The observations of the greatest living Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, of late years, have frequently pointed out to us how very unfair a proportion of the increasing wealth of this country has been absorbed by the possessors of capital, as compared with that by the recipients of wages. It may indeed be said, in the words of Mr. J. S. Mill, that owing to the way in which population has increased in this century in this country, _pari passu_ with the increase of the wealth of the nation, it is doubtful whether all the improvements in manufactures and in instruments for abbreviating manual toil have taken one hour’s work from the shoulders of the working classes. “The condition of the poor in China,” says Malthus, “is indeed very miserable at present, but this is not owing to their want of foreign commerce, but to their extreme tendency to marriage and increase; and if this tendency were to continue the same, the only way in which the introduction of a greater number of manufacturers could possibly make the lower classes of people richer, would be by increasing the mortality among them, which is certainly not a very desirable mode of growing rich.” This argument of our author might convince both the fair traders and the free traders of this day, that neither free trade, nor protection, are panaceas against starvation among the poorest classes, and make them learn the lesson that a small-family system alone can solve the fundamental question of man’s destiny—how to make the proportion of mouths to food most favorable. The argument perhaps appears clearer when applied to China, because it is generally allowed that its wealth has been long stationary, and its soil cultivated nearly to the utmost. With regard to any other country it might always be a matter of dispute, at which of the two periods compared wealth was increasing the fastest, for Adam Smith, and others of his followers think that the condition of the poor depends on the rapidity of the increase of wealth at any particular epoch. Malthus to this replies that: “It is evident that two nations might increase exactly with the same rapidity in the exchangeable value of the annual products of their land and labor; yet, if one had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, and the other chiefly to commerce, the funds for the maintenance of labor, and consequently the effect of the increase of wealth in each nation, would be extremely different. In that which had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, the poor would live in greater plenty, and population would rapidly increase. In that which had applied itself chiefly to commerce the poor would be comparatively but little benefited, and consequently, population would either be stationary, or increase very slowly.”