In the course of numerous examples of the effects of over-population upon the condition of the masses in various countries, Malthus gives a striking example of the appalling misery to which even industrious laborers were reduced in densely-peopled China. He quotes the words of a Jesuit missionary, who stated that a Chinaman "will pass whole days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in water, and in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and to drink the insipid water in which it is boiled." This is obviously an exaggeration, since it would be impossible to maintain life under such conditions; but it serves to show the deplorable state to which the workers may be reduced by excessive population. It is unnecessary here to follow Malthus through his exhaustive survey of the condition of nations affected by over-population in various stages of the world's history. Our purpose is rather to furnish an indication of the principle than to reproduce in detail the observations upon which it is based. The most concise formula in which the theory of Malthus has been expressed is as follows: "That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence." CHAPTER II. THE REMEDY: OLD AND NEW. The principle stated at the end of the preceding chapter being assumed, the question arises: How can the evils caused by the constant tendency towards over-population be prevented? The method which Mr. Malthus proposed was the substitution of the prudential (or birth-restricting) for the positive (or life-destroying) check. He advised late marriage and celibacy as the most moral means of restraining population. He urged that men should wait until they were in a position to provide for a family before undertaking the responsibilities consequent upon the marriage state. He says: "Our obligation not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being able to support our children will appear to deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an attention to these obligations is of more effect in the prevention of misery than all the other virtues combined; and that if, in violation of this duty, it was the general custom to follow the first impulse of nature, and marry at the age of puberty, the universal prevalence of every known virtue in the greatest conceivable degree would fail of rescuing society from the most wretched and deplorable state of want, and all the diseases and famines which usually accompany it." This, then, was the prudential check advocated by Malthus; but since his time it has been perceived that his remedy is in itself the cause of evils scarcely less terrible than those which it was designed to remove. Further, it is one which, in the vast majority of cases, could not possibly be put into practice; for it assumes a power of mental control over the sexual passion which exists in a comparatively small number of individuals.