w of
Europe. There are no doubt conflicting possibilities which I need
not stop to discuss.

The check to over-population mainly advocated by Malthus is a
prudential delay in the time of marriage; but the practice of such a
doctrine would assuredly be limited, and if limited it would be most
prejudicial to the race, as I have pointed out in _Hereditary Genius_,
but may be permitted to do so again. The doctrine would only be
followed by the prudent and self-denying; it would be neglected by
the impulsive and self-seeking. Those whose race we especially want
to have, would leave few descendants, while those whose race we
especially want to be quit of, would crowd the vacant space with
their progeny, and the strain of population would thenceforward be
just as pressing as before. There would have been a little relief
during one or two generations, but no permanent increase of the
general happiness, while the race of the nation would have
deteriorated. The practical application of the doctrine of deferred
marriage would therefore lead indirectly to most mischievous results,
that were overlooked owing to the neglect of considerations bearing
on race. While criticising the main conclusion to which Malthus came,
I must take the opportunity of paying my humble tribute of admiration
to his great and original work, which seems to me like the rise of
a morning star before a day of free social investigation. There is
nothing whatever in his book that would be in the least offensive to
this generation, but he wrote in advance of his time and consequently
roused virulent attacks, notably from his fellow-clergymen, whose
doctrinaire notions upon the paternal dispensation of the world were
rudely shocked.

The misery check, as Malthus called all those influences that are
not prudential, is an ugly phrase not fully justified. It no doubt
includes death through inadequate food and shelter, through
pestilence from overcrowding, through war, and the like; but it also
includes many causes that do not deserve so hard a name. Population
decays under conditions that cannot be charged to the presence or
absence of misery, in the common sense of the word. These exist when
native races disappear before the presence of the incoming white man,
when after making the fullest allowances for imported disease, for
brandy drinking, and other assignable causes, there is always a
large residuum of effect not clearly accounted for. It is certainly
not wh