mechanics, blacksmiths, engineers, and overlookers, are paid about half as much again in 1881 as in 1841. The wages of domestic servants have more than doubled the last forty years. There have been no associations or unions, no strikes; the advance has come naturally and inevitably from the growing wealth and prosperity of the country. Not only does the labouringman get a higher scale of wages, but the money he receives will buy him a larger quantity of bread, tea, sugar, clothing, &c., than it would have done forty years ago. In fact, without the material progress caused by inventions, and the capital and skill employed in production and distribution, it would not have been possible to house, feed, and clothe the millions of our steadily increasing population. In 1798 Malthus published his celebrated "Essay on Population," the leading principle of which is, that as the means of sustenance increase only in the arithmetical ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., the population Ancreases in the geometrical ratio of 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. ; and that, consequently, society is doomed to a perpetual struggle to find food equal to the number of its mouths. We need not go into his remedies,*there is the fact that this book was written because of the seeming impossibility of feeding the then existing population; yet the population of the United Kingdom in 1801 was only 15,902,322, and solely by the increased productive power of machinery, we are able to maintain, in a more healthy and comfortable manner, a population of 85,289,950, in 1882. From various writers we hear that the "poverty" of our time is mainly due to land monopoly,