betrothed parties was carried too far,' and 'the betrothed became a mother before she was a wife.' We quit this painful phase of peasant proprietorship with the observation that, notwithstanding a still wider diffusion of property and of moral qualities which, according to Mr. Laing, that diffusion is calculated to engender, 8.38[8] per cent. of the live children born in Norway between 1866 and 1870 were born out of wedlock, the corresponding proportion in 1836 having been 7.07 per cent. It is natural to find, under these circumstances, that the marriage rate was 6.84 per 1000 of the population in 1866-75 against 7.31 per 1000 between 1834 and 1836, with a fractional decrease of the total number of births in the former period, the average per family remaining slightly over four. The ancient Allodial Right and the happy social system based upon it, Mr. Laing found jealously guarded by the yeomanry, 'who have not only the legislative power and the election of the Storthing' (or Parliament) 'almost entirely in their own hands, but also the whole civil business of the community.' He may, therefore, well say, without fear of contradiction, that 'the Norwegian people enjoy a greater share of liberty, have the framing and administering of their own laws more entirely in their own hands, than any European nation of the present time;' and, further, that 'it is not a little extraordinary that almost the only result' of the universal delirium of 1790,[9] 'which approaches in reality to the theories of that period, has been the Norwegian Constitution.'