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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
THE 
 
 LAW OF POPULATION 
 
 ITS CONSEQUENCES, 
 
 AND 
 
 $ts mhi0 wp0n pitman Conirxtci 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE/J3ESANT. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 28, STONECUTTEB STREET, E.C. ^ 
 
LONDON ! 
 
 PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES ERADLAUGH, 
 28, .STONECUTTER STREET, B.C. 
 
TO THE 
 
 POOR 
 
 IN GREAT CITIES AND AGRICULTURAL DISTRICTS, 
 DWELLERS IN STIFLING COURT OR CROWDED HOVEL,. 
 
 IN THE HOPE 
 
 THAT IT MAY POINT OUT A PATH FROM POVERTY, 
 AND MAY MAKE EASIER THE LIFE OF BRITISH MOTHERS, 
 
 TO THEM 
 I DEDICATE THIS ESSAY 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 THE law of population first laid down in this country by the 
 Rev. T. R. Malthus in his great work, entitled "The 
 Principle of Population," has long been known to every 
 student, and accepted by every thinker. It is, however, 
 but very recently that this question has become ventilated 
 among the many, instead of being discussed only by the few. 
 Acknowledged as an axiom by the naturalist and by 
 the political economist, the law of population has never 
 been appreciated by the mass of the people. The free press \J 
 pioneers of the last generation, Richard Carlile, James 
 Watson, Robert Dale Owen these men had seen its impor- 
 tance and had endeavoured, by cheap publications dealing 
 with it from its practical side, to arouse attention and to in- 
 struct those for whom they worked. But the lesson fell on 
 stony ground and passed almost unheeded ; it would, per- 
 haps, be fairer to say that the fierce political conflicts of the v 
 time threw all other questions into a comparative shade ; 
 nor must the strong prejudice against Malthus be forgotten 
 the prejudice which regarded him as a hard, cold theorist, who 
 wrote in the interest of the richer classes, and would deny to the 
 poor man the comfort of wife and home. The books issued 
 at this period such as Carlile's " Every Woman's Book," 
 Knowlton's " Fruits of Philosophy," R. D. Owen's " Moral ' 
 Physiology" passed unchallenged by authority, but obtained 
 only a limited circulation ; here and there they did their 
 work, and the result was seen in the greater comfort and 
 respectability of the families who took advantage of their 
 teachings, but the great mass of the people went on in their 
 ignorance and their ever-increasing poverty, conscious tha- v 
 mouths multiply more rajDJdly than wages.but dimly supposing 
 
4 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 that Providence was the responsible agent, and that where 
 " God sends mouths " he ought to " send meat." One or two 
 recognised advocates for the people did not forget the social 
 side of the work which they had inherited; men like Austin 
 Holyoake and Charles Bradlaugh, carrying on the struggle 
 of Carlile and Watson, were not careless of this vital portion 
 of it, and Mr. Holyoake's " Large and Small Families," and 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's declaration that the National Reformer was 
 to be " Malthusian " in its political economy, proved that 
 these two, at least, were sound on this scarcely regarded 
 branch of social science. 
 
 Now, all has changed; Malthusianism has become one of 
 the " burning questions " of the day, and a low-priced work, 
 stating clearly the outlines of the subject, has become a 
 necessity. Our paternal authorities, like their predecessors, 
 entertain a horror of cheap knowledge, but they will have to 
 assent to the circulation of cheap information on social 
 science, as those who went before them were compelled to 
 tacitly assent to cheap information touching kings and 
 priests. 
 
 The law of population, tersely stated, is " there is a 
 tendency in all animated existence to increase faster than the 
 means of subsistence." Nature produces more life than she 
 can support, and the superabundant life is kept down by the 
 want of food. Malthus put the law thus : " The constant 
 tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourish- 
 ment prepared for it/' " It is observed by Dr. Franklin," 
 he writes, " that there is no bound to the prolific nature of 
 plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and 
 interfering with each other's means of subsistence. . . . 
 Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, Nature has 
 scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and 
 liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the 
 room and the nourishment necessary to rear them." Popu- 
 lation," Malthus teaches, " when unchecked, goes on doubling 
 itself every twenty-five years ; " " in the northern States of 
 America, where the means of subsistence have been more 
 ample, the manners of the people more pure, and the checks 
 to early marriages fewer than in any of the modern States 
 of Europe, the population has been found to double itself, 
 for above a century and a half successively, in less than 
 twenty-five years. . . In the back settlements, where the 
 sole employment is agriculture, and vicious customs and 
 unwholesome occupations are little known, the population 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 5 
 
 has been found to double itself in fifteen years. Even this 
 extraordinary rate of increase is probably short of the utmost 
 power of population." 
 
 The " power of increase " of the human species, according 
 to John Stuart Mill, "is indefinite, and the actual multi- 
 plication would be extraordinarily rapid, if the power were 
 exercised to the utmost. It never is exercised to the 
 utmost, and yet, in the most favourable circumstances known 
 to exist, which are those of a fertile region colonized from 
 an industrious and civilized community, population has con- 
 tinued for several generations, independently of fresh immi- 
 gration, to double itself in not much more than twenty 
 years. ... It is a very low estimate of the capacity of in- 
 crease, if we only assume that in a good sanitary condition 
 of the people, each generation may be double the number 
 of the generation which preceded it." James Mill wrote : 
 " That population therefore has such a tendency to increase 
 as would enable it to double itself in a small number of 
 years, is a proposition resting on the strongest evidence, 
 which nothing that deserves the name of evidence has been 
 brought on the other side to oppose." 
 
 Mr. McCulloch tells us that " it has been established 
 beyond all question that the population of some of the 
 states of North America, after making due allowance for 
 immigration, has continued to double for a century past in 
 so short a period as twenty, or at most five-and-twenty years." 
 M. Moreau de Jonnes gives us the following table of the 
 time in which the population of each of the under-mentioned 
 countries would double itself : 
 
 Turkey would take ... 
 
 . 555 years 
 
 Switzerland 
 
 . 227 
 
 France 
 
 138 
 
 Spam 
 Holland 
 Germany 
 
 1 06 
 
 100 
 
 76 
 
 Russia 
 
 43 
 
 England 
 
 43 
 
 United States 
 
 25 
 
 (Without reckoning immigrants.) 
 
 We shall take but a narrow view of the law of population 
 if- we confine ourselves exclusively to human beings. Man 
 is but the highest in the animal kingdom, not a creature 
 apart from it, and the law of population runs through the 
 
6 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 animal and the vegetable worlds. To take the commonest 
 illustration : the horse is but a slowly breeding animal, pro- 
 ducing but one at a birth, and that at considerable intervals 
 of time ; yet how small a proportion of the horses of a 
 country are either stallions or brood mares ; the reproductive 
 organs of the colt are destroyed in the enormous majority of 
 those born, and, nevertheless, our production of horses 
 suffices for the vast needs of our commercial and luxurious 
 classes. Darwin, in his " Origin of Species," writes : 
 " There is no exception to the rule that every organic being 
 naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, 
 the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single 
 pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five 
 years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would 
 literally not be standing room for his progeny. Linnaeus has 
 calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds 
 and there is no plant so unproductive as this and their 
 seedlings next year produced two and so on, then in 
 twenty years there would be a million plants. The elephant 
 is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I 
 have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum 
 rate of natural increase ; it will be under the mark to assume 
 that it breeds when thirty years old, and goes on breeding 
 till ninety years old, bringing forth three pair of young in 
 this interval ; if this be so, at the end of the fifth century 
 there would be alive 15,000,000 elephants, descended from 
 the first pair. But we have better evidence on this subject 
 than mere theoretical calculations, namely, the numerous 
 recorded cases of the astonishingly rapid increase of various 
 animals in a state of nature, when circumstances have been 
 favourable to them during two or three following seasons. 
 Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals 
 of many kinds which have run wild in many parts of the 
 world ; if the statements of the rate of increase of slow- 
 breeding cattle and horses in South America, and latterly in 
 Australia, had not been well authenticated, they would have 
 been incredible. So it is with plants ; cases could be given 
 of introduced plants which have become common through- 
 out whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several 
 of the plants, such as the cardoon and a tall thistle, now 
 most numerous over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing 
 square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of all other 
 plants, have been introduced from Europe ; and there are 
 plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 7 
 
 from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, which have been im- 
 ported from ^ America since its discovery. In such cases, 
 and endless instances could be given, no one supposes that 
 the fertility of these animals or plants has been suddenly 
 and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The 
 obvious explanation is that the conditions of life have been 
 very favourable, and that there has consequently been less 
 destruction of the old and young, and that nearly all the 
 young have been enabled to breed. In such cases the 
 geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails 
 to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid 
 increase and wide diffusion of naturalized productions in 
 their new homes. In a state of nature almost every plant 
 produces seed, and amongst animals there are very few 
 which do not annually pair. Hence, we may confidently 
 assert that all plants and animals are tending to increase at 
 a geometrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every 
 station in which they could anyhow exist, and that the 
 geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by 
 destruction at some period of life." 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill also remarks : " The power of 
 multiplication inherent in all organic life may be regarded 
 as infinite. There is no species of vegetable or animal, 
 which, if the earth were entirely abandoned to it, and to the 
 things on which it feeds, would not in a small number of years 
 overspread every region of the globe of which the climate 
 was compatible with its existence." 
 
 The rapid multiplication of rabbits in Australia has lately 
 given a startling instance of reproductive power : a number 
 of rabbits were taken over and let loose ; the district was 
 thinly peopled, so they were not shot down to any great 
 extent ; their natural enemies, the hawks, weasels, &c., that 
 prey on their young in England, were not taken over with 
 them ; food was abundant, and there was no check to keep 
 them back : the consequence was that whole districts were 
 overrun by them, and the farmers were at their wits' end to 
 save their crops from the swarming rodents. In France, 
 again, owing to the wholesale destruction of small birds, 
 there was a perfect plague of insects, and the inhabitants of 
 many districts have striven to import birds, so as to prevent 
 the insects from practically destroying the vegetation. 
 
 While in the vegetable and animal kingdoms the rapidity 
 of the increase is generally far greater than in the human 
 race, we have yet seen how rapidly man has been found to 
 
8 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 increase where the circumstances surrounding him were 
 favourable to vigorous life. We have never yet, however, 
 seen the full power of reproduction among mankind ; the 
 increase of population in America " falls very far short," says 
 the author of the " Elements of Social Science," " of the 
 possible rate of increase, as is seen by the short average of 
 life in America, and by the large amount of the reproductive 
 power which, even in that country, is lost from celibacy and 
 
 prostitution The capacity of increase in the 
 
 human race, as in all other organized beings, is, in fact, 
 boundless and immeasurable." 
 
 But while animated existence increases thus rapidly, no 
 such swift multiplication can be secured of the means of 
 subsistence. The means of subsistence of vegetable life 
 are strictly limited in quantity ; the amount obtainable from 
 the soil may be increased by manure, by careful tillage, by 
 rotation of crops, by improved methods of husbandry, but 
 none the less is this amount limitable, while there is no limit 
 to the power of animal life-production ; if the soil and air 
 and light could be indefinitely stretched, vegetable life would 
 still suffice without effort to clothe the increased surface. 
 But since the size of the globe inexorably limits the amount 
 of vegetable produce possible of growth, the limited 
 vegetable produce must, in its turn, limit the amount of 
 animal life which can be sustained. While increased know- 
 ledge, skill and care may augment the means of subsistence 
 obtainable from the earth, yet animal life multiplies more 
 rapidly than can its food. As is truly said by the author 
 just quoted : " From a consideration of the law of agricul- 
 tural industry, and an estimate of the rate at which the 
 means of subsistence could be increased in old countries, 
 even under the most favourable circumstances, it may be in- 
 ferred with certainty that these means of subsistence could 
 not possibly be increased so fast as to permit population to 
 increase at its natural rate. . . Let us apply the American 
 rate of increase to the population of this country. Is it 
 conceivably possible that the population of England or any 
 old country should double itself every twenty-five years? 
 In Great Britain there are now " (the book was written many 
 years ago) " about twenty-one millions ; is it conceivable that 
 the means of subsistence could be so rapidly increased as to 
 allow these twenty-one millions to swell to forty-two millions 
 in the first twenty-five years ; to eighty-four millions in the 
 next; 168 millions in the next, c. ? The supposition is 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 9 
 
 evidently absurd. Even the rate of increase of the last fifty- 
 three years (in which time the population has doubled) 
 cannot possibly be long continued. If it were, it would in- 
 crease our population in three centuries to about 1300 
 millions ; or, in other words, to more than the total popula- 
 tion of the globe, which is estimated at about 1000 millions." 
 Wherever, then, we look throughout Nature, we find 
 proofs of the truth of the law, that "there is a tendency in 
 all animated existence to increase faster than the means of 
 subsistence." This is the law of which Miss Martineau said 
 that it could be no more upset than a law of arithmetic ; this 
 is the law which John Stuart Mill regarded " as axiomatic ;" 
 this is the law which the Lord Chief Justice designated " an 
 irrefragable truth." Controversialists may quarrel as to its 
 consequences, and may differ as to man's duty in regard to 
 them, but no controversy can arise on the law itself, any 
 more than on the sphericity of the earth. 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 ;(ijUij U. 
 
 ' 
 joubo-iq aid;. 
 
 rfj jiftiiL 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ailqblum ITS CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 IT is abundantly clear, from experience, that population 
 does not, as a general rule, increase at anything like the rate 
 spoken 'of in the preceding chapter; the earth would, long 
 ere now, have become unable to support her offspring," if 
 they had multiplied at the pace which the naturalist tells us 
 is possible ; if, for instance, all rabbits had increased in the 
 same ratio as those taken over to Australia and naturalised 
 there. Some cause must therefore be at work checking the ^^ 
 increase and preventing over-rapid multiplication, holding^' 
 the balance, in fact, roughly even between the means of 
 subsistence and the living creatures who consume them. In 
 the vegetable kingdom the checks to increase are not diffi- 
 cult to find ; every plant needs for its development suitable 
 soil, moisture, air, and light ; these are its means of sub- 
 sistence. The amount of these is limited, while the power 
 of multiplication in the vegetable is unlimited. AVhat is the 
 
IO THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 necessary consequence ? That of the myriad seeds produced 
 only a few will develop into seed-bearing plants ; each seed 
 needs a certain proportion of soil, moisture, air, light if they 
 fall round the parent stem and sprout into seedlings, they so 
 crowd each other that the weaker perish ; every gardener 
 knows that his seedlings need thinning if any are to grow 
 into useful plants, that his plantations must be thinned out, 
 if any tree is to have full development ; an overcrowded 
 plantation, an overcrowded garden-bed, gives a crop of 
 dwarfed, stunted, weak, and useless plants. These facts are 
 so commonplace that they pass continually before our eyes, 
 and the' simple inference from them is unregarded. There 
 is another check of a severe character on vegetable' increase. 
 Birds eat the seeds ; animals browse on the plants ; man uses 
 many kinds for his own support ; the wheat sown in one 
 year, not only produces the seed corn for the ensuing season, 
 but also affords so vast a multiplication as to supply the 
 world with bread ; the animal world preys on the vegetable, 
 and so is made a check which destroys the mature, as well 
 as the check of want of room and nourishment which 
 destroys the infant, growth. Out of 357 seedlings of English 
 weeds, carefully watched by Mr. Darwin, 295 were destroyed. 
 On some heaths near Farnham, in the portions enclosed 
 during ten years previously, self-sown firs were observed by 
 him springing up so closely that all could not live, while in 
 the unenclosed portions not one young tree was to be seen. 
 On close examination, Mr. Darwin found, in one square 
 yard, thirty-two little trees, no higher than the heather, one 
 with twenty-six rings of growth : the check here was the 
 browsing of cattle over the open parts of the heath. In the 
 animal kingdom the same class of checks is found : the 
 rabbit which in Australia has become an intolerable plague, 
 is kept down to a fair level in England, not because he mul- 
 tiplies less rapidly, but because the check of destruction is 
 brought to bear upon him ; food is scarcer in the more cul- 
 tivated land ; guns and traps send him to the market in 
 millions ; hawks, weasels, cats, prey upon his young ; he 
 produces life rapidly, but the check of death waits upon him 
 and keeps him down. The swift increase of plants and 
 animals under favourable circumstances, dealt with in 
 Chapter I., shows the enormous power of the destructive 
 checks which generally keep in subjection the life-producing 
 force. Once more turning to Mr. Darwin, we read : 
 " Of the many individuals of any species which are 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. II 
 
 periodically born, but a small number can survive. ... A 
 struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate 
 at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, 
 which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or 
 seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, 
 and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on 
 the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would 
 quickly become so inordinately great that no country could 
 support the product. Hence, as more individuals are 
 produced than can possibly survive, there muse in every 
 case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with 
 another of the same species, or with the individuals of 
 distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It 
 is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to 
 the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms ; for in this case 
 there can be no artificial increase of food, and no pruden- 
 tial restraint from marriage. Although some species may 
 be now increasing more or less rapidly in numbers, all 
 cannot do so, for the world would not hold them. . . . Our 
 familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think, 
 to mislead us ; we see no great destruction falling on them, * 
 and we forget that thousands are annually slaughtered for 
 food, and that in a state of nature an equal number would 
 have somehow to be disposed of. ... In looking at 
 nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing con- 
 siderations always in mind never to forget that every 
 single organic being around us may be said to be striving 
 to the utmost to increase in numbers ; that each lives by a 
 struggle at some period of its life ; that heavy destruction 
 inevitably falls either on the young or old during each 
 generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, 
 mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of 
 the species will almost instantaneously increase to any 
 amount." 
 
 If there be such vast destruction of life throughout the 
 vegetable and animal kingdoms, necessarily consequent on 
 the superabundance of life produced, is man exempt from 
 the same law ? 
 
 Malthus laid down the three following propositions, pro- 
 positions of which his book is only an amplification : 
 
 " i. Population is necessarily limited by the means of 
 subsistence. 
 
 " 2. Population invariably increases where the means of 
 
12 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 subsistence increase, unless prevented by some very power- 
 ful and obvious checks. 
 
 " 3. These checks, and the checks which repress the 
 superior power of population, and keep its effects on a 
 level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into 
 mortal restraint, vice, and misery. 
 
 " The ultimate check to population appears to be a want of 
 food, arising necessarily from the different ratios according 
 to which population and food increase. But this ultimate 
 check is never the immediate check, except in cases of 
 actual famine. The immediate check may be stated to con- 
 ^j sist in all those customs and all those diseases, which seem 
 to be generated by a scarcity of the rrieans~of subsistence ; 
 and all those causes, independent of this scarcity, whether 
 of a moral or physical nature, which tend prematurely to 
 weaken and destroy the human frame." These causes which 
 retard the growth of population by killing human beings, 
 either slowly or rapidly, are all classed together by Malthus 
 under the head of "positive " checks; they are the "natural" 
 checks to population, common alike to vegetables, to animals, 
 to man ; they are all checks of suffering, of want, of disease ; 
 they are life-destroying, anti-human, brutal, irrational. 
 
 These checks are, as might be imagined, more striking, 
 more openly repulsive, more thorough, among savage than 
 among civilized nations. War, infanticide, hardship, famine, 
 disease, murder of the aged, all these are among the positive 
 checks which keep down the increase of population 
 among savage tribes. War carries off the young men, full 
 of vigour, the warriors in their prime of life, the strongest, 
 the most robust, the most fiery those, in fact, who, from 
 their physical strength and energy would be most likely to 
 add largely to the number of the tribe. Infanticide, most 
 prevalent where means of existence are most restricted, is 
 largely practised among barbarous nations, the custom being 
 due, to a great extent, to the difficulty of providing food for 
 a large family. Hardship carries away many a child in 
 savage life : " Women," says Malthus, " obliged, by their 
 habits of living, to a constant change of places, and com- 
 pelled to an unremitting drudgery for their husbands, appear 
 to be absolutely incapable of bringing up two or three 
 children nearly of the same age. If another child be born 
 before the one above it can shift for itself, and follow its 
 mother on foot, one of the two must almost necessarily 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 13 
 
 perish from want of care." Farnine, so easily caused among 
 a primitive community, sweeps off young and old together ; 
 epidemics carry away almost a whole tribe at one swoop ; 
 the aged are often slain, or left to perish, when their feeble- 
 ness no longer permits them to add to the productive force 
 of the community. 
 
 All these miseries are the positive and natural checks 
 to population among uncivilized beings; among the 
 more civilized the checks are the same in kind although 
 more decently veiled. But the moment we come among 
 civilized nations a new factor is introduced into the 
 problem which complicates it very considerably. Hitherto 
 we have seen Nature apart from man going her own way, 
 producing and destroying without let or hindrance. But 
 when we examine civilized nations we find a new agent at 
 work ; Nature's grandest product, the brain of man, now 
 comes into play, and a new set of circumstances arises. 
 Men, women, and children, who would be doomed to death 
 in the savage state, have their lives prolonged by civilization ; 
 the sickly, whom the hardships of the savage struggle for 
 existence would kill off, are carefully tended in hospitals, 
 and saved by medical skill ; the parents, whose thread of life 
 would be cut short, are cherished on into prolonged old age ; 
 the feeble, who would be left to starve, are tenderly shielded 
 from hardship, and life's road is made the smoother for the 
 lame ; the average of life is lengthened, and more and more 
 thought is brought to bear on the causes of preventible 
 disease ; better drainage, better homes, better food, better 
 clothing, all these, among the more comfortable classes, re- 
 move many of the natural checks to population. Among 
 these nations wars become less frequent and less bloody ; 
 famines, owing to improved means of inter-communication, 
 become for a time almost impossible ; epidemics no longer 
 depopulate whole districts. In England, in A.D. 1258, no 
 less than 15,000 people were starved to death in London 
 alone ; in France, in A.D. 1348, one-third of the whole popu- 
 lation perished from the same cause; in Rome, from A.D. 
 250-265, a plague raged, that, for some time, carried off 
 daily 5,000 persons; in England, in A.D. 1506 and 1517, 
 the sweating sickness slew half the inhabitants of the large 
 towns and depopulated Oxford; in London, in A.D. 1603-4, 
 the plague killed 30,578 persons, and in A.D. 1664-5 it 
 destroyed 68,596; in Naples, in A.D. 1656, 400,000 died, 
 and in Egypt, A.D. 1792, above 800,000. These terrible 
 
14 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 epidemics and famines have ceased to sweep over Europe, 
 but for how long? This decrease of natural checks to 
 population, consequent on advancing civilization, has, un- 
 fortunately, a very dark side. Darwin has remarked : 
 " Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, 
 and the number of the species will almost instantaneously 
 increase to any amount." A signal instance of the truth of 
 this remark is now being given to us in our Indian empire 
 by the introduction there of Western civilization ; Lord Derby 
 says : " We have established there order and peace ; we 
 have done away with local wars; we have lessened the 
 ravages of pestilence ; and we do what we can and, in 
 ordinary seasons, we do it with success to mitigate the 
 effects of destitution. The result is, naturally and neces- 
 sarily, a vast increase in population ; and, if present appear- 
 ances can be trusted, we shall have in every generation a 
 larger aggregate of human beings relying upon us for help 
 in those periods of distress which must, from time to time, 
 occur in a country wholly agricultural and liable to droughts." 
 So that it appears that our civilization in India, taking away 
 the ordinary natural checks to population, and introducing 
 no others in their stead, brings about a famine which has 
 already destroyed more than 500,000 people in one Presi- 
 dency alone, and has thrown about one and a half million 
 more on charity. From this point of view civilization can 
 scarcely be regarded as an unmixed blessing, and it must 
 not be forgotten that what is happening in India now must, 
 sooner or later, happen in every country where science 
 destroys the balance of nature. 
 
 Ireland suffered thirty years ago from exactly the same 
 cause which has now touched India over-population. 
 Professor Fawcett, in his Essay on Pauperism, writes as 
 follows : " Ireland should serve to warn us of the terrible 
 misfortunes brought upon a country by an undue increase 
 of population. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 the population of that country was about two millions ; 
 maintaining for the next 150 years a smaller rate of increase 
 than is now going on in England, the two millions had 
 grown into eight millions in the year 1847. The country, 
 at this time, became so densely peopled that a considerable 
 portion of the nation could only obtain the barest subsis- 
 tence ; still nothing was done to avert the suffering that was 
 certain to ensue ; the people went on marrying with as 
 much recklessness as if they were the first settlers in a new 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 15 
 
 country possessing a boundless area of fertile land. All 
 the influence that could be exerted by religion prompted 
 the continuance of habits of utter improvidence ; the priests 
 and other ministers of religion encouraged early marriages. 
 At length there came one of those unpropitious seasons 
 which are certain occasionally to recur; the potato, the 
 staple food of the people, was diseased, and it was soon 
 found that there were more people in the country than 
 could be fed." 
 
 Here, again, we see famine as the result of improved civili- 
 zation. Turning to England, we find that our population is 
 growing rapidly enough to cause anxiety ; although there are 
 some severe checks, with which we shall deal presently, England 
 has almost doubled her population during the last fifty years. 
 In 1810 the population of England and Wales was about 
 10,000,000, and in 1860 it was about 20,000,000. "At 
 the present time," writes Professor Fawcett, " it is growing 
 at the rate of 200,000 every year, which is almost equivalent 
 to the population of the county of Northampton. If in fifty 
 years the descendants of one million become two millions, 
 it is obvious that in 100 years the two millions will have 
 become four millions, so that if the population of England 
 were eight millions in 1810 it would be 80 millions in 1960." 
 40 years hence, if we maintain the rate of increase which we 
 have kept up since the commencement of this century, some 
 40 millions of people will be crowded into our little island ; 
 yet " at the present time it is said that there is a great 
 redundancy of labour. Many who are willing to work can- 
 not find employment ; in most of our important branches 
 of industry there has been great over-production; every 
 trade and every profession is over-crowded ; for every vacant 
 clerkship there are hundreds of applications. Difficult as it 
 is for men to obtain a livelihood, it is ten times more difficult 
 for women to do so ; partly on account of unjust laws, and 
 partly because of the tyranny of society, they are shut out 
 from many employments. All that has just been stated is 
 admitted by common consent it is the topic of daily con- 
 versation, and of daily complaint and yet with the utmost 
 complacency we observe 200,000 added to our population 
 every year, and we often congratulate ourselves upon this addi- 
 tion to our numbers, as if it were an unerring sign of advancing 
 prosperity. But viewed in relation to the facts just mentioned,, 
 what does this addition to our numbers indicate ? To this 
 question only one reply can be given that in ten years' 
 
1 6 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 time, where there are a hundred now seeking employment 
 there will then be a hundred and twenty. This will not 
 apply simply to one industry, but will be the case through- 
 out the whole country. It will also further happen that in 
 ten years' time for every hundred who now require food, 
 fuel, and clothing, a similar provision will have to be made 
 for one hundred and twenty. It therefore follows that, low 
 as the general average standard of living now is, it cannot by 
 any means be obtained, unless in ten years' time the supply 
 of all the commodities of ordinary consumption can be in- 
 creased by 20 per cent., without their becoming more costly." 
 The Continually rising price of food is one of the most 
 certain signs that population in England is pressing over 
 hard on the means of subsistence ; although our own corn 
 and meat production is enormously supplemented by supplies 
 from abroad, prices are always going up, and the large 
 amount of adulteration practised in every food-supplying 
 trade is, to a great extent, an effort to equalise the supply 
 and the demand. Much of the food on which our poor live 
 is unwholesome in the extreme ; let anyone walk through 
 the poorer districts of London, or of any large town and see 
 the provisions lying for sale in the shops ; it is not only the 
 meat sold for cooking at home, the doubtful sugar, and not 
 doubtful apology for butter, the blue milk, the limp and 
 flabby vegetables but let the inquirer stop at the cook-shop 
 and inspect the fish, unpleasant both to eye and smell, in 
 itself and in its cooking ; the " faggots " the eating of which 
 killed a child the other day; the strangely shaped and 
 strangely marked lumps of what should be meat, and, after 
 an hour's walk, the searcher will not wonder at the wan, 
 haggard faces of those who support life on this untempting 
 fare. Even of this fare, however, there is not enough ; the 
 low fever so sadly common in poor districts, the " falling 
 away," the hollow cough, the premature old age, all these 
 are the results of insufficiency of food insufficiency which 
 does not kill at once, but slowly and surely starves away the 
 life. Much of the drunkenness, most common in the 
 poorest districts, has its root in lack of food ; the constantly 
 craving stomach is stilled with drink, which it would not 
 desire if it were better filled. 
 
 But the pressure on the means of subsistence has other 
 consequences than the living on unwholesome food. One 
 of the earliest signs of too rapidly increasing population is 
 the overcrowding of the poor. Just as the overcrowded 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 17 
 
 seedlings spoil each other's growth, so do the overcrowded 
 poor injure each other morally, mentally, and physically. 
 Whether we study town or country the result of our in- 
 quiries is the same the houses are too small and the 
 families are too large. Take, as illustrating this, the terrible 
 instances given by Mr. George Godwin, in his essay on 
 " Overcrowding in London." In Lincoln Court he states 
 that : " In the majority of the houses the rooms are small, 
 and the staircases are narrow and without ventilation. In 
 two of them it was admitted that more than thirty-five 
 persons lived in each ; but it would probably be nearer 
 truth to say that each house of eight rooms contains on an 
 average, including children, forty-five persons." "A child 
 was found dead in Brownlow Street, and on inquiry, it was 
 learnt that the mother, a widow, and six children slept in 
 one bed in a small room. The death of the child was 
 attributed to the bedclothes." " In a model lodging house 
 for families, a father, who with his wife and one child occu- 
 pies one room, has accommodated six of his nine other 
 children the crossway on two camp bedsteads, while three 
 elder girls, one sixteen years old, sleep on a small bedstead 
 near." " In a respectable house not far from the last, occu- 
 pied by steady artisans and others, I found that nine persons 
 slept in one of the rooms (12 feet by 14 feet), a father, 
 mother and seven children. Eleven shoemakers worked in 
 the attics ; and in each of the other five rooms there was a 
 separate family. I could quote scores of such cases of 
 overcrowding in what would seem to be decent houses." 
 " Hundreds of modern houses, built in decent suburban 
 neighbourhoods, as if for one family only, are made to con- 
 tain several. The neat external appearance of many of 
 them gives no suggestion of the dangerously-crowded state 
 of the houses. A description of one of them in Bemerton 
 Street, Caledonian Road, will be more truthful. The base- 
 ment below the level of the street contains in the front room 
 an old man and his wife ; in the back room, two lodgers ; 
 in the parlours there are a man and his wife and eight chil- 
 dren. On the first floor, a man and his wife and infant ; 
 two girls, sixteen and eighteen years of age, and occasionally 
 their mother all in the front room ; and in the small back 
 room, two women, a girl, and two young children. On the 
 second floor, a father, mother, two grown up sons, an infant, 
 and a brood of rabbits. Two women and two boys in the 
 ba<:k room make the whole population of the house thirty- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 four. In the next there were thirty-three persons similarly 
 divided." " In one small house, with staircase in the centre, 
 there were in the four small rooms on each side of it, forty 
 persons in the daytime. How many there may be at night 
 I cannot say. The atmosphere on the staircase was sicken- 
 ing." Who can wonder that the death-rate is so high in 
 large cities, and that the difference in the death-rate between 
 the rich and poor sections of the same city is appalling. In 
 Glasgow, for the quarter ending June 30, the death-rate in 
 the Blythswood division was 19 ; that in the Bridgegate and 
 Wynds division 52^. Many of the deaths in the richer 
 districts might be prevented by better sanitary arrangements 
 and wider sanitary knowledge ; the excess in the poorer dis- 
 tricts is clearly preventible with our present knowledge, and 
 preventible death is manslaughter. As might be expected, 
 the rate of infant mortality is very high in these overcrowded 
 districts; where 200 children under the age of five years die 
 among the rich, 600 die among the poor ; a young child is 
 easily killed, and the bad air and unwholesome food rapidly 
 murder the little ones ; again quoting from the Glasgow 
 report, " a large number of the deaths, bearing the relation 
 of 13^ per cent, to the total births, were those of children 
 under one year." In addition to the actual deaths caused 
 by overcrowding, we must add to the mass of misery accru- 
 ing from it, the non-fatal diseases and the general debility 
 and lack of vigorous life so common in our large centres of 
 industry. "Overcrowding," says Mr. Godwin, "means 
 want of pure air ; and want of pure air means debility, con- 
 tinued fever, death, widowhood, orphanage, pauperism, and 
 money loss to the living." Epidemics are most fatal in 
 over-crowded districts, not only because they pass so rapidly 
 from one to another, but also because the people dwelling 
 in those districts have less vitality, less vigour of resistance, 
 than those more fortunately circumstanced. " The great 
 reason," said Dr. Drysdale in the late trial in the Court of 
 Queen's Bench, "that typhus fever is so terrible a disease is 
 that people are crowded. It is impossible to have health 
 with large crowded families." Here then is one of the com- 
 monest checks to population in all great cities. Nor must 
 the results to morality be omitted in this imperfect summary 
 of the evils which grow out of over-crowding. What modesty, 
 what decency, what self-respect is possible to these men and 
 women, boys and girls, herded together, seven, ten, fourteen 
 in a room ? Only the absence of these virtues could make the 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 19 
 
 life endurable for four-and-twenty hours ; no delicacy of 
 feeling can exist there, and we cannot wonder at Dr. 
 Drysdale's sad answer in the recent trial : " They do not 
 know what modesty is." 
 
 Can there be any doubt that it is the large families so 
 common among the English poor that are the root of this 
 over-crowding. For not only would the " model-lodging 
 house" spoken of above have been less crowded if the 
 parents, instead of having ten children, had had only two, 
 but with fewer children less money would be needed for food 
 and clothing, and more could be spared for rent. The artisan 
 with six children, forced to live in a Stirling pair of rooms in a 
 back street in London in order to be near his work, might, if 
 he had only two, spare money enough to pay his rail to and fro 
 from the suburbs, where the same rent would give him decent 
 accommodation ; and not only would he have a better home, 
 but the two children would grow strong in the free air, where 
 the six pine in the London street, and the two would have 
 plenty of food and clothing, where the six lack both. Mr. 
 Godwin recognises this fact ; he says : " Amongst the causes 
 which lead to the evil we are deploring, we must not over- 
 look the gradual increase of children, while in the case of 
 the labouring man, the income mostly remains the same. 
 . . . As the children increase in number the wife is pre- 
 vented from adding by her earnings to the income, and 
 many years must elapse before the children can be put to 
 work." " Ought to be put to work," would be a truer phrase, 
 for the age at which young children are forced to help in 
 winning their daily bread is one of the disgraces of our 
 civilization. 
 
 Overcrowding in country districts is, naturally, not so 
 injurious to health as it is in the towns ; the daily work in 
 the open air, the fresh breeze blowing round the cottage, 
 and cleansing, to some extent, the atmosphere within, the 
 fields and lanes where the children can play, all these things 
 may do much to neutralise the harm to health wrought by 
 overcrowding at night. The injury to health, caused by 
 large families among the agricultural poor, arises more from 
 other causes than from overcrowding ; the low wage cannot 
 afford a house sufficiently good, and the cheap ill-built cot- 
 tage, damp, draughty, badly-drained, brings to those who live 
 in it the fever, and the ague, and the rheumatism so sadly 
 common among these labouring classes. But the moral effect 
 of overcrowding is, as the present Bishop of Manchester 
 
 iJ 2 
 
20 THE LAW OF POPULATION 1 . 
 
 said when serving, as the Rev. J. Fraser, in the Royal 
 Commission on the employment of children, young per- 
 sons, and women in agriculture " fearful to contemplate." 
 " Modesty," he goes on, " must be an unknown virtue, 
 decency an unimaginable thing, where, in one small chamber, 
 with the beds lying as thickly as they can be packed, father, 
 mother, young men, lads, grown and growing up girls two 
 and sometimes three generations are herded promiscuously; 
 where every operation of the toilette and of nature dress- 
 ings, undressings, births, deaths is performed by each within 
 the sight or hearing of all ; where children of both sexes, to 
 as high an age as twelve or fourteen, or even more, occupy 
 the same bed ; where the whole atmosphere is sensual, and 
 human nature is degraded into something below the level of 
 the swine." 
 
 The too early putting of the children to work is one of 
 the consequences of over-large families. In the country the 
 children working in gangs in the fields learn evil speech and 
 evil act at an age when they should be innocent, at school 
 and at play. In town, in the factory and in the workroom, 
 the seeds of disease are sown in the child-labourers. " Chil- 
 dren in big families," says Dr. Drysdale, " are taken out to 
 work very early, and premature exertion often injures them 
 for life. . . Children are not fit to do very much work 
 so long as they are half developed, and early death is often 
 the consequence." Children should not work for their bread ; 
 the frame is not fit for toil, the brain is not ready for the 
 effort of long attention ; those who give the life should 
 support and protect it until the tenderness of childhood is 
 passed away, and the young body is firm-knit and strong, 
 prepared to take its share of the battle, and bear the burden 
 and heat of the day. 
 
 From the same pressure and struggle for existence, conse- 
 quent on the difficulty of winning the means of life in an 
 over-crowded land, arise the unhealthy conditions among 
 which many kinds of work are carried on. Mr. Godwin re- 
 marks, as to artificial flower-making : " In an upper room in 
 Oxford Street, not ten feet square, I have seen a dozen deli- 
 cate young women closely shut up, pursuing this occupation. 
 . . . . Many of the workrooms of fashionable milliners 
 are similarly over-crowded, as are those where young girls 
 are engaged in book-stitching. Take, as an example, a 
 house in Fleet Street, looked at not long ago. The passage 
 is narrow ; a door in it shuts with a spring ; the staircase is 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 21 
 
 confined and without ventilation ; the atmosphere is steamy 
 and smells of glue ; ascending, it is seen that all the doors 
 shut with springs. In the first room looked into forty young 
 women and girls were sorting and stitching books. . . . 
 Poor creatures so placed are being slowly slain." Dr. Symes 
 Thompson, writing on the "Influence of Occupation on 
 Health and Life," points out the death-bringing circum- 
 stances under which too many of our wealth-producers toil ; 
 if there were fewer of them their lives would be more valuable 
 than they are ; horses and cattle are cared for and protected ; 
 the very machinery used is oiled and polished ; only the 
 human machines are worked under life-ruining conditions, 
 and are left to struggle on as best they may. Dr. Thompson 
 gives cases of printers which every one connected with 
 journalism can supplement by his own experience--where 
 unwholesome atmosphere and preposterously long hours 
 destroy the constitution. He tells us how the shoddy- 
 grinders, the cocoa-matting weavers, the chaff-cutters, the 
 workers in flax, woollen, and cotton factories, suffer from a 
 " peculiar kind of bronchitis, arising from the irritation of the 
 dust " and other matters inhaled, and the cough " is followed 
 by expectoration, and, if the occupation is continued, emphy- 
 sema, or, in those predisposed to phthisis, tubercle, is 
 developed." At Sheffield. the "inhalation of metal filings" 
 is " destructive " to the knife and fork grinders, and although 
 this might be prevented by the use of respirators the men's 
 lives are not sufficiently valuable to be thus saved. If grit 
 got into the works of a machine and ruined them the works 
 would be covered over, but it may pass into men's lungs and 
 kill them, and no one troubles. Brass-finishers and stone- 
 masons labour under the same -disadvantages ; lead poison- 
 ing is common among plumbers, painters, c. ; " women 
 employed in lead works rarely bear healthy children; 'in a 
 large number of cases miscarriage occurs at the fifth or 
 seventh month, and if the children are born alive they rarely 
 survive long. Lead exerts a similar influence on the repro- 
 ductive powers in the male sex ; men with lead affections 
 seldom produce healthy children." Many of these diseases 
 might be prevented, if the excessive number of workers did 
 not make the prevention a matter of indifference to those 
 concerned. Dr. Thompson says : " Let over-crowding and 
 over-heating be avoided. There should be an abundant 
 supply of pure air. The hours of work should be moderate, 
 with fair intervals for meals. If there is much dust or other 
 
22 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 foreign matter in the air a suitable respirator should be used, 
 or the offensive particles should be carried off by a current 
 of air produced by a chimney or revolving wheel. Again, 
 mechanical appliances may often take the place of hand- 
 labour, and much may often be accomplished by the 
 application of practical science and chemical knowledge." 
 Thus we see indifference to life resulting from the over- 
 crowding of the labour market, and in the unhealthy condi- 
 tions among which many kinds of work are carried on we 
 find a widely-spread check to population. 
 
 Baby-farming has only too justly been called the 
 " hideous social phenomenon of the nineteenth century." 
 It is the direct result of the pressure of over-large 
 families, and is simply a veiled form of infanti- 
 cide. Mr. Benson Baker, one of the medical officers 
 of Marylebone, has written a sad notice of baby- 
 farming. He speaks of a notorious case : " One of the 
 stock from that model baby-farm is now under my care. 
 This child, three years old, was employed by the proprietoress 
 as a gaffer, or ganger over the younger babies. His duties 
 were to sit up in the middle of the bed with eight other 
 babies round him, and the moment any one of them awoke 
 to put the bottle to their mouth. He was also to keep them 
 quiet, and generally to superintend them." A vast number 
 of children are slowly murdered annually in this way, and 
 the death-rate is also very high in every place where many 
 infants are kept together, whether it be in workhouse, 
 hospital, or creche. 
 
 Another consequence of large families which must not be 
 overlooked is the physical injury caused to the mothers. 
 Among the poor, cases of prolapsus uteri, or falling of the 
 womb, are only too common ; prolapsus uteri results fre- 
 quently from " getting about " too rapidly after child-birth, 
 it being impossible for the mother of the increasing family 
 to lie by for that period of rest which nature absolutely en- 
 joins. " Women," says Dr. Drysdale, " ought never to get 
 up from confinement for some weeks after the child is born, 
 but these poor women are so utterly unable to do without 
 work that they are compelled to get up in a day or two. The 
 womb being full of blood, falls down and produces infirmity 
 for life." The doctor also says of this disease : " It is ex- 
 tremely common. Indeed, when I was obstetrical assistant 
 at Edinburgh, it was one of the commonest diseases among 
 women the principal one, in fact." " Prolapsus, or falling of 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 23 
 
 the womb," says Dr. Graily Hewett, " is an affection to which 
 women are in one form or other exceedingly liable, and it is 
 one which is not unfrequently productive of very much in- 
 convenience and distress." The reason of the disease is not 
 far to see. The womb, in its unimpregnated state, is " from 
 two and a half to three inches long, and an inch and a halt 
 wide, more or less, at its largest part, and about an inch 
 thick" (Dr. Marion Sims). During the nine months ot 
 pregnancy this organ is stretched more and more, until, 
 at the end of nine months it is capable of containing 
 the fully developed infant. During these nine months 
 the muscular substance of the womb " increases, in 
 thickness, while the whole organ enlarges in order 
 to accommodate the growing foetus and its appendages" 
 (Dr. Dalton). At birth the muscular fibres begin to con- 
 tract, and the womb ought to return to almost its original 
 size. But in order that it may so return the horizontal po- 
 sition is absolutely necessary for some days, and much rest 
 for some weeks, until the muscles connected with the womb 
 have regained something of their natural elasticity. If the 
 mother be forced to leave her bed too early, if she be compelled 
 to exert herself in housekeeping cares, to stand over the 
 wash-tub, to bend over the fire what happens ? The womb 
 so long distended, has no chance of healthy contraction ; 
 the muscles which support it in its proper position have not 
 recovered from the long strain ; the womb itself is heavy 
 with the blood flowing from the vessels yet unclosed, and it 
 naturally falls and "produces infirmity for life." Too 
 frequent pregnancy is another cause of prolapsus uteri, and 
 of many other diseases of the womb. " We frequently find 
 that the uterus becomes diseased from the fact that the 
 pregnancies rapidly succeed each other, the uterus not 
 having recovered its natural size when it becomes again oc- 
 cupied by an ovum" (Dr. Graily Hewett). The womb is 
 too constantly put on the stretch, and is not allowed suffi- 
 cient rest to recover its original vigour and elasticity. It 
 takes about two months for the womb to thoroughly recon- 
 struct itself after the delivery of a child ; a new mucous 
 membrane developes, and a degeneration and reconstruc- 
 tion of the muscles takes place, technically known as 
 "the involution of the uterus." During pregnancy, the 
 uterine muscles " increase very considerably in size. 
 Their texture becomes much more distinctly granular, 
 and their outlines more strongly marked. , . . . . Tht 
 
24 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 entire walls of the uterus, at the time of delivery, 
 are composed of such muscular fibres, arranged in 
 circular, oblique, and longitudinal bundles. About the end 
 of the first week after delivery, these fibres begin to under- 
 go a fatty degeneration. . . . The muscular fibres which 
 have become altered by the fatty deposit, are afterwards 
 gradually absorbed and disappear : their place being sub- 
 sequently taken by other fibres of new formation, which already 
 begin to make their appearance before the old ones have 
 been completely destroyed. As this process goes on, it 
 results finally in a complete renovation of the muscular sub- 
 stance of the uterus. The organ becomes again reduced in 
 size, compact in tissue, and of a pale ruddy hue, as in the 
 ordinary unimpregnated condition. This entire renewal or 
 reconstruction of the uterus is completed, according to 
 Heschl, about the end of the second month after delivery " 
 (Dr. Dalton). No words can add strength to this state- 
 ment, proving the absolute right of women to complete 
 repose from sexual disturbance during this slow recovery of 
 the normal condition of the womb. Many a woman .in 
 fairly comfortable circumstances suffers from lack of know- 
 ledge of physical laws, and from the reckless English dis- 
 regard of all conjugal prudence ; short of absolute displace- 
 ment of the womb, and of grave uterine diseases, various 
 disorders result from weakness of the over-taxed generative 
 organs. Leucorrhoea is one of the commonest of these, 
 producing general debility, pain in the back, indigestion, 
 &c. It is not right, it is not moral, that mothers of families 
 should thus ruin their health, causing suffering to themselves 
 and misery to those around them ; it is only a perverted 
 moral sense which leads men and women to shut their eyes 
 to these sad consequences of over-large families, and causes 
 them thus to disregard the plainest laws of health. Sexual 
 intemperance, the over-procreation of children, is as im- 
 moral as intemperance in drink. 
 
 Among the melancholy consequences of over-population 
 we must not omit the foolish and sometimes criminal 
 attempts made by ignorant people to limit the family ; the 
 foolish attempt is the prevalent habit of over-lactation, arising 
 from the mistaken idea that conception is impossible during 
 the nursing of a child ; the criminal attempt is the procur- 
 ing of abortion by means of drugs or by the use of instru- 
 ments. These will be more fully dealt with in Chapter III., 
 and are only alluded to here as among the consequences of 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 35 
 
 the pressure of over-population. Too often, indeed, do 
 these come under the head of the positive, the life-destroy- 
 ing checks. 
 
 To turn to a different and more immediately life-destroy- 
 ing class of checks, that of war cannot, of course, be left out 
 of this melancholy picture. The Franco-German war, in 
 1870, the Turco-Russian war now going on, have both been 
 sensible checks to the populations of their respective countries. 
 The great famine now raging in India is a positive check on 
 a still more frightful scale, and we have seen that this 
 terrible famine results entirely from over-population; the 
 evidence of Lord Derby may be taken as conclusive 
 upon this point : but is it possible to accept Lord Derby's 
 facts, and yet make no kind of effort to solve the question 
 which, he says, " does not seem to me to be a light one " ? 
 It is all very well to say that : " If present appearances 
 can be trusted, we shall have in every generation a larger 
 aggregate of human beings relying upon us for help in those 
 periods of distress which must from time to time occur in a 
 country wholly agricultural and liable to droughts." 
 
 But what a confession of helplessness ! Is it possible to sit 
 down with foldedhands and calmly contemplate therecurrence 
 at regular intervals of such a famine as is now slaying its tens 
 of thousands ? Yet the law of population is " an irrefragable 
 truth," and these people are starved to death according to 
 natural law ; early marriages, large families, these are the 
 premisses ; famine and disease, these are the conclusions. 
 The same consequences will, sooner or later sooner in an 
 agricultural country, dependent on its crops, later in a 
 manufacturing country commanding large foreign supplies, 
 but always inexorably produce the same fearful results. 
 
 One more melancholy positive check must be added, the 
 last to which we shall here refer. It is the absolute child- 
 murder by desertion or by more violent means: Dr, 
 Lankester said that "there were in London alone 16,000 
 women who had murdered their offspring." Dr, Attwood 
 lately stated of Macclesfield that the doctors in that town 
 often had moral, though not legal, proof that children were 
 " put away," and that Macclesfield was " no worse than any 
 other manufacturing town." 
 
 Such are some of the consequences of the law of population; 
 the power of production is held in check by the continual 
 destruction, the number of births is balanced by the number of 
 deaths. Population struggles to increase, but the want of the 
 
26 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 means of existence beats it back, and men, women, and chil- 
 dren perish in the terrible struggle. The more civilization ad- 
 vances the more hopeless becomes the outlook. The checks 
 imposed by " nature and providence," in which Sir Hardinge 
 Giffard trusts for the prevention of over-population, are being 
 removed, one by one, by science and by civilization. War will 
 be replaced by arbitration, and those who would have fallen 
 victims to it will become fathers of families ; sanitary 
 knowledge will bring sanitary improvement, and typhus fever 
 and small-pox will disappear as the plague and black death 
 have done ; children will not die in their infancy, and the 
 average length of human life will increase. The life- 
 destroying checks of " nature and providence " will be met 
 with the life-preserving attempts of science and of reason, 
 and population will increase more and more rapidly. What 
 will be the result ? Simply this : India to-day is a microcosm 
 of the world of the future, and the statesman of that time 
 will re-echo the words of the present Foreign Secretary with 
 a wider application. Ought we then to encourage positive 
 checks so as to avert this final catastrophe ? Ought we to 
 stir up war ? Ought we to prevent sanitary improvements ? 
 ought we to leave the sickly to die ? Ought we to permit 
 infants to perish unaided ? Ought we to refuse help to the 
 starving ? These checks may be " natural," but they are 
 not human ; they may be " providential," but they are not 
 rational. Has science no help for us in our extremity? 
 has reason no solution to this problem ? has thought no 
 message of salvation to the poor? 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ITS BEARING UPON HUMAN CONDUCT AND MORALS. 
 
 To the question that closes the last chapter there is an 
 answer ; all thinkers have seen that since population increases 
 more rapidly than the means of subsistence, the human 
 brain should be called in to devise a restriction of the 
 population, and so relieve man from the pressure of the 
 struggle for existence. The lower animals are helpless and 
 must needs suffer, and strive, and die, but man, whose brain 
 raises him above the rest of animated existence, man rational, 
 thoughtful, civilized, he is not condemned to share in the 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 27 
 
 brute struggle, and to permit lower nature to destroy his 
 happiness and his ever-growing rapidity of progress. In 
 dealing with the law of population, as with every other 
 natural law which presses on him unpleasantly, civilised 
 man seeks so to alter the conditions which surround him as 
 to produce a happier result. Thinkers have, therefore, 
 studied the law and its consequences, and have suggested 
 various views of its bearing on human conduct and morals. 
 It was acknowledged that the only way of escape from 
 pauperism and from the misery occasioned by positive 
 checks, was in the limitation of the population within the 
 available means of subsistence, and the problem to be solved 
 was How shall this be done? Malthus proposed that 
 preventive, or birth-restricting, should be substituted for 
 positive, or life-destroying, checks, and that "moral res- 
 traint" should supersede "misery and vice." He lays it 
 down as a principle of duty, that no one "is to bring beings 
 into the world for whom he cannot find the means of sup- 
 e port." This obligation, he says, is a " duty intelligible to 
 the humblest capacity." But the duty being admitted on 
 all sides, the crucial point is How is this duty to be 
 fulfilled ? Malthus answers : By delay of marriage. We 
 are bound " not to marry till we have a fair prospect of being 
 able to support our children ; " in a right state of society 
 " no man, whose earnings were only sufficient to maintain 
 two children, would put himself in a situation in which he 
 might have to maintain four or five ; " a man should " defer 
 marrying, till, by industry and economy, he is in a capacity 
 to support the children that he may reasonably expect from 
 his marriage." Thus marriage if ever possible to the 
 poor would be delayed until the middle of life, and the 
 birth-rate would be decreased by a general abstention from 
 marriage until a comparatively late age. 
 
 This preventive check would doubtless be an effectual 
 one, but it is open to grave and fatal objections, and would 
 only replace one set of evils by another. If late marriage 
 were generally practised the most melancholy results would 
 follow. The more marriage is delayed, the more prostitu- 
 tion spreads. It is necessary to gravely remind all advocates of 
 late marriage that men do not and will not live single, and all 
 women, and all men who honour women, should protest 
 against a teaching which would inevitably make permanent 
 that terrible social evil which is the curse of civilization, 
 and which condemns numbers of unhappy creatures to a 
 
28 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 disgraceful and revolting calling. Prostitution is an evil 
 which we should strive to eradicate, not to perpetuate, and 
 late marriage, generally adopted, would most certainly per- 
 petuate it. The state of the streets of our large towns at 
 nightfall is the result of deferred marriage, and marriage is 
 deferred owing to the ever-increasing difficulty of maintain- 
 ing a large family in anything like comfort. 
 
 Mr. Montagu Cookson, writing in the Fortnightly Review, 
 says : " If, indeed, we could all become perfect beings, the 
 rule of life deduced by Malthus from the unalterable law of 
 population would be both practicable and safe ; as it is, it 
 has a direct tendency to promote the cardinal vice of cities 
 that of unchastity. The number of women in England 
 who ply the loathsome trade of prostitution is already large 
 enough to people a county, and, as our great thoroughfares 
 show at nightfall, is certainly not diminishing. Their chief 
 supporters justify themselves by the very plea which Malthus 
 uses to enforce the duty of continence, namely, that they 
 are not well enough off to maintain a wife and family. If 
 they could be sure that they could limit the number of their 
 children, so as to make it commensurate with their income, 
 not only would the plea be generally groundless, but I 
 believe it would not be urged, and the so-called social evil 
 would be stormed in its strongest fortress." 
 
 The evils resulting from late marriage to those who 
 remain really celibate, must not be overlooked in weighing 
 this recommendation of it as a cure for the evils of over- 
 population. Celibacy is not natural to men or to women ; 
 all bodily needs require their legitimate satisfaction, and 
 celibacy is a disregard of natural law. The asceticism which 
 despises the body is a contempt of nature, and a revolt 
 against her ; the morality which upholds virginity as the 
 type of womanly perfection is unnatural ; to be in harmony 
 with nature, men and women should be husbands and wives, 
 fathers and mothers, and until nature evolves a neuter sex 
 celibacy will ever be a mark of imperfection. Very clearly 
 has nature marked celibacy with disapproval ; the average 
 life of the unmarried is shorter than the average life of the 
 married ; the unmarried have a less vigorous physique, are 
 more withered, more rapidly aged, more peevish, more 
 fanciful ; " the disordered emotions of persons of both sexes 
 who pass lives of voluntary or enforced celibacy," says Dr. 
 Drysdale in his essay on Prostitution, " is a fact of every- 
 day observation. Their bad temper, fretfulness, and excita- 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 29 
 
 bility are proverbial." We quote from the same tractate the 
 following opinions : " M. Villamay, in his ' Dictionnaire des 
 Sciences Medicales,' says, ' It is assuredly true that abso- 
 lute and involuntary abstinence, is the most common cause 
 of hysteria.' Again, at a meeting of the Medico-Chirurgical 
 Society, reported in the Lancet of February 14, 1859, Mr. 
 Holmes Coote is reported to have said, ' No doubt incon- 
 tinence was a great sin ; but the evils connected with con- 
 tinence were productive of far greater misery to society. 
 Any person could bear witness to this, who had had 
 experience in the wards of lunatic asylums.' Again, Sir 
 Benjamin Brodie, at the Birmingham Social Science Meet- 
 ing, is reported to have said, in a discussion on prostitution, 
 that ' the evils of celibacy were so great, that he would not 
 mention them ; but that they quite equalled those of prosti- 
 tution ! '" M. Block informs us that in France out of 100 
 male lunatics, 65.72 are celibate, 5.61 are widowers, and 
 only 28.67 are married; of 100 female lunatics, 58.16 are 
 celibate, 12.48 are widows, and 29.36 are married. M. 
 Bertillon, dealing with France, Holland, and Belgium, states 
 that men who live celibate lives after twenty have, on an 
 average, six years less of life than those who marry. The 
 same fact holds good as regards married and unmarried 
 women. A long train of formidable diseases results from 
 celibacy such as spermatorrhoea in the male, chlorosis 
 and hysteria in the female and no one who desires 
 society to be happy and healthy should recommend 
 late marriage as a cure for the social evils around 
 us. Early marriage is best, both physically and morally ; 
 it guards purity, softens the affections, trains the heart, 
 and preserves physical health; it teaches thought for 
 ochers, gentleness and self-control ; it makes men gentler 
 and women braver from the contact of their differing 
 natures. The children that spring from such marriages 
 where not following each other too rapidly are 
 more vigorous and healthy than those born of middle- 
 aged parents, and in the ordinary course of nature the 
 parents of such children live long enough to see them make 
 their start in life, to aid, strengthen, and counsel them at the 
 beginning of their career. 
 
 Fortunately, late marriage will never be generally 
 practised in any community ; the majority of men and 
 women will never consent to remain single during the 
 brightness of youth, when passion is strongest and feelings 
 
3 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 most powerful, and to marry only when life is half over and 
 its bloom and its beauty have faded into middle-age. But 
 it is important that late marriage should not even be 
 regarded as desirable, for if it became an accepted doctrine 
 among the thoughtful that late marriage was the only escape 
 from over-population, a serious difficulty would arise ; the 
 best of the people, the most careful, the most provident, 
 the most intelligent, would remain celibate and barren, 
 while the careless, thoughtless, thriftless ones would marry 
 and produce large families ; this evil is found to prevail to 
 some extent even now; the more thoughtful, seeing the 
 misery resulting from large families on low wage, often 
 abstain from marriage, and have to pay heavy poor-rates 
 for the support of the thoughtless and their families. The 
 preventive check proposed by Malthus must therefore be 
 rejected, and a wiser solution of the problem must be 
 sought. 
 
 Later thinkers, recognising at once the evils of over- 
 population and the evils of late marriage, have striven to 
 find a path which shall avoid both Scylla and Charybdis, 
 and have advocated early marriages and small families. 
 John Stuart Mill has been one of the most earnest of -these 
 true friends of the people j in his " Political Economy " he 
 writes : " In a very backward state of society, like that of 
 Europe in the Middle Ages, and many parts of Asia at 
 present, population is kept down by actual starvation. . . 
 In a more improved state, few, even among the poorest of 
 the people, are limited to actual necessaries, and to a bare 
 sufficiency of those ; and the increase is kept within bounds, 
 not by excess of deaths, but by limitation of births. The 
 limitation is brought about in various ways. In some 
 countries, it is the result of prudent or conscientious self- 
 restraint. There is a condition to which the labouring 
 people are habituated ; they perceive that by having too 
 numerous families, they must sink below that condition, or 
 fail to transmit it to their children ; and this they do not 
 choose to submit to. The countries in which, so far as is 
 known, a great degree of voluntary prudence has been 
 longest practised on this subject, are Norway and parts of 
 Switzerland. . . In both these countries the increase of 
 population is very slow ; and what checks it, is not multitude 
 of deaths, but fewness of births. Both the births and the 
 deaths are remarkably few in proportion to the population ; 
 the average duration of life is the longest in Europe ; the 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 31 
 
 population contains fewer children, and a greater propor- 
 tional number of persons in the vigour of life than is known 
 to be the case in any other part of the world. The paucity 
 of births tends directly to prolong life, by keeping the 
 people in comfortable circumstances." Clearly and pointedly 
 Mill teaches "conjugal prudence;" he quotes with approval 
 the words of Sismondi, who was " among the most bene- 
 ; volent of his time and the happiness of whose married life has 
 1 been celebrated : " " When dangerous prejudices have not 
 become accredited, when a morality contrary to our true 
 duties towards others, and especially towards those to whom 
 we have given life, is not inculcated in the name of the 
 most sacred authority, no prudent man contracts matrimony 
 before he is in a condition which gives him an assured 
 means of living, and no married man has a greater number 
 of children than he can properly bring up." Many other 
 eminent men and women have spoken in the same sense ; 
 Professor Leone Levi advocates " prudence as regards the 
 increase of our families." Mrs. Fawcett writes : " Those 
 who deal with this question of pauperism should remember 
 that it is not to be remedied by cheap food, by reductions 
 of taxation, or by economical administration in the depart- 
 ments, or by new forms of government. Nothing will per- 
 manently affect pauperism while the present reckless in- 
 crease of population continues. And nothing will be so 
 likely to check this increase as the imposition by the State 
 on parents of the whole responsibility of maintaining their 
 offspring." Mr. Montagu Cookson says that some may 
 think " prudential restraint after marriage wilder than any- 
 thing Malthus ever dreamt," but urges that " the numbers 
 of children born after marriage should be limited," and that 
 " such limitation is as much the duty of married persons as 
 the observance of chastity is the duty of those that are un- 
 married." 
 
 It remains, then, to ask how is this duty to be performed ? 
 It is clearly useless to preach the limitation of the family, 
 and to conceal the means whereby such limitation may be 
 effected. If the limitation be a duty, it cannot be wrong to 
 afford such information as shall enable people to discharge it. 
 There are various prudential checks which have been 
 suggested, but further investigation of this intricate subject 
 is sorely needed, and it is much to be wished that more 
 medical men would devote themselves to the study of this 
 important branch of physiology. 
 
32 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 The check we will take first in order is that to which 
 Mr. Montagu Cookson alludes in his essay : he says that the 
 family may be limited by " obedience to natural laws which 
 all may discover and verify if they will." The "natural 
 laws " to which Mr. Cookson refers would be, we imagine, 
 the results of observation on the comparative fertility with 
 women of some periods over others. It is well known that 
 the menstrual discharge, or the Catamenia, recurs in normal 
 cases at monthly intervals, during the whole of the fertile 
 period of female life ; a woman does not bear children 
 before menstruation has commenced, nor after it has ceased. 
 There are cases on record where women have borne children, 
 but have never menstruated, but these are rare exceptions 
 to the general rule ; menstruation is the sign of capability of 
 conception, as its cessation is the sign of future disability to 
 conceive. Recent investigators have collected many cases 
 in which " the menstrual period was evidently connected 
 with the maturation and discharge of ova" (Carpenter). 
 " The essential part of the female generative system," says 
 Dr. Carpenter, " is that in which the ova [eggs] are pre- 
 pared. ... In the higher animals, as in the human female, 
 the substance of the ovarhrm is firm and compact, and con- 
 sists of a nucleated, tough, fibrous, connective tissue, with 
 much interspersed fusiform muscular tissue, forming what is 
 known as the stroma. ... As development proceeds the 
 cells. . . . multiply, and single cells or group of cells, round, 
 ovoid, or tubular, come to be enclosed in the tissue of the 
 ovary by delicate vascular processes which shoot forth from 
 the stroma. These cells constitute the primordial ova." These 
 ova gradually mature, and are then discharged from the 
 ovary and pass into the uterus, and on the fertilisation of 
 one of them conception depends. Dr. Kirke writes : " It 
 has long been known that in the so-called oviparous animals, 
 the separation of ova from the ovary may take place inde- 
 pendently of impregnation by the male, or even of sexual 
 union. And it is now established that a like maturation 
 and discharge of ova, independently of coition, occurs in 
 mammalia, the periods at which the matured ova are separated 
 from the ovaries and received into the Fallopian tubes being 
 indicated in the lower mammalia by the phenomena of heat 
 or rut ; in the human female by the phenomena of menstru- 
 ation. ... It may, therefore, be concluded that the two 
 states, heat and menstruation, arc analogous, and that the 
 essential accompaniment of both is the maturation and 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 33 
 
 extrusion of ova." Seeing, then, that the ova are discharged 
 at the menstrual periods, and that conception depends - on 
 the fertilisation of the ova by the male, it is obvious that 
 conception will most readily take place immediately before 
 or after menstruation. "It is quite certain that there is a 
 greater aptitude for conception immediately before and after 
 that epoch than there is at any intermediate period" 
 (Carpenter). A woman " is more apt to conceive soon after 
 menstruation than at any other time " (Chavasse). So much 
 is this fact recognised by the medical profession, that in cases 
 of sterility a husband is often recommended only to .visit his 
 wife immediately after the cessation of the Catamenia. 
 Since women conceive more easily at this period, the avoid- 
 ance of sexual intercourse during the few days before 
 and after menstruation has been recommended as a pre- 
 ventive check. Dr. Tyler Smith writes : " In the middle 
 of the interval between the periods, there is little chance 
 of impregnation taking place. The same kind of know- 
 ledge is of use, by way of caution, to women who 
 menstruate during lactation, in whom there is a great 
 aptitude to conceive ; pregnancy, under such circum- 
 stances, would be injurious to the health of the foetus, the 
 child at the breast, and the mother herself, and therefore 
 should be avoided, if possible." The most serious objec- 
 tion to reliance on this check is that it is not certain. M. 
 Raciborski says that only 6 or 7 per cent of conceptions take 
 place during this interval, but the 6 or 7 exceptions to the 
 general rule prevent recommendation of the check as 
 thoroughly reliable ; we can scarcely say more than that 
 women are far less likely to conceive midway between the 
 menstrual periods than either immediately before or after 
 
 thC ^' ,_ , !_-!. mili L - A 
 
 The preventive check which is so generally practised in 
 
 France that Dr. Drysdale with a rarely wide French experi- 
 ence stated that among the peasantry it was " used univer- 
 sally," and was "practised by almost every male in Paris, ' 
 and all over the country," is one which depends entirely on 
 the self-control of the man. It consists simply in the with- 
 drawal of the husband previous to the emission of the semen, 
 and is, of course, absolutely certain as a preventive. A few 
 among the French doctors contend that the practice is 
 injurious, more especially to the wife ; but they have failed, 
 so far as we can judge, in making out their case, for they 
 advance no proofs in support of their theory, while the 
 
34 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 universal practice of the French speaks strongly on the other 
 side. 
 
 The preventive check advocated by Dr. Knowlton is, 
 on the other hand, entirely in the hands of the wife. It 
 consists in the use of the ordinary syringe immediately after 
 intercourse, a solution of sulphate of zinc or of alum being 
 used instead of water. . There is but little doubt that this 
 check is an effective one, a most melancholy proof of its 
 effectiveness being given by Dr. J. C. Barr, who, giving evi- 
 dence before the Commission on the working of the Conta- 
 gious Diseases Act, stated : " Every woman who leaves the 
 hospital is instructed*in* v the best mode of preventing disease. 
 These are cleanliness injections of alum and sulphate of 
 zinc." 
 
 Professor Sheldon Amos, dealing with the same painful 
 subject, refers to v this evidence, and quotes Dr. Barr as 
 saying again, " my custom is to instruct them to keep them- 
 selves clean, to use injections and lotions." These women 
 are not meant to bear children, they are to be kept " fit for 
 use" by Her Majesty's soldiers. 
 
 Apart altogether from this sad, but govermnentally author- 
 ised, use of this check, there are many obvious disadvantages 
 connected with it as a matter of taste and feeling. The 
 same remark applies to the employment of the baudruche, 
 a covering used by men of loose character as a guard against 
 syphilitic diseases, and occasionally recommended as a pre- 
 ventive check. 
 
 The check which appears to us to be preferable, as at 
 once certain, arid in no sense grating on any feeling of 
 affection or of : delicacy, is that recommended by Carlile 
 many years ago in his " Every Woman's Book." In 
 order that impregnation should take place, " the absolute 
 contact of the spermatozoa with the ovum is requisite" 
 (Carpenter). The ovum passes from the ovary down the 
 Fallopian tube into the uterus ; the spermatazoa, floating in 
 the spermatic fluid, pass upwards through the uterus, and 
 fecundate the ovum either in the uterus, in the tube, or in 
 the ovary itself. To prevent impregnation it is then only 
 necessary to prevent this contact. The neck of the uterus, 
 where it enters the vagina, ends with the Os uteri \ an orifice 
 varying in shape in different individuals. Through this orifice 
 the male semen must pass in order to fertilise the ovum. 
 To prevent impregnation, pass to the end of the vagina 
 a piece of fine sponge, which should be dipped in 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 35 
 
 water before being used, and which need not be removed 
 until the morning. Dr. Marion Sims, who in cases of 
 retroversion of the uterus constantly used mechanical 
 support to maintain the uterus in its normal position, and 
 so make pregnancy possible, gives much useful information 
 on the various kinds of pessaries. He sometimes used a 
 " small wad of cotton, not more than an inch in diameter," 
 which was " secured with a string for its removal ; " this was 
 worn during the day and removed at night. He says that 
 the woman using a pessary should be able " to remove and 
 replace it with the same facility that she would put on and 
 pull off an old slipper." There is, in fact, no kind of diffi- 
 culty in the use of this check, and it has the great advantage 
 of unobtrusiveness. 
 
 There is a preventive check attempted by many poor 
 women which is most detrimental to health, and should 
 therefore never be employed, namely, the too-long persis- 
 tence in nursing one baby, in the hope of thereby prevent- 
 ing the conception of another. Nursing does not prevent 
 conception. A child should not be nursed, according to Dr. 
 Chavasse, for longer than nine months ; and he quotes Dr. 
 Farr, as follows : " It is generally recognised that the 
 healthiest children are those weaned at nine months 
 complete. Prolonged nursing hurts both child and 
 mother : in the child, causing a tendency to brain disease, 
 probably through disordered digestion and nutrition ; in 
 the mother, causing a strong tendency to deafness and 
 blindness." Dr. Chavasse adds : " If he be suckled after 
 he be twelve months old, he is generally pale, flabby, un- 
 healthy, and rickety; and the mother is usually nervous, 
 emaciated, and hysterical ... A child nursed beyond 
 twelve months is very apt, if he should live, to be knock- 
 kneed, and bow-legged, and weak-ankled, to be narrow- 
 chested, and chicken-breasted." If pregnancy occur, and 
 the mother be nursing, the consequences affect alike the 
 mother, the babe, and the unborn child. To nurse under 
 these circumstances, says Dr. Chavasse, " is highly im- 
 proper, as it not only injures her own health, and may bring 
 on a miscarriage, but it is also prejudicial to her babe, and 
 may produce a delicacy of constitution from which he might 
 never recover." 
 
 Another class of checks is distinctly criminal, i.e., the 
 procuring of abortion. Various drugs are taken by women 
 with this intent, and too often their use results in death, or 
 

 36 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 in dangerous sickness. Dr. Fleetwood Churchill gives 
 various methods of inducing labour prematurely, and 
 argues, justly, that where the delivery of a living child at 
 the full time is impossible, it is better to bring on labour 
 than be compelled to perform later either craniotomy or the 
 Cassarian section. But he goes further : " There are cases 
 where the distortion [of the pelvis] is so great as to render 
 the passage of a seven months' child impossible, and others 
 still worse, where no reduction of a viable child's bulk will 
 enable it to pass. I do not see why abortion should not 
 be induced at an early period in such cases." And Dr. 
 Churchill quotes Mr. Ingleby as saying: "Premature 
 labour may with great propriety be proposed on pregnancy 
 recurring, assuming the delivery of a living child at term 
 to have already proved impracticable." If there is a 
 chance for the child's life, this is sound advice, but if the 
 delivery of a living child has been proved to be impos- 
 sible, surely the prevention of conception is far better 
 than the procuring of abortion. The destruction of the 
 foetus is destruction of life, and it is immoral, where a 
 woman cannot bear a living child, that she should conceive 
 
 11 
 
 If this system of preventive checks were generally adopted, 
 how happy would be the result both to the home and to 
 the State ! The root of poverty would be dug up, and pau- 
 perism would decline and at last vanish. Where now 
 overcrowded hovels stand would then be comfortable 
 houses; where now the large family starves in rags, the 
 small family would then live on sufficient food, clad in 
 decent raiment; education would replace ignorance, and 
 self-reliance would supersede charity. Where the work- 
 house now frowns, the busy school would then smile, and 
 care and forethought for the then valuable lives would 
 diminish the dangers of factory and of work-room. Pros- 
 titution would cease to flaunt in our streets, and the sacred 
 home would be early built and joyously dwelt in ; wedded 
 love would enter the lists against vice, and, no longer the 
 herald of want, would chase her counterfeit from our land. 
 No longer would transmitted diseases poison our youth, 
 nor premature death destroy our citizens. A full possibility 
 of life would open before each infant born into our nation, 
 and there would be room, and love, and cherishing, enough 
 for each new-comer. It remains for England to have all 
 this if she will but the first upward step towards that 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 37 
 
 happier life will only be taken when parents resolutely 
 determine to limit their family to their means, and stamp 
 with moral disapprobation every married couple who 
 selfishly overcrowd their home, to the injury of the com- 
 munity of which they are a part. 
 
 _ 
 i bJ 
 
 > 
 
 CHAPTER !V. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 MANY people, perfectly good-hearted, but somewhat narrow- 
 minded, object strongly to the idea of conjugal prudence, 
 and regard scientific checks to population as " a violation 
 of nature's laws, and a frustration of nature's ends." Such 
 people, a hundred years ago, would have applauded the 
 priest who objected to lightning conductors as being an \^~- 
 interference with the bolts of Deity ; they exist in every age, 
 the rejoicers over past successes, and the timid disapprovers 
 of new discoveries. Let us analyse the argument. "A 
 violation of nature's laws ;" this objection is couched in 
 somewhat unscientific phrase ; nature's " laws " are but the 
 observed sequences of events ; man cannot violate them ; 
 he may disregard them, and suffer in consequence ; he may 
 observe them, and regulate his conduct so as to be in 
 harmony with them. Man's prerogative is that by the use 
 of his reason he is able to study nature outside himself, and 
 by observation may so control nature, as to make her add 
 to his happiness instead of bringing him misery. To limit 
 the family is no more a violation of nature's laws, than to 
 preserve the sick by medical skill ; the restriction of the 
 birth-rate does not violate nature's laws more than does the 
 restriction of the death-rate. Science strives to diminish 
 the positive checks ; science should also discover the best 
 preventive checks. "The frustration of nature's ends." 
 Why should we worship nature's ends? Nature flings 
 lightning at our houses ; we frustrate her ends by the light- 
 ning conductor. Nature divides us by seas and by rivers ; 
 we frustrate her ends by sailing over the seas, and by 
 bridging the rivers. Nature sends typhus fever and ague to 
 slay us j we frustrate her ends by purifying the air, and by 
 draining the marshes. Oh ! it is answered, you only do this 
 by using other natural powers. Yes, we answer, and we only 
 
38 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 teach conjugal prudence by balancing one natural force 
 v against another. Such study of nature, and such balancing 
 of natural forces, is civilization. 
 
 It is next objected that preventive checks are "unnatural" 
 and " immoral." " Unnatural " they are not ; for the 
 human brain is nature's highest product, and all improve- 
 ments on irrational nature are most purely natural ; preven- 
 tive checks are no more unnatural than every other custom 
 of civilization. Raw meat, nakedness, living in caves, these 
 are the irrational natural habits ; cooked . food, clothes, 
 houses, these are the rational natural customs. Production 
 of offspring recklessly, carelessly, lustfully, this is irrational 
 nature, and every brute can here outdo us ; production of 
 offspring with forethought, earnestness, providence, this is 
 rational nature, where man stands alone. But " immoral." 
 What is morality ? It is the greatest good of the greatest 
 number. It is immoral to give life where you cannot 
 support it. It is immoral to bring children into the world 
 when you cannot clothe, feed, and educate them. It is 
 immoral to crowd new life into already over-crowded houses, 
 and to give birth to children wholesale who never have a 
 chance of healthy life. Conjugal prudence is most highly 
 moral, and " those who endeavour to vilify and degrade 
 these means in the eyes of the public, and who speak of 
 them as ' immoral ' and ' disgusting,' are little aware of the 
 moral responsibility they incur thereby. As already shown, 
 to reject preventive intercourse is in reality to choose the 
 other three true population checks poverty, prostitution, 
 and celibacy. So far from meriting reprobation, the 
 endeavour to spread the knowledge of the preventive 
 methods, of the great law of nature which renders them 
 necessary, is in my opinion the very greatest service which 
 can at present be done to mankind " (" Elements of Social 
 Science "). 
 
 But the knowledge of these scientific checks would, it is 
 argued, make vice bolder, and would increase unchastity 
 among women by making it safe. Suppose that this were so, 
 it might save some broken hearts and some deserted children; 
 men ruin women and go scatheless, and then bitterly object 
 that their victims escape something of public shame. And 
 if so, are all to suffer, so that one or two, already corrupt in 
 heart, may be preserved from becoming corrupt in act? 
 Are mothers to die slowly that impure women may be held 
 back, and wives to be sacrificed, that the unchaste may be 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 39 
 
 curbed ? As well say that no knives must be used because 
 throats may be cut with them; no matches sold because incen- 
 diarism may result from them ; no pistols allowed because 
 murders may be committed by them. Blank ignorance has 
 some advantages in the way of safety, and if all men's eyes 
 were put out, none would ever be tempted to seduce 
 a woman for her beauty. Let us bring for our women the 
 veil to cover, and the eunuch to guard, and so be at least 
 consistent in our folly and our distrust ! But this knowledge 
 would not increase unchastity ; the women who could thus 
 use it would be solely those who only lack opportunity, not 
 will, to go astray : the means suggested all imply deliberation 
 and forethought ; are these generally the handmaids of 
 unchastity ? English women are not yet sunk so low that 
 they preserve their loyalty to one, only from fear of the 
 possible consequences of disloyalty ; their purity, their 
 pride, their honour, their womanhood, these are the 
 guardians of their virtue, and "never from English women's 
 heart will fade the maiden and matronly dignity, which 
 makes them shield their love from all taint of impurity, and 
 bid them only surrender themselves, where the surrender of 
 heart and of pledged faith have led the way. Shame on 
 those who slander England's wives and maidens with the 
 foul thoughts that can only spring from the mind and the 
 lips of the profligate. 
 
 Another class of objectors appears : those who argue 
 that there is no need to limit the population, at any rate for 
 a long while to come. Some of these say that there is 
 food enough in the world for all, and point out that the 
 valley of the Mississippi would grow corn enough to feed 
 the present population of the globe. They forget that the 
 available means of subsistence are those with which we have 
 to deal. Corn in Nebraska and starving mouths in Lanca- 
 shire are not much use to each other ; when the cost of 
 carriage exceeds the money power of the would-be buyer, 
 the corn-fields might be in the moon for all the good they 
 are to him ; if means can be discovered of bringing com and 
 mouths together, well and good, but until they are dis- 
 covered, undue production of mouths here is unwise, because 
 their owners will starve while the corn is still on the other 
 side of the sea. 
 
 But if the corn can't be brought to the mouths may not 
 the mouths go to the corn ? Why not emigrate ? Because 
 emigration is impracticable to the extent needed for the 
 
4 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 relief of the labour market. Emigration caused by starva- 
 tion pressure is not a healthy outlet for labour ; if it is 
 Government-aided, helpless, thriftless folk flock to it for 
 a while, and starve on the other side ; if land is given, capital 
 is wanted by the emigrant, for before he can eat his own 
 bread, he must clear his land of timber, plough or dig it, sow 
 his corn, and wait for his harvest ; if he goes out poor, on 
 what is he to live during the first year ? Men with ^300 
 or ^400 of capital may find more profitable investment for 
 it in the West in America, or in our colonies, than at home, 
 but their outgoing will not much relieve the labour market. 
 Emigration for penniless agricultural labourers, andforartizans, 
 means only starvation abroad instead of at home. And it is 
 starvation under worse conditions than they had left in the 
 mother-country ; they have to face vicissitudes of climate for 
 which they are utterly unprepared, extremes of heat and of 
 cold which try even vigorous constitutions, and simply kill 
 off underfed, half clothed, and ill housed new comers. Nor 
 is work always to be had in the New World. No better 
 proof of the foolishness of emigration to the United States 
 can be given, than the fact that, at the present time, con- 
 tractors in England are in treaty with American workmen, 
 with the object of bringing them over here. Unskilled 
 labour does not improve its chances by going abroad. Nor 
 is skilled labour in a better position, for here the German 
 emigrant undersells the British ; he can live harder and 
 cheaper, and has had a better technical education than has 
 fallen to the lot of his British rival. One great evil con- 
 nected with emigration is the disproportion it causes between 
 men and women, both in the old country and in the new, 
 those who emigrate being chiefly males. Nor must it be 
 forgotten that when England colonised most, her population 
 was far smaller than it is at the present time ; physical 
 vigour is necessary for successful colonising, and the 
 physical vigour of our labouring poor deteriorates under 
 their present conditions ; as the Canadian roughly said at 
 the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth : " the 
 colonies don't want the children of your rickety paupers." 
 Colonization needs the pick of a nation, if it is to succeed, 
 not the poor who are driven from home in search of the ne- 
 cessaries of life. John Stuart Mill points out how inadequate 
 emigration is as a continued relief to population, useful as it 
 is as a sudden effort to lighten pressure ; he remarks that 
 the great distance of the fields of emigration prevents them 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 41 
 
 from being a sufficient outlet for surplus labourers ; " it still 
 remains to be shown by experience," he says, " whether a 
 permanent stream of emigration can be kept up sufficient to 
 take off, as in America, all that portion of the annual increase 
 (when proceeding at its greatest rapidity) which, being in 
 excess of the progress made during the same short period 
 in the arts of life, tends to render living more difficult for 
 every averagely situated individual in the community. And 
 unless this can be done, emigration cannot, even in an 
 economical point of view, dispense with the necessity of 
 checks to population." 1173 infants are born in the United 
 Kingdom everyday, and to equalise matters about 1000 
 emigrants should leave our shores daily. Careful calcula- 
 tions are sometimes entered into by anti-Malthusians as to 
 the acreage of Great Britain as compared with its popula- 
 tion, and it is said that the land would support many 
 more than the present number of inhabitants ; quite 
 so ; there is a very large quantity of land used for 
 deer, game, and pleasure, that, if put under cultivation, 
 would enormously increase the food-supply. But to know 
 this, does not remedy the pressing evils of over-popu- 
 lation ; what service is it to the family crowded into a St. 
 Giles' cellar to tell them that there are large uninhabited 
 tracts of land in Perthshire ? In the first place they can't 
 get to them, and if they could, they would be taken up for 
 trespassing. Such information is but mockery. Land reform 
 is sorely needed, but, to meet the immediate needs of the 
 present, land revolution would be necessary; it is surely 
 wiser to lessen the population-pressure, and to work steadily 
 at the same time towards Reform of the Land Laws, instead 
 of allowing the population-pressure to increase, until the 
 starving multitudes precipitate us into a revolution. 
 
 An extraordinary confusion exists in some minds between 
 preventive checks and infanticide. People speak as though 
 prevention were the same as destruction. But no life is 
 destroyed by the prevention of conception, any more than 
 by abstention from marriage ; if it is infanticide for every 
 man and woman not to produce as many children as possible 
 during the fertile period of life, if every person in a state of 
 celibacy commits infanticide because of the potential life he 
 prevents, then, of course, the prevention of conception by 
 married persons is also infanticide ; the two things are on 
 exactly the same level. When conception has taken place, 
 then prevention is no longer possible and a new life having 
 
42 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 been made, the destruction of that life would be criminal. 
 Before conception no life exists to be destroyed ; the seminal 
 fluid is simply a secretion of the body ; its fertilizing power 
 is not a living thing, the non-use of which destroys life ; the 
 spermatozoa, the active fertilizing agents, are not living exist- 
 ences, and " they have been erroneously considered as 
 proper animalculse " (Carpenter). Life is not made until 
 the male and female elements are united, and if this is pre- 
 vented, either by abstention from intercourse among the 
 unmarried, or by preventive intercourse among the married, 
 life is not destroyed, because the life is not yet in existence. 
 
 Mr. Darwin puts forward an argument against scientific 
 checks which must not be omitted here he says : "The 
 enhancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate 
 problem; all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot 
 avoid abject poverty for their children, for poverty is not 
 only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading 
 to recklessness in marriage.- On the other hand, as Mr. 
 Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, whilst 
 the reckless marry, the inferior members tend to supplant 
 the better members of society. Man, like every other 
 animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high con- 
 dition through a struggle for existence, consequent on his 
 rapid multiplication, and if he is to advance still higher it is 
 to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle ; 
 otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted 
 men would not .be more successful in the battle of life than 
 the less gifted. ""'TFIence our natural rate of increase, though 
 leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly 
 diminished by any means." 
 
 If the struggle for existence among mankind were waged 
 under the same conditions as among animals, then Mr. 
 Darwin's argument would have great force, terrible as would 
 be the amount of human misery caused by it. Then the 
 strongest, cleverest, craftiest, would survive, and would 
 transmit their qualities to their offspring. But Mr. Darwin 
 forgets that men have qualities which the brutes have not, 
 such as compassion, justice, respect for the rights of ^others 
 and all these, man's highest virtues, are absolutely incom- 
 patible with the brutal struggle for existence. Where the 
 lion would leave his parents to starve, man would feed his ; 
 where the stag would kill the sickly one, man would carry 
 him to the hospital and nurse him back to health. The 
 feeble, the deformed, the helpless, are killed out in brute 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 43 
 
 nature; in human nature they are guarded, tended, nourished, 
 and they hand on to their offspring their own disabilities. 
 Scientific checks to population would just do for man what 
 the struggle for existence does for the brutes : they enable 
 man to control the production of new human beings ; those 
 who suffer from hereditary diseases, who have consumption 
 or insanity in the family, might marry, if they so wished, but 
 would preserve the race from the deterioration which results 
 from propagating disease. The whole British race would 
 gain in vigour, in health, in longevity, in beauty, if only 
 healthy parents gave birth to children \ at present there is 
 many a sickly family, because sickly persons marry ; they 
 revolt against forbiddance of marriage, celibacy being un- 
 natural, and they are taught that " the natural consequences 
 of marriage " must follow. Let them understand that one 
 set of " consequences " results naturally from one set of con- 
 ditions, another set from different conditions, and let them 
 know that laisser aller in marriage is no wiser than in othei 
 paths of life. 
 
 Leaving objectors, let us look at the other side of the 
 question. The system of preventive checks to population 
 points us to the true pathway of safety ; it is an immediate 
 relief, and at once lightens the burden of poverty. Each 
 married couple have it in their power to avoid poverty for 
 themselves and for their children, by determining, when 
 they enter on married life, that they will not produce a 
 family larger than they can comfortably maintain : thus they 
 avoid the daily harass of domestic struggle ; they rejoice over 
 two healthy, robust, well-fed children, instead of mourning 
 over seven frail, sickly, half-starved ones ; they look forward 
 to an old age of comfort and of respectability instead of one 
 of painful dependence on a grudgingly-given charity. 
 
 How rapidly conjugal prudence may lift a nation out of 
 pauperism is seen in France ; the proportion of adults to 
 the whole population is the largest in Europe, the propor- 
 tionate number of persons under thirty being the smallest ; 
 hence, there are more producers and fewer non-producers 
 than in any other country. The consequence of this is that 
 the producers are less pressed upon, and live in greater 
 comfort and with more enjoyment of life. There are no less 
 than 5,000,000 of properties under six acres, each sufficient 
 to support a small family, but wholly inadequate for the 
 maintenance of a large one, and it was from these indepen- 
 dent Deasants that M. Thiers borrowed the money to pay 
 
44 THE LAW OF POPULATION". 
 
 off the indemnity levied by the Germans after the late war. 
 If those peasants had been struggling under the difficulties 
 of large families, no savings would have been made to fall 
 back upon in such an emergency. France shows a pattern 
 of widely-spread comfort which we look for in vain in our 
 own land, and this comfort is directly traceable to the 
 systematic regard for conjugal prudence'. Small agricultural 
 holdings directly tend to this virtue, the fact of the limita- 
 tion of the food-supply available being obvious to the most 
 ignorant peasant. So strongly rooted is this habit in France, 
 that the Roman Church in vain branded it as a deadly sin, 
 and Dr. Drysdale writes that a French priest begged the 
 Vatican Council to change this direction ; he said, "It is 
 not the sin which is new, but the circumstances which have 
 changed. This practice has been spreading more and more 
 for half a century from the force of things. As Providence 
 does not multiply animals, when they have not wherewithal 
 \J to eat, so it will not require reasonable man voluntarily to 
 multiply when there is no longer the condition for his sub- 
 sistence. This is human calculation, pecuniary motives if 
 you will, but a calculation as inevitable as destiny. Countries 
 enjoying the faith do not thus calculate, it is true, and so 
 long as obedience is possible they will obey the priest with- 
 out a murmur; but a day will come when the prevailing 
 doctrine will be applicable to them all, and hence we 
 earnestly plead for reform. Other times, other customs. 
 The laws should change with the customs." 
 
 It is well worthy of notice that those who have pleaded 
 for scientific checks to population, have also been those 
 who have been identified with the struggle for political and 
 religious freedom ; Carlile defended the use of such as 
 advocated in his " Every Woman's Book " as follows : 
 
 " There are four grounds on which my ' Every Woman's 
 Book ' and its recommendation can be defended, and each 
 of them in itself sufficient to justify the publication, and to 
 make it meritorious. First the political or national ground ; 
 which refers to the strength and wealth of the nation, and 
 the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the people. 
 Second the local or commercial ground, or the ground of 
 the wages of labour, and its supply in the several trades and 
 districts. Third the domestic or family ground, where 
 the parents may think they have already children enough, 
 and that more will be an injury. Fourth the individual 
 ground, where the state of health in the femaV, or her 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 45 
 
 situation in life, will not justify a pregnancy; but where the 
 abstinence from love becomes as great an evil. It has been 
 a sort of common, but ill-judged maxim, that the strength 
 and wealth of a nation consist in the number, the greatest 
 number, of its people. The error in the judgment of the 
 maxim is, in not taking into consideration whether that 
 number be well or ill employed, well or ill fed, clothed and 
 housed. If the number be well employed, well fed, well 
 clothed, well housed, then the greatness of the number is in 
 reality the wealth and strength of the nation. But if, on the 
 other hand, the greatness of the number lessens the means of 
 good employment, good living, clothing and housing, then, 
 as in England and Ireland, at this moment, under the 
 present arrangements of government, aristocracy, religion, 
 &c., the greatness of the number constitutes the weakness of 
 the nation ; and England and Ireland are both weak at this 
 moment : weak, too evidently weak, from ill-employed or 
 unemployed members of the people. It is objected to me, 
 that there is a sufficiency of natural checks already in 
 existence, to remedy the evils of which I complain. My 
 answer is, that these natural checks are the evil of which I 
 do complain, and which I seek to remove by the substitution 
 of a MORAL CHECK, that shall furnish no pain, no degradation, 
 no discomfort, no evil of any kind. The existing natural or 
 physical checks are disease or pestilence and famine. 
 Surely it is to be desired that neither of these should exist. 
 It is not wise, not parental, not kind, to breed children to 
 such disasters. -. It is better that they should not be born, 
 than be cut off prematurely by disease or famine, or struggle 
 through a life of disease, poverty, and misery, a life of pain to 
 themselves, and both a pain and burthen to their parents. 
 The existing moral checks on numbers are war, and social 
 arrangements, such as poverty, late marriages, celibacy, and 
 the bad healih which bad states of living produce; to 
 which may be added, states of servitude, in which marriage 
 is found inconvenient. These are all so many evils all 
 will say. It would be well to go on without war, and the 
 time will come when wars will cease. In the question of 
 trade, a government can do nothing more than remove 
 impediments. It cannot increase the amount of trade 
 beyond its natural demand. It cannot force trade to 
 any permanent utility. Therefore I take it to be a clear 
 point, that no change in government will do anything per- 
 manently for the relief of the present number of persons 
 
46 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 employed in surplus production. In limiting the number 
 of children, as applicable to such a case, there is a double 
 relief; an immediate relief to the parents, in not incurring 
 expenses which cannot be well met, and a remote relief, in 
 not bringing forth new labourers, when those existing cannot 
 find employment. Besides, there is something cruel, 
 wanton, base, and parentally unfeeling, in the principle that 
 says : ' I will bring all the children I can into the world, 
 and if I cannot maintain them some other persons who 
 care nothing about them must, or, which is the real alter- 
 native, they may starve.' " 
 
 Mr. Francis Place argues : " The mass of the people in 
 an old country must remain in a state of wretchedness, 
 until they are convinced that their safety depends upon 
 themselves, and that it can be maintained in no other way 
 than by their ceasing to propagate faster than the means of 
 comfortable subsistence are produced 
 
 " If above all it were once clearly understood that it was 
 not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of 
 such precautionary means as would, without being injurious 
 to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent concep- 
 tion, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase 
 of population beyond the means of subsistence, and vice 
 and misery to a prodigious extent might be removed from 
 
 society If means were adopted to prevent the 
 
 breeding of a larger number of children than married people 
 might desire to have, and if the labouring part of the popu- 
 lation could thus be kept below the demand for labour, 
 wages would rise, so as to afford the means of comfortable 
 subsistence for all, and all might marry 
 
 " It is time that those who really understand the cause of 
 a redundant, unhappy, miserable, and considerably vicious 
 population, and the means of preventing the redundancy, 
 should clearly, freely, openly, and fearlessly point out the 
 means." 
 
 Mr. James Watson showed his view of the matter by 
 publishing Dr. Charles Knowlton's " Fruits of Philosophy." 
 
 Mr. Robert Dale Owen (son of Robert Owen, and 
 American minister in Florence), in his " Moral Physiology," 
 urges " some ' moral restraint ' that shall not, like vice and 
 misery, be demoralising, nor, like late marriages, be ascetic 
 and impracticable ;" and he proceeds to advocate and 
 describe scientific checks. 
 
 Mr. James Mill complains that the problem of checking 
 
THE LAW OF POPULATION. 47 
 
 population is "miserably evaded by all those who have 
 meddled with the subject;" and says that "if the supersti- 
 tions of the nursery were disregarded, and the principle of 
 utility kept steadily in view, a solution might not be very 
 difficult to be found." 
 
 - Mr, John Stuart Mill strongly urges restraint of the number 
 of the family, and he took an active part in disseminating 
 the knowledge of scientific checks. 
 
 The members of the old Freethought Institution in John 
 Street made it part of their work to circulate popular tracts, 
 advocating scientific checks, such as a four-page tract 
 entitled, " Population : is not its increase at present an evil, 
 and would not some harmless check be desirable ? " 
 
 Mr. Austin Holyoake, in his " Large and Small Families," 
 follows in the. same strain, and recommends as guides 
 K'nowlton's Pamphlet and Owen's " Moral Physiology." 
 
 Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, writing as one of the Vice- 
 Presidents of the National Secular Society in 1876, points 
 to the difference between Christian and Secular morality on 
 this head ; he says : " Let any one regard for a moment the 
 Christian's theory of this life. It tells us that all human 
 beings born are immortal, and that God has to provide for 
 them above or below ! Yet in every portion of the land 
 scoundrel or vicious parents may bring into existence a. 
 squalid brood of dirty, sickly, depraved, ignorant, ragged 
 children. Christianity fails utterly to prevent their exist- 
 ence, and hurls quick words of opprobrium upon any who 
 advocate the prevention of this progeny of crime. Yet the 
 Christian teaches that, by mere act of orthodox belief, these 
 ignorant and unclean creatures can be sent from the gutter 
 to God. A Secularist cannot help shuddering at this 
 doctrine and this practice, so fatal to society, so con- 
 temptuous to heaven." 
 
 M. Garnier and with him I close these extracts, only a 
 few out of many that might be brought forward says : 
 " I am led to declare openly and positively, that by pru- 
 dence is to be understood not only delayed marriages, not 
 only celibacy for those who are capable of practising it, but 
 prudence during the married state itself." Answering 
 Proudhon's objections, he asks : " Can it be called immoral 
 in the father of a family if he should wish to have only a 
 limited number of children, proportioned to his means, and 
 to the future which his affection fondly weaves for them, 
 and if he should not, in carrying out this object, condemn 
 
48 THE LAW OF POPULATION. 
 
 himself to the most absolute and rigorous continence? 
 
 Let any one ask himself whether it is more moral, more 
 conscientious, to give birth to children in the midst of 
 privations, or prevent them being born, and let him then 
 reply." 
 
 Thus has the effort to obtain social reform gone hand in 
 hand with that for political and religious freedom; the 
 victors in the latter have been the soldiers in the former. 
 Discussion on the Population Question is not yet safe ; legal 
 penalty threatens those who advocate the restriction of birth 
 instead of the destruction of life; the same penalty was 
 braved by our leaders in the last generation, and we have 
 only to follow in their steps in order to conquer as they 
 conquered and become sharers of their crown. We work 
 for. the redemption of the poor, for the salvation of the 
 wretched ; the cause of the people is the sacredest of all 
 causes, and is the one which is the most certain to triumph, 
 however sharp may be the struggle for the victory. 
 
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