64 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



have always been noted for the slowness of their increase, and 

 that, too, while occupying a soil and climate capable of afford- 

 ing sustenance many hundred fold greater than their demands. 

 The tribes of the Pacific and South Sea islands are conspicu- 

 ously prolific. In Great Britain and Ireland the population 

 doubless in about sixty-five years. In Great Britain alone it 

 doubles in about fifty years. In France not very dissimilarly 

 situated on the whole, at the present rate of increase, it would 

 require two hundred and seventy-seven years to double the 

 population. In the United States, deducting the increase from 

 immigration, the population doubles in about thirty years. 

 The variation would be found doubtless quite as great if we 

 should compare other countries. 



But while we can deduce no law of increase, nature is by 

 no means lawless or capricious either here or elsewhere. 

 There is unquestionably a grand general principle governing 

 this whole matter and beautiful in its adaptations; a law 

 which is self-adjusting and to which men may readily adapt 

 themselves without arbitrary artificial restraints. It is that 

 the increase of popidatton, is inversely as the advance of civiliza- 

 tion ; or that the fecundity diminishes as the mental and moral 

 development increases. There are some apparent exceptions, 

 as among the hunter and, to a less extent, the pastoral tribes; 

 but, as a whole, we shall find that it holds good. It is doubt- 

 less involved in the great law before alluded to, which evinces 

 itself in the fact that the lower the order of animal life, the 

 more prolific. 



Manifestations of this law are obvious in the fact that the 

 greatest fecundity in our times is found among the drudges of 

 civilization — the former slaves of our Southern States and the 

 lower classes of tailors in Europe and among the immigrants 

 to America. Here the animal prevails over the rational nearly 

 to its utmost; matter almost entirely subordinates mind. There 

 is little of self-respect and little of hope. To talk of self- 

 restraint to persons so conditioned, yet where such a remedy 



