Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/49

 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 limitation 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 to eat, so it will not require reasonable man voluntarily to multiply when there is no longer the condition for his subsistence. 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 without 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 female, or her