13.  MONTAGUE COOKSON.—­“The limitation of the number of the family—­is as much the duty of married persons as the observance of chastity is the duty of those that are unmarried.”

14.  JOHN STUART MILL.—­“Every one has aright to live.  We will suppose this granted.  But no one has a right to bring children into life to be supported by other people.  Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last.  Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of a large family is regarded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess.”

15.  DR. T.D.  NICHOLLS.—­“In the present social state, men and women should refrain from having children unless they see a reasonable prospect of giving them suitable nurture and education.”

16.  REV.  M.J.  SAVAGE.—­“Some means ought to be provided for checking the birth of sickly children.”

17.  DR. STOCKHAM.—­“Thoughtful minds must acknowledge the great wrong done when children are begotten under adverse conditions.  Women must learn the laws of life so as to protect themselves, and not be the means of bringing sin-cursed, diseased children into the world.  The remedy is in the prevention of pregnancy, not in producing abortion.”

* * * * *

SMALL FAMILIES AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE.

1.  MARRIED PEOPLE MUST DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES.—­It is the fashion of those who marry nowadays to have few children, often none.  Of course this is a matter which married people must decide for themselves.  As is stated in an earlier chapter, sometimes this policy is the wisest that can be pursued.

2.  Diseased people who are likely to beget only a sickly offspring, may follow this course, and so may thieves, rascals, vagabonds, insane and drunken persons, and all those who are likely to bring into the world beings that ought not to be here.  But why so many well-to-do folks should pursue a policy adapted only to paupers and criminals, is not easy to explain.  Why marry at all if not to found a family that shall live to bless and make glad the earth after father and mother are gone?  It is not wise to rear too many children, nor is it wise to have too few.  Properly brought up, they will make home a delight, and parents happy.

[Illustration:  A WELL NOURISHED CHILD.]

3.  POPULATION LIMITED.—­Galton, in his great work on hereditary genius, observes that “the time may hereafter arrive in far distant years, when the population of this earth shall be kept as strictly within bounds of number and suitability of race, as the sheep of a well-ordered moor, or the plants in an orchard-house; in the meantime let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent and conform to a high and generous civilization.”

4.  SHALL SICKLY PEOPLE RAISE CHILDREN?—­The question whether sickly people should marry and propagate their kind, is briefly alluded to in an early chapter of this work.  Where father and mother are both consumptive the chances are that the children will inherit physical weakness, which will result in the same disease, unless great pains are taken to give them a good physical education, and even then the probabilities are that they will find life a burden hardly worth living.