M. Condorcet’s _Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain_ was written, it is said, under the pressure of that cruel proscription which terminated in his death during the French Revolution, and the posthumous publication is only a sketch of a much larger work which he proposed to write. By the application of calculations to the probabilities of life and the interest of money, Condorcet proposed that a fund should be established, which should assure to the old an assistance produced in part by their own former savings, and in part by the savings of individuals, who in making the same sacrifice die before they reap the benefit of it. These establishments, he observes, might be made in the name and under the protection of the state. Mr. Blackley brought forward a somewhat similar proposal in 1880. Condorcet adds that by the just application of such calculations, means might be found of more completely preserving a state of equality, by preventing credit from being the exclusive privilege of large fortunes, and yet giving it a basis equally solid, and by rendering the industry and activity of commerce less dependent on great capitalists. Mr. Malthus criticises the schemes of Condorcet as follows:—“Supposing for a moment that they would give no check to production, the greatest difficulty remains behind. Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for a family, almost every man would have one; and were the rising generation free from the killing frost of misery, population must increase with unusual rapidity.” And Condorcet himself saw this, for he says: “But in this progress of industry and happiness, each generation will be called to more extended enjoyments, and, in consequence, by the physical constitution of the human frame, to an increase in the number of individuals. Must not there arise a period when these laws, equally necessary, shall counteract each other; when the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be, either a continual diminution of happiness and population—a movement truly retrograde—or, at least, a kind of oscillation between good and evil. Shall we ever arrive at such a period? It is equally impossible to pronounce for or against the future realization of an event, which cannot take place but at an era when the human race will have attained improvements of which we can at present scarcely form a conception.”