The latter years of the life of Mr. Malthus were passed in the midst of his family, in the performance of his professional and professorial duties, and in the editing of the various editions of his work and other treatises on political economy. In proportion as the views enunciated in his Essay on Population became known, his fame was extended. Most of the statesmen of his time, and the whole of the eminent political economists of Great Britain, adopted his opinions; and thus the way was prepared for the adoption of a better system of poor-law relief than the one which at that time was ruining England. On the Continent, too, and indeed wherever science extended, his views were adopted by the foremost writers on political economy. He was elected a member of the most eminent scientific societies abroad, such as the Institute of France and the Royal Academy of Berlin. At home, he founded the Political Economy Club and the Statistical Society. In the other departments of the science of Political Economy Malthus was a distinguished writer. He was, in company with Dr. West, a promulgator of the theory of rent, first mooted, it seems, by a Scotchman, Dr. Anderson, a contemporary of Adam Smith. Ricardo, the eminent political economist, has acknowledged his deep obligations to Malthus, for his exposition of this theory. The great Principle of Population has been examined carefully and accepted as a splendid discovery by the master minds of all countries since the discoverer’s death in 1834. To say that it is looked upon as axiomatic by the two Mills, by Ricardo, Senior, Cairnes, Alexander Bain, Garnier, Bertillon, Fawcett, William Ellis, and William Hunter, is to say that its truth has been fully proved to the ablest thinkers on social science and on political economy that this and other European States have produced. It was, before the days of Malthus, the almost universal belief of mankind that the wealth of a country was in proportion to its population. Statesmen, poets, and philanthropists were constant in their endeavour to secure as rapid a multiplication of the citizens as possible: and, up till the publication of his essay—indeed, long after that event, it was the custom in many European States for the Government to give prizes to such parents as had given birth to and reared a more than averagely large family of children. Such a law, indeed, was not abrogated until about 25 years ago in Sardinia.