“Dirt is rare, I might almost say as unknown, as rags.... Drunkenness is also comparatively, in some places we might say absolutely, absent. As we make further acquaintance with these favoured regions, we might suppose that here, at least, the dreams of the Utopians had come true, and that poverty, squalor and wretchedness were banished for ever.” In the month of August, 1878, I had the great advantage of reading, in my capacity of Vice-President of the First Section of the International Congress of Hygiene at Paris, an essay on “The Too Rapid Increase of Population as a Cause of Disease and Death.” In the debate which followed, Dr. Bertillon, the distinguished Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, who has done so much for social statistics, said that he considered that in many parts of France there was too great a disinclination on the part of the people to increase the population. In Brittany, the marriages were few but very prolific, and the people were very poor. The influence of the priests was paramount in that province, and the mortality, both adult and infantile, great. There were very few children to a family in Normandy, and the death-rate was low in that province. The French Government he said, appeared to be acting according to the plan advised by the reader of the essay, since they taxed persons with large families as much as those with small ones. He admitted that the size of a family should be regulated by parental forethought; but thought that at present French population was too stationary. Dr. Lagneau said, that in France it was the rich who had the smallest families, whilst the very poor often had large ones. The rich employés of Government, above all, were noted for the small size of their families. In the case of the peasant vine-growers of the Marne, many would only have one child, or even none at all, since these peasants found it difficult to get people to come from the town and help them with their farms, and had to do all the work by themselves. Hence, female labour was much in demand. These facts will, doubtless, afford to many thoughtful persons a clear enough picture of the remarkable position of modern France, the only country in Europe which, as yet, seems to have begun fairly to grapple with the giant question of population. CHAPTER VI. ON THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND.