MR. HOWORTH, it seems to me, has not chosen a very favourable time for so strongly maintaining the truth of Mr. Doubleday's theory, seeing that the recent census has shown that the population of England has increased not only with an increment absolutely greater than that shown by any previous census, but also—and this is still more important—with an increase proportionally greater than during the last decade. Yet never, surely, has luxury been so prevalent among us as during these last ten years. The evidence thus afforded will perhaps be deemed more conclusive than the argument of Mr. J. S. Mill, who invites those who may be inclined to accept Mr. Doubleday's opinions “to look through a volume of the Peerage, and observe the enormous families almost universal in that class; or call to mind the large families of the English clergy, and generally of the middle classes of England” (“Principles of Political Economy,” bk. 1, ch. x., note). Mr. Howorth, however, states that “the classes among us who teem with children are not the well-to-do and the comfortable.” If this statement were absolutely true, it would be of little service to Mr. Howorth, since it is in the classes referred to that prudential restraint acts with the greatest force, and the effects of this restraint, both direct and indirect, would have to be taken into account before his conclusion could be admitted. He further asserts that “a state of debility of the population induces fertility,” since “where mortality is the greatest there is much the greatest fecundity.” That births should be most numerous where the mortality is greatest, requires for its explanation no hypothesis respecting the fertilising power of debility. “The fact,” says Malthus, “may be accounted for without resorting to so strange a supposition as that the fruitfulness of women should vary inversely as their health. . . . When a, great mortality takes place, a proportional number of births immediately ensues, owing both to the greater number of yearly marriages from the increased demand for labour, and the greater fecundity of each marriage from being contracted at an earlier, and naturally more prolific, age” (vol. i., pp. 472, 473, 5th edit.). Man's reproductive power is always in civilised life more or less checked, and ready to be more or less exercised in proportion to the lessening by death of the restraining pressure.