se of an increased degree of human fecundity."

To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short, Dr
Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not
dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in
establishing it he overturns his own theory. If men breed in proportion
to their poverty, as he tells us here,--and at the same time breed
in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,--it
necessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse
proportion to their numbers. Inverse proportion, indeed, as we have
shown, is not the phrase which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To
speak more correctly, it follows, from his own positions, that, if one
population be thinner than another, it will also be poorer. Is this the
fact? Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already
quoted, that in the United States the population is four to a square
mile, and the fecundity 5.22 to a marriage, and that in Russia the
population is twenty-three to a square mile, and the fecundity 4.94 to
a marriage. Is the North American labourer poorer than the Russian boor?
If not, what becomes of Mr Sadler's argument?

The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him, is that
which he has kept for the last. It is derived from the registers of the
English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says truly, are the class with
respect to whom we possess the most accurate statistical information.

"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and recorded ever
since the order has existed in the country. For several centuries past,
the addition to it of a single individual has been a matter of public
interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal
dignity merely, but important privileges, and being almost always
identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to
it are kept with the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and
expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant connections, as
conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there
are few disputes concerning successions to this rank, but such as go
back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages, births, and
deaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to
those personally interested, but have been published periodically, and,
consequently, subject to perpetual correction and revisio