transference of it to the towns. The hand-loom weaver had been supplanted by the power-loom. The little villages, where the workman lived idyllically, half in his farm and half in his workshop, now either sent their whole families to the towns, thus stopping their contributions to the parish registers in the country and swelling those of the town, or, still keeping the parents, sent three-fourths of the children there, thus making the country registers a very untrustworthy reflection of the real state of the population in the country districts. That country villages in every part of Scotland, but especially near the large cities, are “breeding grounds” of this latter description[421] is perfectly well known; and the same is true, in a less degree, of England. This is one reason why even the purely rural districts of Scotland have greatly increased in apparent population since 1801, and most of them are increasing still; the readiness of the Scotch to emigrate has caused the large families quite as much as the large families the emigration. Another reason is, that even in the country districts there is now more work to be done and it is done better. Orthodox economists may count this an example of the self-healing effects of an economical change that causes much suffering at first. It is fair to say that this eventual cure is neither more nor less complete than the cure of the analogous hardships of the newly-introduced factory system, and the temporary inconveniences of sudden free trade. What keen commercial ambition can do it has done, and its success is at least sufficiently complete to justify us in saying of Scotland to-day what Malthus said of it eighty years ago: it was most over-populated when it had fewest inhabitants. Modern improvements, however short of perfection, have at least both in England and in Scotland absolutely put an end to periodical famines. Even the scarcities of 1799 and 1800, though they caused great distress in both countries, were not famines in either of them; and, since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, even such general distress as was caused in Scotland by the potato blight cannot occur again. That distress itself was as nothing compared with the terrible dearths from which Scotland used to suffer five or six times a century, and which England experienced as late as the seventeenth.[422] The dismal picture[423] which Malthus draws of the condition of the Scottish peasantry reminds us that it is not much more than a century since Scotland took her first steps in civilization and turned her energies from war to commerce. Her population at the ’45 was about one and a quarter millions, in 1801 about one and a half; but in 1861 more than three, and in 1881 three and three-quarters. Population therefore has more than doubled within the century. But even now there are only a hundred and twenty-one inhabitants to the square mile, as compared with four hundred and forty-five in England. The wealth of the