he proceeds to execute his contract.

But there is a third which is contained in the manner of his action, and which has an immense effect on the quality of the article purchased. That element is will, temper of mind, a mental and moral force which governs all the work performed and determines to no small extent its value. Something similar is exhibited in a horse. There is the generous and eager horse, and there is the lazy and the shirking horse. There are means which often overcome this temper, but they are inapplicable to free men. But even in a horse, a shirking and lazy temper lowers his price. How to act upon the will is incomparably more difficult in the case of a man than in that of a horse. The laziness of an individual workman may be more easily dealt with. He is the last to be engaged and the first to be discharged. But the temper of ablebodied, well-trained and, if they choose, energetic workmen, associated together in great numbers, who deliberately resolve not to work well, gives a character to the labour market which belongs to none other. It corrupts the nature of the article bought. It introduces uncertainty into the purchase. The employer knows not what he is buying, and a worse and more mischievous feature in any purchase cannot easily be conceived. The hirer seeks labour which is efficient. He is sure of the strength and intelligence of the men hired, but their perverted will may injure the quality and quantity of their work, and may wrong him severely in the character of the article which he had a right to expect he was buying. This peculiarity of the labour market gives rise to events and dangers which will have to be considered later.

Another and most embarrassing peculiarity distinguishes this market of labour. The regulation of the supply presents exceptional difficulties. In the case of ordinary commodities, the supply adjusts itself easily to the expected demand. Production is carried on with a distinct reference to such a calculation. If an error has been committed, and the supply is greater than can be disposed of at the natural price, sellers accept a sacrifice, and the supply is carried away by increased demand at a lower price. The market is cleared and production makes a fresh start upon new computations. It is wholly otherwise with the market for labourers. The providing of the supply has but a remote connection with the state of the market and its demand. Marriages and births occur many years before the young labourers are qualified to be offered for hire. They may have been born under a state of industry and trade entirely different from that which they find when they offer themselves for employment. If they are in excess they cannot be permanently got rid of by diminution of price; depressed wages may generate formidable and distressing consequences. The lives of human beings may be at stake. The workhouses, the tables of out-door relief, the records of sickness and death, bear witness to the fearful effects which excess of supply can here create.

Further, the regulation of the supply falls upon the most uneducated as well as the largest class of the population, upon those who are least able to estimate beforehand the course which demand for labour is likely to take. Ordinary producers, men of high and cultivated intelligence, are guided by the probabilities of the immediate future, yet even they may fall into

grievous error, and a long commercial depression with over-stocked markets, low profits and shut up works may then be the inevitable punishment. On the other hand the working classes multiply marriages when trade is brisk; yet fluctuations of trade from countless causes may reduce demand, or even sweep it away altogether. The successful competition of foreign countries in what are called third markets might throw tens of thousands of English labourers out of employment, and ruin the future of innumerable young children lately added to the supply. The vaster and the more complicated the trade of a nation becomes, the more it embraces the whole globe, the greater are the uncertainties which overhang it, the more difficult is the adjustment of the supply of labour to demand, a supply which begins with infancy to a demand most hard to estimate for a distant future.

The problem of regulating the supply of labourers is further encumbered with a difficulty of the most formidable kind. That problem is closely connected with the fundamental fact of all animal life. All animals, and not man only, have the power of multiplying their numbers beyond the means of subsistence, and their tendency is to exert this power, and thereby to involve themselves in distressing consequences. It cannot be doubted that nature keeps the numbers of animals in harmony with her power of maintaining them by actual destruction of their excess. The locusts and the blighting flies appear in myriads at times, pass through a brief existence, and perish. Violent drought or violent rain are equally fatal to larger animals. The difficulty of procuring food for many of their young

is found insuperable. More are born than can be

reared.

Man falls under this universal law precisely as all other animals. Mr Malthus drew the attention of the world to this cardinal truth in his famous "Essay on Population." He thereby rendered a most valuable service to humanity, and yet encountered in many quarters reproaches of the most virulent kind. He was charged with having brought the ordinances of the Creator into discredit. God never gave children, it was cried, without giving also the means of supporting them; to discourage marriage was to dishonour a divine institution and to compromise the happiness of mankind. Yet Mr Malthus had only proclaimed a fact as certain and as common-place as the fact that a man dropped in midocean must infallibly sink and be drowned.

In the case of man, under the expression subsistence, must be included, besides food, shelter, resource against disease, and other necessaries for living. Malthus showed that in the United States population, in certain parts, doubled itself in twenty-five years; and then he framed a definite law which declared that food grew in arithmetical, and population, in respect of its tendency, in geometrical proportion. At such a rate of increase, human beings might be accumulated in a brief time beyond the ability of the earth to give them standing room. Some forces manifestly interfere with this power of human beings to multiply. Nature opposes to it positive, or actual checks; man himself others called prevention. Famines, fevers, deaths of children from want and misery, absence of the means of fighting disease, potato-rots, and countless other physical forces

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fight against and overcome the capacity to increase, and beat down the population into correspondence with the physical conditions of the world. Man himself takes part in the struggle. Ancient nations exposed unneeded infants on the mountain side; eastern nations drop them into lakes; and who can tell how many are the contrivances by which even in England superfluous and troublesome children are got rid of? Other resources derived from man's moral nature are brought to bear on the battle against excess of population. The tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence is discerned, and man does what it is beyond the ability of animals to do. He postpones marriage for a time, until the prospect of being able to support a family fairly dawns upon his mind. This tendency gathers great strength in proportion as young men and women belong to classes that are well off for comfort and social position; fathers counsel prudence, and refuse to help a reckless marriage. In some countries, as in France, the whole population expands slowly, if at all-a fact of enormous economical value to that thriftiest of nations, however it may be explained. In other lands the law interferes with marriage by positive regulations; it forbids marriage until a certain amount of property is exhibited. Habit in others appoints a late age for marriage.

On the other hand legislation may produce mischievous effects on the numbers, and consequently on the well-being of a population. The Poor Law of former days furnishes a striking instance of this misdirected but injurious interferénce of the law. The Poor Law distributed to every man who was unable to maintain