igo NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



the Netherlands have extensive and populous posses- 

 sions beyond sea, yet the emigration has always been 

 on a moderate scale. With a larger population than 

 Scotland, Holland's emigration has amounted only to 

 a fractional part of that of the former country, while 

 her expanding labour market has, as a rule, called for 

 a proportionally larger supply of labour, or, in other 

 words, for a proportionally greater addition to her 

 population. That the last decade has been singularly 

 prosperous is evidenced both by the larger natural 

 increase of 16'1 per cent., and by the larger actual 

 increase of 14'6 per cent. 



To the table giving the marriage, birth, and death 

 rates I have added the vital statistics of the decade 

 1854-63, to exhibit more fully the fluctuation of 

 the marriage-rate as affected by the state of the 

 labour market and also by a declining death-rate. 

 There cannot be a doubt that where it is not caused 

 by a pestilential mortality, or by an increased emigra- 

 tion, a heightened marriage-rate signifies a greater 

 degree of prosperity. As in the two decades beginning 

 with the years 1854 and 1864 the variation of the 

 death-rate was inappreciable, and as the average 

 annual marriage-rate per 10,000 persons fell from 

 79 marriages in the first to 73 in the second, the 

 fewer marriages in the latter decade must have 

 been owing to a lessened ability on the part of the 

 people to marry. 



But it will be observed that the birth-rate in the 

 second decade was considerably higher than in the 



