the following statistics:—Between the ages of 20 and 60 the human frame is most capable of production, and, according to Kolb, there are in 10,000 persons in the several States in Europe the following numbers of persons of the productive ages: In France, 5,373; in Holland, 4,964; in Sweden, 4,954; in Great Britain, 4,732; and in the United States, 4,396. France has, of all nations in Europe, the highest average of ages of the living. Thus it is there 31·06 years: in Holland, 27·76; in Sweden, 27·66; in Great Britain, 26·56; and in the United States, 23·10. And in France there are a greater number of persons who attain to old age than in any other country, for, out of 100 deaths there are, in France, over the age of sixty, 36; in Switzerland, 34; in England, 30; in Belgium, 28; in Wurtemburg, 21; in Prussia, 19; and in Austria, 17. But the most notable of all the facts of modern Europe is that marriages are more prevalent in proportion to population in France than elsewhere, and, curiously, there is the smallest number of illegitimate births. Thus, the illegitimate births in France were, from 1825–67, only 7·27 per cent. of all births, whilst in Prussia they were 8·24 per cent. in 1867; in Sweden they were 10 per cent.; in Austria, 11; and in Bavaria, in 1868, even 22 per cent. of all births. Paris is an exception to this, for the illegitimate births there are about one-fourth of all births.