Human Physiology. 



to each other, and wives are to obey their husbands in the 

 Lord. The best writers on moral theology teach that the use 

 of marriage is not for appetite, nor for pleasure merely, or 

 chiefly ; that excess is like gluttony ; that marriage requires the 

 consent of both parties, and must be interior, exterior, free, ab- 

 solute, and made with knowledge, and it is inferrable that the 

 payment of the marriage debt should be accompanied with the 

 same conditions; that the demand must be serious, at suit- 

 able periods, and for proper motives. If dangerous to the 

 health of the wife or child, as during pregnancy and nursing, it 

 cannot be demanded, nor in drunkenness, as it may inflict a 

 hereditary predisposition, or even idiocy upon the offspring. 

 In a word, the rules of religion are always those ot sound com- 

 mon sense, and a true science. No law of God in His Word 

 can ever contradict the law of God in His Works. What we 

 have to do is to rightly read both revelations. 



The population question has agitated the minds of English- 

 men since the days of Malthus ; but population has increased 

 .in its .customary ratio notwithstanding, and England is less 

 crowded, compared with its means of subsistence, than it was 

 twenty years ago. A manufacturing and commercial country, 

 drawing its supplies from other, and even very distant regions, 

 may sustain an almost unlimited population. In an agricul- 

 tural country like Ireland the population has a limit, but such 

 limit has probably never been reached. A large portion of the 

 produce of Ireland is exported to pay the rent. If the land 

 were owned by those who cultivated it, or if the owners lived 

 and spent their incomes in Ireland, the country could sustain a 

 much larger population. If England and Ireland were culti- 

 vated in the best manner, and the land devoted to hops, bar- 

 ley for malt, and grains for distillation were used for raising 

 food for men, the population might be largely increased, with- 

 out food imports. If the land used to feed cattle were used 

 to feed men that is, if the population lived on a vegetable and 



