Let my readers bear in mind, that this is from the pen of one of the most justly admired writers of the present day; a man celebrated throughout all Europe, for his works on political economy, and whose writings are not unknown even on this side the Atlantic. He considers the question now under discussion to involve “the most important problem to which the wisdom of the politician and moralist can be applied.” This question, he admits, has ever been “miserably evaded.” Yet even a man so influential and enlightened as Mill, must himself yield to the weakness he reprobates; must speak in parables, as the Nazarene reformer did before him; and, even while commenting on the “miserable evasion” of a subject so engrossingly important, must imitate the very evasion he despises. I will not imitate it. I am more independently situated than the English economist; and I see, as clearly as he does, the extreme importance of the subject. What he saw and declared _ought_ to be said, I will say. Before concluding this chapter, let me state distinctly, that I by no means agree with Malthus and other political economists in believing, that, at this moment, there is an actual excess of population in any country (China perhaps excepted) in the known world. I believe that there is more than enough land in every country of Europe to support, in perfect comfort, all its present inhabitants. That they _are_ not supported in comfort, is, in my opinion, attributable, not to overpopulation, but to mal-government. Monopolies favour the rich, taxes oppress the poor, commercial rivalry grinds its victims to the dust. To such causes as these, and not to overpopulation, _at the time being_, is the mass of distress (felt more or less over the civilized world) to be attributed. Thus, if the enemies of reform would but let us alone, we might long postpone to other and more important discussions, this population question. But they will not. They _force_ it upon us. And though it might have evinced want of judgment to obtrude it unnecessarily or prematurely on the public, it would betray cowardice to evade it now, when thrust upon us.