at they
produced was a striking example to the world of the wisdom and virtue
of saving.[6] Not the least of the services which Christian teaching
rendered in the domain of production was its insistence upon the
dominical repose.[7]

[Footnote 1: See Sabatier, _L'Eglise et le Travail manuel_, and
Antoine, _Cours d'Economie sociale_, p. 159.]

[Footnote 2: Levasseur, _Histoire des Classes ouvrieres en France_,
vol. i. pp. 182-3.]

[Footnote 3: _Reg. St. Ben._, c. 48.]

[Footnote 4: List, _National System of Political Economy_, ch. 6.]

[Footnote 5: Janssen, _History of the German People_, vol. ii. p. 2.]

[Footnote 6: _Dublin Review_, N.S., vol. vi. p. 365; see Goyau,
_Autour du Catholicisme sociale_, vol. ii. pp. 79-118; Gasquet, _Henry
VIII. and the English Monasteries_, vol. ii. p. 495.]

[Footnote 7: _Dublin Review_, vol. xxxiii. p. 305. See Goyau, _Autour
du Catholicisme sociale_, vol. ii. pp. 93 _et seq._]

The importance which the scholastics attached to an extended and
widespread production is evidenced by their attitude towards the
growth of the population. The fear of over-population does not
appear to have occurred to the writers of the Middle Ages;[1] on
the contrary, a rapidly increasing population was considered a great
blessing for a country.[2] This attitude towards the question of
population did not arise merely from the fact that Europe was very
sparsely populated in the Middle Ages, as modern research has proved
that the density of population was much greater than is generally
supposed.[3]

[Footnote 1: Brants, _op. cit._, p. 235, quoting Sinigaglia, _La
Teoria Economica della Populazione in Italia_, Archivio Giuridico,
Bologna, 1881.]

[Footnote 2: _Catholic Encyclopaedia_, art. 'Population.' Brants draws
attention to the interesting fact that a germ of Malthusianism is to
be found in the much-discussed _Songe du Vergier_, book ii. chaps.
297-98, and Franciscus Patricius de Senis, writing at the end of
the fifteenth century, recommends emigration as the remedy against
over-population (_De Institutione Reipublicae_, ix.).]

[Footnote 3: Dureau de la Malle, 'Memoire sur la Population de la
France au xiv^e Siecle,' _Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres_, vol. xiv. p. 36.]

The mediaeval attitude towards population was founded upon the sanctity
of marriage and the respect for human life. The utterances of Aquinas
on the subject of matrimony show his keen appreciation o