Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/51

 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 alternative, 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 conception, 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 population 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