The only remaining portion of Europe which has furnished answers to the Commissioners’ questions is European Turkey; with respect to which it may be enough to say, that the only charitable institutions mentioned in the return are religious establishments and khans, in which vagrants are allowed to remain a few days, and receive food; and schools attached to the mosques, in which children of every description receive gratuitous instruction in reading and writing. ABSENCE OF SURPLUS POPULATION. [Sidenote: General absence, in the countries not subject to compulsory relief, of a surplus population.] One of the most striking circumstances connected with the countries which we have last considered is the accuracy with which the population seems to be regulated with reference to the demand for labour. In the ill-administered parts of England there is in general no approach to any such regulation. That sort of population which, from our familiarity with it, has acquired the technical name of a surplus population, not only continues stagnant in places where its services are no longer required, but often springs up and increases without any increase of the means of profitable employment. The parochial returns, forming part B. of this Appendix, are full of complaints of a want of labourers in one parish, and of an over-supply in another; without any tendency of the redundancy to supply the deficiency. In time, of course, the deficient parish is filled up by natural increase; but in the mean time the population of the redundant parish does not seem to diminish. In general, indeed, it goes on increasing with unchecked rapidity, until, in the worst administered portions of the kingdom, a state of things has arisen, of which the cure is so difficult, that nothing but the certainty of absolute and almost immediate ruin from its increase, or even from its continuance, would have induced the proprietors to encounter the dangers of the remedy. Nothing like this, indeed, exists in any of the countries affording compulsory relief, except Berne, which have given us returns. But they provide against its occurrence, as we have already observed, by subjecting the labouring classes, indeed all classes except the opulent, to strict regulation and control, by restraining their marriages, forcing them to take service, and prohibiting their change of abode unless they have the consent of the commune in which they wish to settle. By a vigilant exertion of these means, the population of the north of Europe and Germany seems in general to be proportioned to the means of employment and subsistence; but in the countries which have not adopted the compulsory system the same results are produced without interference or restriction. Complaints are often made in the different returns of the idleness, the drunkenness, and the improvidence of the labouring classes, but never of their disproportionate number. Condition of the labouring classes.