Outspoken Essays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 361 pages of information about Outspoken Essays.

Outspoken Essays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 361 pages of information about Outspoken Essays.

Even more interesting to most of us is the future of our race at home.  As regards quality, the outlook for the present is bad.  We have seen that the destruction of the upper and professional classes by taxation directed expressly against them has already begun, and this victimisation is certain to become more and more acute, till these classes are practically extinguished.  The old aristocracy showed a tendency to decay even when they were unduly favoured by legislation, and a little more pressure will drive them to voluntary sterility and extermination.  Even more to be regretted is the doom of the professional aristocracy, a caste almost peculiar to our country.  These families can often show longer, and usually much better pedigrees than the peerage; the persistence of marked ability in many of them, for several generations, is the delight of the eugenist.  They are perhaps the best specimens of humanity to be found in any country of the world.  Yet they have no prospects except to be gradually harassed out of existence, like the curiales of the later Roman Empire.  The power will apparently be grasped by a new highly privileged class, the aristocracy of labour.  This class, being intelligent, energetic, and intensely selfish, may retain its domination for a considerable time.  It is a matter of course that, having won its privilege of exploiting the community, it will use all its efforts to preserve that privilege and to prevent others from sharing it.  In other words, it will become an exclusive and strongly conservative class, on a broader basis than the territorial and commercial aristocracies which preceded it.  It will probably be strong enough to discontinue the system of State doles which encourages the wastrel to multiply, as he does multiply, much faster than the valuable part of the population.  We are at present breeding a large parasitic class subsisting on the taxes and hampering the Government.  The comparative fertility of the lowest class as compared with the better stocks has greatly increased, and is still increasing.  The competent working-class families, as well as the rich, are far less fertile than the waste products of our civilisation.  Dr. Tredgold found that 43 couples of the parasitic class averaged 7.4 children per family, while 91 respectable couples from the working class averaged only 3.7 per family.  Mr. Sidney Webb examined the statistics of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, which is patronised by the best type of mechanic, and found that the birth-rate among its members has fallen 46 per cent, between 1881 and 1901; or, taking the whole period between 1880 and 1904, the falling off is 52 per cent.  This decline proves that the period of industrial expansion in England is nearly over.  It would be far better if our birth-rate were as low as that of France, as it would be but for the reckless propagation of the ‘submerged tenth,’ England being now a paradise for human refuse, the offscourings of Europe (170,000 in 1908) take the place of the better

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Outspoken Essays from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.