The New Zealand Official Year Book gives the following as the average prices of food for the years mentioned:—

The official returns give the average daily wage for artisans for the years 1877, 1887, 1897, and 1901 as 11s., 10s. 6d., 9s. 9d., and 10s. 3d., respectively.

The weekly rations (the standard food supply for soldiers—Parkes's) purchaseable by the weekly wages for these years respectively are 11.1, 14.3, 16, and 12.4; i.e., the average weekly wage of an artisan in constant employment in 1877 would purchase rations for 11.1 persons, in 1887 for 14.3 persons, in 1897 for 16 persons, and in 1901 for 12.4 persons.

Up to the year 1877, the birth-rate in England and Wales conformed to the law of Malthus, and kept pace with increasing prosperity; but, after that year, and right up to the present time, the nation's prosperity has gone on advancing at a phenomenal rate pari passu with an equally phenomenal decline in the number of births per 1000 of the population.

People were encouraged to believe that large families were an evil. A great many, no doubt, had already come to this conclusion; for there is no more common belief amongst the working classes, at least, than that large families are a cause of poverty and hardship. And this is even more true than it was in the days of the Neo-Malthusians, for then child and women labour was a source of gain to the family, and a poor man's earnings were often considerably augmented thereby.

The uniform decrease of the birth-rate is a matter of statistics, and admits of no dispute. It has been least rapid in the German Empire, and most rapid in New Zealand.

With the declining birth-rate the marriage-rate must be considered.

Malthus would have expected a declining birth-rate to be the natural result of a declining marriage-rate, and a declining marriage-rate to be due to the practice of moral restraint, rendered imperative because of hard times, and a difficulty in obtaining work, wages, and food.

Given the purchasing power of a people, Malthus would have estimated, according to his laws, the marriage-rate, and, given the marriage-rate, he would have estimated the birth-rate.

In "Industrial Democracy," by Sydney and Beatrice Webb (p. 637), the following occurs:—"The Hearts of Oak Friendly Society is the largest centralised Benefit Society in this country, having now over two hundred thousand adult male members. No one is admitted who is not of good character, and in receipt of wages of twenty-four shillings a week or upwards. The membership consists, therefore, of the artisan and skilled operative class, with some intermixture of the small shopkeeper, to the exclusion of the mere labourer. Among its provisions, is the "Lying-in Benefit," a payment of thirty shillings for each confinement of a member's wife.

From 1866 to 1880 the proportion of lying-in claims to membership slowly rose from 21.76 to 24.78 per 100. From 1880 to the present time it has continuously declined, until now it is only between 14 and 15 per 100.

HEARTS OF OAK FRIENDLY SOCIETY.

In this remarkable table the percentage of births to total membership gradually rose from 21.76, in 1866, to 24.72, in 1880, and then gradually declined to 14.67 in 1896.

This is a striking instance of the fact that the decrease in the total birth-rate is due more to a decrease in the fecundity of marriage, than to a decrease of the marriage-rate.

Mr. Webb adds:—"The well-known actuary, Mr. R.P. Hardy, watching the statistics year by year, and knowing intimately all the circumstances of the organisation, attributes this startling reduction in the number of births of children to these specially prosperous and specially thrifty artisans entirely to their deliberate desire to limit the size of their families."

The marriage-rate in England and Wales commenced to decline about three years before the sudden change in the birth-rate of 1877, and continued to fall till about 1880, but has maintained a fairly uniform standard since then, rising slightly in fact, the birth-rate, meanwhile, descending rapidly.

Means Adopted.

Family Responsibility—Natural fertility undiminished.—Voluntary prevention and physiological knowledge.—New Zealand experience.—Diminishing influence of delayed marriage.—Practice of abortion.—Popular sympathy in criminal cases.—Absence of complicating issues in New Zealand.—Colonial desire for comfort and happiness.

There is a gradually increasing consensus of opinion amongst statisticians, that the explanation of the decrease in the number of births is to be found in the desire of married persons to limit the family they have to rear and educate, and the voluntary practice of certain checks to conception in order to fulfil this desire.

It is assumed that there is no diminution in the natural fertility of either sex. There is no evidence to show that sexual desire is not as powerful and universal as it ever was in the history of the race; nor is there any evidence to show that the generative elements have lost any of their fertilizing and developmental properties and power.

He further says, "there is no good reason for thinking that there is a diminished power to produce children in either sex."

M. Arsène Dumont in "Natalite et Democratie" discusses the declining birth-rate of France, and finds the cause to be the voluntary prevention of child-bearing on the part of the people, going so far as to say that where large families occur amongst the peasantry, it is due to ignorance of the means of prevention.

The birth-rate in none of the civilized countries of the world has diminished so rapidly as in New Zealand. It was 40.8 in 1880; it was 25.6 in 1900, a loss of 15.2 births per 1000 of the population in 20 years.

There is no known economic cause for this decline. The prosperity of the Colony has been most marked during these years.

Observation and statistics force upon us the conclusion that voluntary effort upon the part of married couples to prevent conception is the one great cause of the low and declining birth-rate. The means adopted are artificial checks and intermittent sexual restraint, within the marriage bond, the latter tending to replace the former amongst normal women, as physiological knowledge spreads.

Delayed marriage under Malthusian principles would exert a potent influence in limiting the births, because early marriages were, and, under normal circumstances would still be, fruitful.

In the 28th annual report relating to the registration and return of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Michigan for the year 1894 (p. 125), it is stated that "The mean number of children borne by females married at from 15 to 19 years of age inclusive, is 6.76. For the next five year period of ages, it is 5.32, or a loss of 1.44 children per marriage, this attending an advance of five years in age at marriage."

Voluntary effort frequently expresses itself in the practice of abortion. Many monthly nurses degenerate into abortionists and practise their calling largely, while many women have learned successfully to operate on themselves.

In New Zealand there is no oppressive misgovernment, there is no land question in the sense in which Nitti applies the term, there is no poverty to account for a declining birth-rate or to confuse the problem. There is prosperity on every hand, and want is almost unknown. And yet, fewer and fewer children, in proportion to the population, and in proportion to the number of marriages, are born into the colony every year. The only reason that can be given is that the people, though they want marriage and do marry, do not wish to bear more children than they can safely, easily, and healthfully support, with a due and ever-increasing regard for their own personal comfort and happiness. They have learned that marriage and procreation are not necessarily inseperable and they practice what they know.

Causes of Declining Birth-rate.

Influence of self-restraint without continence.—Desire to limit families in New Zealand not due to poverty.—Offspring cannot be limited without self-restraint.—New Zealand's economic condition.—High standard of general education.—Tendency to migrate within the colony.—Diffusion of ideas.—Free social migration between all classes.—Desire to migrate upwards.—Desire to raise the standard of ease and comfort.—Social status the measure of financial status.—Social attraction of one class to next below.—Each conscious of his limitation.—Large families confirm this limitation.—The cost of the family.—The cost of maternity. The craving for ease and luxury.—Parents' desire for their children's social success.—Humble homes bear distinguished sons. Large number with University education in New Zealand.—No child labour except in hop and dairy districts.—Hopeless poverty a cause of high birth-rates.—High birth-rates a cause of poverty.—Fecundity depends on capacity of the female to bear children.

The first or direct cause of this decline in the birth-rate then, is the inhibition of conception by voluntary means, on the part of those capable of bearing children.

This inhibition is the result of a desire on the part of both sexes to limit their families.

The desire for this limitation must be strong, for there is absolutely no evidence that the passion for marriage has lost any of its force; it must be extensive for the statistics show its results, and the experience of medical men bears the contention out.

While the marriage passion remains normal, offspring cannot be limited without the exercise of self-restraint on the part of both parties to the marriage compact. Artificial means of inhibiting conception, and intermittent restraint are antagonistic to the sexual instinct, and the desire for limitation must be strong and mutual to counteract this instinct within the marriage bond.

The reasons for this strong and very general desire, that marriage should not result in numerous births must have some foundation. What is it?

Every natural blessing that a people could desire in a country, is to be found in New Zealand. Climate, natural fertility, and production, unrivalled scenery in mountain, lake, and forest, everything to bless and prosper the present, and inspire hope in the future. Why is it that, with all this wealth, and with the country still progressing and yet undeveloped, a desire exists in the heart of the people to limit families.

The reason is social not economic, if one may contrast the terms.

Take women's attitude to the question first. Our women are well educated. A state system of compulsory education has placed within the reach of all a good education, up to what is known as the VI. or VII. Standard, and only a very few in the colony have been too poor or too rich to take advantage of it.

Most women can and do read an extensive literature, and to this they have abundant access, for even small country towns have good libraries. Alexandra, a little town of 400 inhabitants amongst the Central Otago mountains, has a public library of several thousand volumes, and the people take as much pride in this institution as in their school and church.

Class distinctions have no clear and defined line of demarcation, and there is a free migration between all the classes; the highest, which is not very high, is always being recruited from those below, and from even the lowest, which is not very low.

The highest class is not completely out of sight of any class below it, and many families are distributed evenly over all the classes. A woman is the wife of a judge, a sister is the President of a Woman's Union, another sister is in a shop, and a fourth is married to a labourer.

If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the social scale, he or she is welcome—if one of the richer (they do not like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or repute.

In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between the various strata of society that obtain in other lands. Not only is that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are not touched by a consciousness of it.

Because it is possible to rise, because others rise, the desire to be migrating upwards soon takes possession of members of all but the lowest or poorest class, or those heavily ballasted with a large or increasing family.

The desire to rise in social status is inseparably bound up with the kindred desire to rise in the standard of comfort and ease.

Social status in New Zealand is, as yet, scarcely distinguishable from financial status. Those who are referred to as the better classes, are simply those who have got, or who have made, money. All things, therefore, are possible to everyone in this democratic colony.

There is thus permeating all classes in New Zealand a spirit of social rivalry, which shows no tendency to abate nor to be diverted. The social status of one class exerts an attractive force on the class next below.

But, apart from the influence of status, one class keeps steadily in view, and persistently strives to attain, the ease, comfort, and even luxury of the class above it.

Many who do not acquire wealth enough to make any appreciable difference in their social status, are able, through family, to improve their position. Their sons and daughters are given an University education, and by far the largest number of those entering the learned professions in New Zealand are the sons of farmers, tradespeople, and retail dealers.

The great mass of the people in our Colony are conscious of the fact that their social relations and standard of comfort, or shall one say standard of ease, are capable of improvement, and the desire to bring about that improvement is the dominant ambition of their lives.

Anything that stands in the way of this ambition must be overcome. A large family is a serious check to this ambition, so a large family must be avoided.

This desire to rise, and this dread too of incurring a responsibility that will assuredly check individual progress were counselled by Malthus, and resulted, and he said should result, in delayed marriage, lest a man, in taking to himself a wife, take also to himself a family he is unable to support.

Men and women, in this Colony at least, have discovered that conformity to physiological law makes this possible.

A wife does not really add very much to a man's responsibility—it is the family that adds to his expense, and taxes all his resources. It is the doctor and the nurse, the food and the clothing, and the education of the uninvited ones to his home, that use up all his earnings, that keep him poor, or make him poorer.

Then there is one aspect of the question peculiar to the women themselves. Women have come to dread maternity. This is part of a general impatience with pain common to us all. Chloroform, and morphia, and cocaine, and ethyl chloride have taught us that pain is an evil.

When there was no chance of relieving it, we anæsthetised ourselves and each other with the thought that it was necessary, it was the will of Providence, the cry of our nerves for succour.

Now it is an evil, and if we must submit we do so under protest. Women now engage doctors on condition that chloroform will be administered as soon as they scream, and they scream earlier in their labour at each succeeding occasion.

It is, however, no new phase in human experience. It characterised all the civilisations of ancient times, at the height of their prosperity, and was really the beginning of their decay.

Women with us are more eager to limit families than are their husbands. They feel the burdens of a large family more. They are often heard to declare that, with a large family around her, and limited funds at her disposal with which to provide assistance, a woman is a slave. A large number think this, and, if there is a way out of the difficulty, they will follow that way. And they are not content to escape the hardships of life. They want comforts, and seek them earnestly. With the advent of comfort, they seek for ease, and, when this is found, they seek for luxury and social position.

Parents with us have a high ideal of what upbringing should be. Every parent wants his children to "do better" than himself. If he does not wish to make a stepping-stone of them, on which to rise to higher social things, he certainly wishes to give them such a "start in life" as will give them the best prospects of keeping pace with, or outstripping their fellows.

There is a shoemaker in a small digging town in New Zealand, still toiling away at his last, whose son is a distinguished graduate of our University, author of several books, and in a high position in his profession.

There is a grocer in another remote inland village whose son is a doctor in good practice. There is a baker in a little country district whose sons now hold high positions in the medical profession, one at home and the other abroad.

These facts are widely known amongst the working classes, and inspire them with a spirit of rivalry.

Further evidences of improved education will be found in the portion of his work relating to marriages, where it is shown that the proportion of persons in every thousand married, who signed by mark, has fallen very greatly since 1881. The figures for the sexes in the year 1881 were 32.04 males, and 57.04 females, against 6.19 males and 7.02 females in 1895.

For the position of teacher in a public school in New Zealand, at a salary of £60 a year, there were 14 female applicants, 10 of whom held the degree of M.A., and the other four that of B.A.

The number of children, 5-15 years of age, in New Zealand, was estimated as on 31st December, 1902, at 178,875. The number of children, 7-13 years of age (compulsory school age), was estimated as on 31st December, 1902, at 124,986. The attendance at schools, public and private, during the fourth quarter of 1902, was European 150,332, Maoris and half-castes 5,573. If children spend their useful years of child life at school, they can render little or no remunerative service to their parents.

In New Zealand, children, therefore, while they remain at home, are a continual drain on the resources of the bread-winner. More is expected from parents than in many other countries.

At our public schools children are expected to be well clad; and it is quite the exception, even in the poorest localities of our large cities, to see children attending school with bare feet.

During child-life, nothing is returned to the parent to compensate for the outlay upon the rearing and educating of children.

If a boy, by reason of a good education, soon, say, at from 14-18 years, is enabled to earn a few shillings weekly, it is very readily absorbed in keeping him dressed equally well with other boys at the same office or work.

An investment in children is, therefore, from a pecuniary point of view, a failure. There are, perhaps, two exceptions in New Zealand—in dairy farming in Taranaki, where the children milk outside school hours; and in the hop districts of Nelson, where, during the season, all the children in a family become hop-pickers, and a big cheque is netted when the family is a large one.

Clothing is dear in New Zealand. The following is a labourer's account of his expenditure. He is an industrious man, and his wife is a thrifty Glasgow woman. It is drawn very fine. No. 7 is less than he would have to pay in the city by two or three shillings a week for a house of similar size. No. 9 is rather higher than is usual with Benefit Societies, which average about sixteen shillings a quarter.

WEEKLY EXPENSES OF FAMILY COMPRISING
FIVE CHILDREN AND PARENTS.

In our Colony, there is no more prevalent or ingrained idea in the minds of our people than that large families are a cause of poverty.

A high birth-rate in a family certainly is a cause of poverty. Many children do not enable a father to earn higher wages, nor do they enable a mother to render the bread-winner more assistance; while in New Zealand, especially, compulsory education and the inhibition of child-labour prevent indigent parents from procuring the slight help that robust boys and girls of 10 years of age, or so, are often able to supply.

These considerations go far to explain the desire on the part of married couples to limit offspring; and, if there were no means at their disposal of limiting the number of children born to them, a great decline in the marriage-rate would be the inevitable result of the existing conditions of life, and the prevalent ideas of the people.

Hopeless poverty appears to be a cause of a high birth-rate, and this seems to be due to the complete abandonment by the hopelessly poor of all hope of attaining comfort and success.

If he is not, the wife can work, and their joint earnings will keep them from want. But, if one of the partners has not only to give herself up to child-bearing, and thus cease to earn, but also bring another into the home that will monopolise all her time, attention, and energy, and a good deal of its father's earnings, how will they fare?

If a man's wages has to be divided between two, then between three, then four, six, eight, ten, while all the time that wages is not increasing, have we not a direct cause of poverty, and, moreover, is not that cause first in time and importance?

Later on in the history of the family their poverty will become a cause of an increase in the children born to them. At first they may struggle to prevent an increase, but, when they are in the depths of hopeless poverty, they will abandon themselves to despair.

Could they have had born to them only one, or two, or three, during their early married life, they might not only have escaped want, but later in life may have had others born to them, without either their little ones or themselves feeling the pinch of poverty.

It must be remembered in this connection that fecundity and sexual activity are not convertible terms.

A high fecundity does not depend on an inordinate sexual activity.

Fecundity depends on the child-bearing capacity of each female, and a sexual union at an appropriate time once in two years between puberty and the catamenia is compatible with the highest possible fecundity.

It would be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of sense, their fecundity would be modified in an appreciable degree.

Ethics of Prevention.

Fertility the law of life.—Man interprets and controls this law.—Marriage law necessary to fix paternal responsibility.—Malthus's high ideal.—If prudence the motive, continence and celibacy violate no law.—Post-nuptial intermittent restraint.—Ethics of prevention judged by consequences.—When procreation is a good and when an evil.—Oligantrophy.—Artificial checks are physiological sins.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them, and God blessed them and God said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.'"—(Genesis i., 27-28). This commandment was repeated to Noah and his sons.

Whether Moses was recording the voice of God, or interpreting a physiological law is immaterial to this aspect of a great social question. The fact remains that in obedience to a great law of life, all living things are fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and multiplication in a state of nature is limited only by space and food.

In a state of nature, reproduction is automatic, and only in this state is this physiological law, or this divine command obeyed.

A community of men becomes a social organism, calls itself a State, and limits the law of reproduction. It decrees that the sexes shall, if they pair, isolate themselves in pairs, and live in pairs whether inclined to so live or not.

If the State has a right so to interpret and limit the law of reproduction, a principle in human affairs is established, and its decree that individuals shall not mate before a certain age, or not mate at all, is only a further application of the same principle. By the law of reproduction a strong instinct, second only in force and universality to the law of self-preservation, is planted in the sexes, and upon a blind obedience to this force, the continuity of the race depends.

The tendency in the races of history has been to over-population, or to a population beyond the food supply, and there is probably no race known to history that did not at some one period of its rise or fall suffer from over-population.

Sparta was said to have suffered thus, because of under-population, and passed a law encouraging large families. Alexander encouraged his soldiers to intermarry with the women of conquered races, in order to diminish racial differences and antagonism, and Augustus framed laws for the discouragement of celibacy, but no law has ever been passed decreeing that individuals must mate, or if they do mate that they shall procreate.

Malthus, the great and good philanthropist of Harleybury, a great moralist and Christian clergyman, urged that it was people's duty not to mate and procreate until they had reasonable hope of being able easily to rear, support, and educate the normal family of four, and, if that were impossible, not to mate at all. As a Christian clergyman, Malthus did not interpret the Divine command apart from the consequences of its literal acceptance.

"Be fruitful," meant to Malthus reproduce your kind,—that implied not only bringing babies into the world, but rearing them up to healthy, robust, and prosperous manhood, with every prospect of continuing the process.

"Multiply and replenish the earth" as a command to Noah, meant in the mind of the Rector of Harleybury, "People the earth with men after your own image."

The physiological law is simple and blind, taking no cognisance of the consequences, or the quality of the offspring produced. The divine command is complex. It embodies the reproductive instinct, but restrains and guides it in view of ultimate consequences.

So much for the views and teaching of Malthus. To him no ethical standard was violated in preventing offspring by protracted continence, or lifelong celibacy, provided the motive was the inability so to provide for a family as to require no aid from the state. And it is difficult to escape this conclusion. There is no ethical, Christian, or social law, that directs a man or woman to procreate their kind if they cannot, or have reasonable grounds to think they cannot, support their offspring without aid from others.

There can be, therefore, no just law that decrees that men or women shall marry under such circumstances. In fact most philanthropists think they violate a social and ethical law if they do marry.

Abstention is the voluntary hindrance of a desire, when that desire is strongest in both sexes; and as such it limits happiness, and is in consequence an evil per se. A motive that will control this desire must be a strong one; such a motive is not necessarily bad. It may be good or evil.

There can be no essential ethical difference between constant continence, prior to marriage, and intermittent continence subsequent to marriage, both practices having a similar motive.

If post nuptial restraint with a view to limiting offspring is wrong, restraint from marriage with the same motive is wrong.

If delayed marriage in the interest of the individual and the State is right, marriage with intermittent restraint is in the same interest, and can as easily be defended.

The ethics of prevention by restraint must be judged by its consequences. If unrestrained procreation will place children in a home where the food and comfort are adequate to their healthful support and development, then procreation is good,—good for the individual, society, and the State.

All persons of fair education and good intelligence know what those conditions are, and if they procreate regardless of their absence, that procreation is an evil, and prevention by restraint is the contrary virtue.

It is not suggested, however, that all those who prevent, without or within the marriage bond, do so from this worthy motive, nor is it suggested that all those who prevent are not extravagant in their demand for luxurious conditions for themselves and for their children.

Many require not merely the conditions necessary to the healthful development of each and every child they may bear, but they demand that child-bearing shall not entail hardships nor the prospect of hardships, shall not involve the surrender of any comfort or luxury, nor the prospect of any such surrender.

Whatever doubt may exist in the minds of moralists and philanthropists as to the ethics of prevention in the face of poverty, there can be no doubt that prevention by those able to bear and educate healthy offspring, without hardship, is a pernicious vice degrading to the individual, and a crime against society and the State.

Aristotle called this vice "oliganthropy." Amongst the ancients it was associated with self-indulgence, luxury, and ease. It was the result of self-indulgence, but it was the cause of mental and moral anæmia, and racial decay.

These checks to conception, though they are very largely used, can hardly be defended on physiological grounds. Every interference with a natural process must be attended, to some extent at least, with physical injury. There is not much evidence that the injury is great, but in so far as an interference is unnatural, it is unhealthy, and there is much evidence to show that many of the checks advocated and used, are not only harmful but are quite useless for the purpose for which they are sold.

It will be conceded by most, no doubt, that with those capable of bearing healthy children, and those unable to rear healthy ones when born, prevention by restraint, ante-nuptial or post nuptial, is a social virtue, while prevention under all other circumstances is a social vice.

Self-preservation is the basal law of life, and to preserve one's-self in happiness, the completest preservation, for happiness promotes health, and health longevity.

The first law of living nature then is to preserve life and the enjoyment of it, and the pleasures sought, to increase the sum of happiness will depend on the sentiments and emotions, i.e., on the faculties of mind that education and experience have developed, in the race, or in the individual.

My duty to my child is comprehended in my duty to society, i.e., to others. My duty to others is to increase the sum of the happiness of others, and bringing healthy children into the world not only creates beings capable of experiencing and enjoying pleasures, but adds to the sum of social happiness, by increasing the number of social units capable of rendering service to others.

The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.

My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself, and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.

Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation the second or subsidiary law.

To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.

Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same age."—(Coghlan).

Statistics and physicians from their observation agree in this, that the bearing of children by normal women, so far from being injurious to health, is as healthful, stimulating, and invigorating a function as the blooming of a flower, or the shedding of fruit, and a mother is no worse for the experience of maternity than is the plant or the tree for the fruit it bears.

The supreme law of society is the law of race-preservation, and the infraction of this law is a social crime. One's duty to society is a higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one, reason—a higher and later, but less respected, faculty—prompts to the other.

But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.

Parental love is a passion as well as an instinct in normal men and women, and the full play of this passion in its natural state is productive of the greatest happiness.

Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage or adulterate this powerful passion in the human heart.

Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings, and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that smother this noble passion.

The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would naturally point to parentage.

The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partnership in success, the repose of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly supply.

What is the alternative?

Or a family of one, after years of parental care and love, education and expense, dies or turns a rake, and the canker of remorse takes his place in the broken hearts.

Nature's laws are not broken with impunity—as a great Physician has said, "She never forgives and never forgets."

Self-preservation and race-preservation together constitute the law of life, just as Conservation of Matter and Conservation of Energy constitute the Law of Substance in Haeckels Monistic Philosophy, and the severest altruism will permit man to follow his highest self-interest in obedience to these laws. It is only a perverted and vicious self-interest that would tempt him to infraction.

That the vice of oliganthropy is growing amongst normal and healthy people is a painful and startling fact. In New Zealand the prevailing belief is that a number of children adds to the cares and responsibilities of life more than they add to its joys and pleasures, and many have come to think with John Stuart Mill, that a large family should be looked on with the same contempt as drunkenness.

Who Prevent.

Desire for family limitation result of our social system.—Desire and practice not uniform through all classes.—The best limit, the worst do not.—Early marriages and large families.—N.Z. marriage rates. Those who delay, and those who abstain from marriage.—Good motives mostly actuate.—All limitation implies restraint.—Birth-rates vary inversely with prudence and self-control.—The limited family usually born in early married life when progeny is less likely to be well developed.—Our worst citizens most prolific.—Effect of poverty on fecundity.—Effect of alcoholic intemperance.—Effect of mental and physical defects.—Defectives propagate their kind.—The intermittent inhabitants of Asylums and Gaols constitute the greatest danger to society.—Character the resultant of two forces—motor impulse and inhibition.—Chief criminal characteristic is defective inhibition.—This defect is strongly hereditary.—It expresses itself in unrestrained fertility.

It has been sufficiently demonstrated in preceding chapters, that the birth-rate has been, and is still rapidly declining. It has been sought to prove that this decline is chiefly due to voluntary means taken by married people to limit their families, and that the desire for this limitation is the result of our social system.

The important question now arises. Is the desire uniform through all classes of Society, and is the practice of prevention uniform through all classes?

Experience and statistics force us to the startling conclusion, that the birth-rate is declining amongst the best classes of citizens, and remains undisturbed amongst the worst.

Now the first-class responsible for the decline includes those who do not marry, and those who marry late. The Michigan vital statistics for 1894 (p. 125) show that the mean number of children to each marriage at the age of 15-19 years is 6.75, at the age of 20-25 years it is 5.32, a difference of 1.44 in favour of delayed marriage for a period of five years.

In New Zealand the marriage rate has gone up from 5.97 per thousand persons living in 1888 to 7.67 in 1900.

This class includes clerks with an income of £100 and under,—a large number with £150, and all misogynists with higher incomes.

It includes labourers with £75 a year and under, and many who receive £100.

Their motives for avoiding marriage are mostly prudential.

These too are as a rule good citizens, and there are two qualities that so distinguish them. First, their prudence; they have no wish to burden the State with the care or support of their children. Their fixed determination is to support and educate them themselves, and they set themselves to the work with thriftiness and forethought.

In order to do this, however, it is essential that the family is limited to one, two, or three, as the case may be, and before it is too late, preventive measures are resorted to.

The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.

The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society. But the birth-rate varies in an inverse ratio with these qualities. In those communities or sections of communities, where these qualities are conspicuous, will the birth-rate be correspondingly low.

They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.

There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.

Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to their wish. They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the best progeny.

If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.

But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most prolific. Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.

Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage early asserts itself.

Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility, and these suggest restraint. But prudence and restraint are not the common attributes of the very poor. Poverty makes people reckless, they live from hour to hour as the lower animals do. They satisfy their desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire of sex.

The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal, the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.

Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely used."

Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.

In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.

To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than in any other class of society.

In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger, than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to practise it though prudence were to guide them.

The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.

The defectives, whose existence and whose liberty constitute the greatest danger to the State, are the intermittent inhabitants of our lunatic asylums, prisons, and reformatories.

There is one defect common to all these, and that is defective inhibition.

All human activity is the result of two forces, motor impulses tending to action, and inhibition tending to inertia.

The lower animals have strong motor impulses constantly exploding and expressing themselves in great activity, offensive, defensive, self-preservative, and procreative, being restrained only by the inhibitive forces of their conditions and environment.

Children have strong motor impulses, which are at first little controlled. Inhibition is a late development and is largely a result of education.

Inhibition is the function performed by the highest and last-formed brain-cells. These brain cells may be undeveloped either from want of exercise, that is, education, or from hereditary weakness, or, having been developed may have undergone degeneration, under the influence of alcohol, or from hereditary or acquired disease.

Motor impulses, as the springs of action, are common to all animals. In the lower animals inhibition is external, and never internal or subjective. In man it may be internal or external.

It is internal or subjective in those whose higher brain centres are well developed and normal. Their auto-inhibition is such that all their motor impulses are controlled and directed in the best interests of society.

It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance to temptation.

A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.

Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.

Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.

M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.

The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.

They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more often hereditary.

But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,—they are unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and which may indeed be normal.