Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/36

 population contains fewer children, and a greater proportional 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 benevolent of his time and the happiness of whose married life has 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 departments, or by new forms of government. Nothing will permanently affect pauperism while the present reckless increase 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 anything 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 unmarried."

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.