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466 good. The 'population question' is nothing but a question of the wisdom or unwisdom and the consequent happiness or unhappiness of individuals and of families,—primarily, of course, of individuals. Were Mr. Kelly and his confreres not standing upon State Socialistic ground, they would never think of advancing such a collectivist argument. Should any governmentalist say to Mr. Kelly that the 'public good' required so and so, and that the individual must 'waive his rights when confronted with the greater right of the majority, that gentleman would proceed to show his opponent that there was no such thing as the 'public good,' save as it was the aggregation of the individual goods, and what was required to augment the 'public good' was to jealously preserve the rights and liberties of the individual."

This indicates the most blissful ignorance on Mr. Walker's part of the real bearing of the point originally made against him;—a point as indisputable as the sunlight, and which he had only to admit frankly and unreservedly in order to stop the "leak in the dykes that confined the waters of anti-Malthusian eloquence," and thereby save himself the necessity of counter-acting this leak by opening his own flood-gates. The point referred to is this: that, in consequence of the "iron law of wages" which prevails wherever monopoly prevails, a reduction of population cannot benefit the masses of laborers, and hence, while monopoly lives, can be of little or no value in political economy, although, if confined to a few families, it may benefit the families in question, and therefore be good domestic economy; the explanation of this being that small families means a reduction in the cost of living for those families, and a reduction in the cost of living for even one family means, under a monopolistic system, a reduction in the rate of wages paid to all laborers. If Mr. Walker had understood this, he never would have attempted to meet it with the specious statement (which to all Anarchists is the merest truism) that the public good is only the aggregation of the individual goods. Can he suppose that the Kellys and myself are so stupid that, if we believed that Malthusianism would make all individuals comfortable and happy, or would largely contribute to that end, we would not be as ardent Malthusians as himself? Mr. Walker begs the question. He bases his argument on an unproven assumption of the very point which we dispute and believe we disprove. The Kellys have expressly denied that Malthusianism can benefit the aggregation of individuals, and therefore the public. They have nowhere admitted that it would benefit "the individual;" they have only admitted that