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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59480 ***
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+                        THE MALTHUSIAN HANDBOOK
+
+                  Designed to induce Married People to
+                Limit their Families within their Means.
+
+
+                            PRICE SIXPENCE.
+
+                                LONDON:
+                    W. H. REYNOLDS, NEW CROSS, S.E.
+                          4th Edition.--1898.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+In every civilised State the problem of poverty is one which presses
+for solution. In some European countries it has, at times, locally
+assumed a critical and menacing form, threatening the very foundations
+upon which society is based. Revolutions have sprung from the fact
+that people needed food and could not obtain it; and, even in our own
+"highly favored" land, honest, industrious men are often driven to
+despair because they can neither get work nor food.
+
+Occasional outbreaks and demonstrations, however, are by no means the
+true measure of national poverty. Beneath the glittering surface of
+society there lies a seething mass of want and misery. The victims
+suffer in silence and make no sign, but their existence constitutes a
+permanent danger to the general welfare. Destitution is in numberless
+instances the parent of crime and prostitution, with their chain of
+disastrous consequences; overcrowding, semi-starvation and squalor are
+the fruitful sources of disease which scruples not to travel beyond
+its birthplace and to infect the homes of the wealthy. Modern society
+may be fitly compared to a magnificent palace reared in a miasmatic
+swamp, which fills the air with its death-dealing exhalations. No
+cunning artifices of builders or engineers can afford protection in
+such a case. In like manner, society cannot hope to escape from the
+influences which make for corruption and ultimate dissolution whilst
+it suffers poverty to remain in its midst.
+
+It is, indeed, unnecessary to insist upon the evils and the national
+dangers arising from poverty; for they are admitted upon all hands. The
+problem is: How can poverty be abolished? Upon this vital point
+opinions differ widely. The evil is so complex and many-sided that
+observers are apt to be misled by a partial view of the symptoms. For
+example, a total abstainer, concentrating his attention upon instances
+in which poverty has been brought about by excessive indulgence in
+alcoholic liquors, urges that drink is the "cause of poverty." The
+Socialist asks "Why are the many poor?" and answers that the remedy
+consists in the nationalisation of land and the instruments of
+production, the abolition of competition, etc. Others attribute
+the existence of poverty to idleness or to want of thrift amongst
+the workers. In no case, however, is the alleged cause equal to the
+palpable effect; and it is necessary to extend the enquiry in another
+direction if we are to discover the cause which, above and beyond all
+others, produces the want and misery that everybody desires to remove.
+
+The purpose of this little work is, first, to show that an excessive
+increase of population is the source from which these evils arise. In
+the second place, the means by which population may be kept under
+control will be explained, for it is useless to warn people of a
+danger if they are kept in ignorance of the means by which it may
+be avoided. Above all, it is to the poor that this knowledge must be
+conveyed, for, as we shall show in the following pages, the indigent
+class multiplies far more rapidly than the well-to-do, and it is upon
+themselves that the consequent misery necessarily falls.
+
+Experience teaches that almost all the ills which afflict mankind can
+be obviated by a careful study of nature and by conduct based upon
+due observance of natural laws. In the darkness of ignorance men
+must stumble into many pitfalls; but in the clear light of reason
+and knowledge they can discern the path which leads to freedom and
+happiness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MALTHUSIAN HANDBOOK.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MALTHUS AND THE LAW OF POPULATION.
+
+
+If it be desired to discover a remedy for an admitted evil, the first
+step must necessarily be to ascertain its cause. All schemes for
+the mitigation of the effects of poverty must in the long run end in
+failure, no matter how ambitious may be the undertakings of those who
+engage in this futile work. The captain of a sinking vessel does not
+confine his attention to the pumps, he seeks without delay to stop
+the inrush of water. And in dealing with the question of poverty it
+is essential that its root-cause be discovered before any hope of
+arriving at a solution of the problem can reasonably be entertained.
+
+An enquiry into the facts of nature will show that all forms of
+vegetable and animal life are capable of reproducing themselves
+in almost boundless profusion. Darwin, in his work on The Origin
+of Species, points this out with the greatest clearness. He says:
+"There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally
+increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would
+soon be covered with the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding
+man has doubled in twenty-five years; and at this rate, in a few
+thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his
+progeny. Linnæus has calculated that if an annual plant produced
+only two seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and
+their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then, in twenty
+years there would be a million plants." After giving the example of
+the slow-breeding elephant, he continues: "Still more striking is
+the evidence from our domestic animals of many kinds which have run
+wild in many parts of the world; if the statements of the rate of
+increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses in South America, and
+latterly in Australia, had not been well authenticated, they would
+have been incredible. So it is with plants: cases could be given of
+introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in
+less than ten years. Several of the plants, such as the cardoon and
+a tall thistle, now most numerous over the wild plains of La Plata,
+clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of all other
+plants, have been introduced from Europe; and there are plants which
+now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin
+to the Himalayas, which have been imported from America since its
+discovery. In such cases, and endless instances could be given, no
+one supposes that the fertility of these animals or plants has been
+suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious
+explanation is that the conditions of life have been very favorable,
+and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and
+young, and that nearly all the young have been able to breed. In such
+cases, the geometrical rate of increase, the result of which never
+fails to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid
+increase and wide diffusion of naturalised productions in their new
+homes. In a state of nature, almost every plant produces seed, and
+among animals there are very few that do not annually pair. Hence
+we may confidently assert that all plants and animals are tending
+to increase at a geometrical ratio; that all would most rapidly
+stock every station in which they could anyhow exist, and that the
+geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at
+some period of life."
+
+It was the observation of this striking fact in nature which led
+an English clergyman, the Rev. Thomas B. Malthus, to study deeply
+the question of poverty, and to formulate as "the principle of
+population" that which is now almost universally regarded as a law of
+nature. Before he published his great work the view was generally
+accepted that the wealth of a country was in proportion to its
+population; and statesmen frequently attempted to stimulate, by the
+distribution of bounties to the parents of excessively large families,
+the natural rate of increase. A few far-sighted men, such as the
+elder Mirabeau, Quesnay, and Adam Smith, partially perceived the true
+doctrine; but it remained for Malthus to examine the question in all
+its bearings, and to collect patiently and laboriously an overwhelming
+array of facts which established his contention beyond all reasonable
+doubt. It will be well here to give some account of this remarkable
+man and of the work with which his name is indissolubly associated.
+
+Thomas Robert Malthus was born at Dorking, Surrey, in 1766. At the
+age of thirty-one he became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge,
+and shortly afterwards took orders, officiating in a small village
+in Surrey.
+
+In the closing years of the eighteenth century, the minds of men in
+England were powerfully influenced by the great social upheaval taking
+place in France, and political views in this country were entering
+upon a new phase. The rights of man were coming to be regarded as
+something more than a phrase, and a generous desire to promote the
+welfare of the people was gradually taking the place of selfish
+indifference. Condorcet in France, and William Godwin in England,
+promulgated the view that the happiness of mankind depended chiefly
+upon the justice of political institutions, and that national welfare
+could be indefinitely promoted by just government. Daniel Malthus (the
+father of Thomas Robert), a man of sanguine and romantic temperament,
+warmly espoused the ideas set forth by Godwin, and frequently discussed
+the subject with his son. The younger man, however, by no means
+shared the paternal enthusiasm, and, following the lines suggested
+by Hume, Adam Smith, and other writers, he maintained that vice and
+misery were two powerful obstacles to the improvement of society,
+and urged, further, that the tendency of mankind to increase more
+rapidly than the means of subsistence gave rise to these evils. His
+arguments made a deep impression upon the mind of Daniel Malthus, who
+requested his son to put them in writing. This was accordingly done,
+and in 1798 T. R. Malthus published the first edition of his work:
+An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future
+Improvement of Society; with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin,
+Mr. Condorcet and other Writers. (London: 1798. One volume.)
+
+This book aroused a lively controversy, the writer's theories and
+conclusions being attacked and defended by various writers. The great
+interest excited by his essay caused Malthus to enquire still more
+deeply into the phenomena of poverty, and he determined to travel
+through Europe for the purpose of collecting facts bearing upon the
+subject. In 1799 he visited the continent, passing through Denmark,
+Sweden, and part of Russia, and, later, Switzerland and Savoy. The
+results of his researches furnished overwhelming proof of the accuracy
+of his contention; and in 1803 he published a second and much enlarged
+edition of his Essay, in two volumes. During the remainder of his
+life, Malthus thrice edited new editions of his work, which to this
+day remains the greatest monument of his honorable career. He died
+on 29th December, 1834.
+
+It is not intended here to give an exhaustive analysis of Malthus's
+Principle of Population. [1] We are concerned only with his theory
+of population and the conclusions to which that theory points. "The
+principal object of this essay," says the author, "is to examine the
+effects of one great cause intimately connected with the very nature
+of man, which, though it has been constantly and powerfully operating
+since the commencement of society, has been little noticed by the
+writers who have treated this subject. The cause to which I allude
+is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the
+nourishment prepared for it.
+
+"Dr. Franklin has observed that there is no bound to the prolific
+nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and
+interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of
+the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed
+and overspread with one kind only--as, for instance, with fennel;
+and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be
+replenished from one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen.
+
+"This is incontrovertibly true. Through the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the
+most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing
+in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs
+of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop
+themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few
+thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law of Nature,
+restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and
+the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law, and man
+cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.
+
+"In plants and irrational animals the view of the subject is
+simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase
+of their species, and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about
+providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is liberty,
+the power of increase is exerted; and the superabundant effects are
+repressed afterwards by want of room and nourishment."
+
+Malthus then adduces evidence of the extremely rapid increase of
+population amongst mankind under conditions in which food is abundant
+and easily obtainable. He calculates that population, if unchecked,
+goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a
+geometrical ratio. But he points out that the food supply can by no
+means be increased with equal facility. Even if it were possible in
+one period of twenty-five years to double the amount produced, there
+is no reason to suppose that the operation could be repeated during
+the following twenty-five years. As the demand for food increased,
+less fruitful soils would be taken into cultivation, and the additions
+that could be made to the former average produce would be gradually and
+regularly diminishing. Malthus then makes the following calculation:
+
+"Let us suppose that the yearly additions which might be made to the
+former average produce, instead of decreasing, which they certainly
+would do, were to remain the same; and that the produce of this island
+might be increased every twenty-five years, by a quantity equal to
+what it at present produces. The most enthusiastic speculator cannot
+suppose a greater increase than this. In a few centuries it would
+make every acre in the island like a garden.
+
+"If this supposition be applied to the whole earth, and if it be
+allowed that the subsistence for man, which the earth affords, might
+be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it
+at present produces, this will be supposing a rate of increase much
+greater than we can imagine that any possible exertions of mankind
+could make it.
+
+"It may fairly be pronounced, therefore, that considering the
+present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under
+circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly
+be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.
+
+"The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when
+brought together, will be very striking. Let us call the population
+of this island 11,000,000 (Mr. Malthus writes in 1806), and suppose
+the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. In
+the first twenty-five years the population would be 22,000,000, and
+the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal
+to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the population would
+be 44,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support
+of 33,000,000. In the next period the population would be 88,000,000,
+and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of half that
+number. And at the conclusion of the first century, the population
+would be 176,000,000, and the means of subsistence only equal to the
+support of 55,000,000, leaving a population of 121,000,000 totally
+unprovided for."
+
+Now let us see how this stupendous possible power of increase in the
+human race has been kept in check.
+
+The positive checks (i.e., checks which have operated through the
+action of natural laws) to an excessive increase of population
+comprehend the premature death of children and adults by disease,
+starvation, war and infanticide. Nature has a short and sharp way
+of dealing with her superfluous children. Amongst savage tribes the
+positive checks alone are brought into operation. The pages of human
+history teem with tragic records of famines decimating the unhappy
+victims of over-population; of pestilence stalking through the land,
+slaying its tens of thousands; of wars devastating countries and
+overwhelming the inhabitants in ruin, misery and death. In certain
+parts of the world the pangs of hunger have destroyed in men and
+women the primal instinct of parental love; and, in the fifth chapter
+of his work, Malthus shows how, in the South Sea Islands, where the
+possible expansion of population was extremely small, the frightful
+expedient of infanticide was largely resorted to by the inhabitants to
+check their natural increase. Even then, however, the pressure on the
+means of subsistence was so great that food became scarce at certain
+seasons of the year, and destructive wars ensued. Captain Vancouver,
+visiting Otaheite for the second time in 1791, found that most of the
+natives whom he had known fourteen years before had perished in battle.
+
+In the course of numerous examples of the effects of over-population
+upon the condition of the masses in various countries, Malthus gives
+a striking example of the appalling misery to which even industrious
+laborers were reduced in densely-peopled China. He quotes the words
+of a Jesuit missionary, who stated that a Chinaman "will pass whole
+days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in water, and
+in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and to
+drink the insipid water in which it is boiled." This is obviously
+an exaggeration, since it would be impossible to maintain life under
+such conditions; but it serves to show the deplorable state to which
+the workers may be reduced by excessive population.
+
+It is unnecessary here to follow Malthus through his exhaustive
+survey of the condition of nations affected by over-population in
+various stages of the world's history. Our purpose is rather to
+furnish an indication of the principle than to reproduce in detail
+the observations upon which it is based. The most concise formula
+in which the theory of Malthus has been expressed is as follows:
+"That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means
+of subsistence."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE REMEDY: OLD AND NEW.
+
+
+The principle stated at the end of the preceding chapter being assumed,
+the question arises: How can the evils caused by the constant tendency
+towards over-population be prevented? The method which Mr. Malthus
+proposed was the substitution of the prudential (or birth-restricting)
+for the positive (or life-destroying) check. He advised late marriage
+and celibacy as the most moral means of restraining population. He
+urged that men should wait until they were in a position to provide
+for a family before undertaking the responsibilities consequent upon
+the marriage state. He says: "Our obligation not to marry till we have
+a fair prospect of being able to support our children will appear to
+deserve the attention of the moralist, if it can be proved that an
+attention to these obligations is of more effect in the prevention of
+misery than all the other virtues combined; and that if, in violation
+of this duty, it was the general custom to follow the first impulse
+of nature, and marry at the age of puberty, the universal prevalence
+of every known virtue in the greatest conceivable degree would fail of
+rescuing society from the most wretched and deplorable state of want,
+and all the diseases and famines which usually accompany it."
+
+This, then, was the prudential check advocated by Malthus; but since
+his time it has been perceived that his remedy is in itself the cause
+of evils scarcely less terrible than those which it was designed
+to remove. Further, it is one which, in the vast majority of cases,
+could not possibly be put into practice; for it assumes a power of
+mental control over the sexual passion which exists in a comparatively
+small number of individuals.
+
+The physiological evils arising from celibacy, and, in lesser degree,
+from prolonged abstention from marriage, are of the most disastrous
+nature. Celibacy is necessarily a condition of privation and suffering,
+since it involves the deliberate and incessant suppression of the
+most powerful instinct of mankind. The pure and elevating joys of
+wedded and family life are shut out, and existence is shorn of its
+most delightful features. The unselfish pleasure of promoting the
+happiness of a loved wife and children is denied to the morbid and
+gloomy celibate, doomed to a solitary and cheerless existence. And
+even when permanent celibacy is not contemplated, marriage may be
+deferred until the bloom and brightness of life are gone for ever,
+until delay and disappointment have soured the temper and choked the
+fountain of affection.
+
+Dr. Bertillon, of Paris, has proved conclusively by statistics derived
+from France, Holland and Belgium, that married persons, especially
+males, live much longer than single ones, and are less liable to become
+insane, criminal, or vicious. It has been shown that the married state
+reduces the danger of insanity by nearly one-half. With regard to the
+effects of celibacy upon individuals, Dr. Holmes Coote is reported
+in the Lancet to have said: "No doubt incontinence is a great sin;
+but the evils connected with continence are productive of far greater
+misery to society. Any person could bear witness to this who has had
+experience in the wards of lunatic asylums."
+
+In addition to the personal ills arising from celibacy, it must be
+remembered that late marriage directly encourages prostitution, the
+most hideous blot upon our social state. Malthus, indeed, laid great
+stress upon the duty of chastity whilst young men were engaged in
+accumulating the means to enable them to marry and rear a family later
+in life. He might as fitly have preached to the whirlwind, or exhorted
+the storm to moderate its violence. The power of restraint is given
+to but few men; and, even when that restraint can be exercised, it
+is only at the cost of much suffering and physical and moral detriment.
+
+The later school of thinkers, whilst adopting the principle formulated
+by Malthus, propound an infinitely better method of compassing the
+end which he had in view. They advocate early marriage and limited
+families. It is not necessary that young men and women should sacrifice
+the youth and freshness of their lives in order that they may marry
+when the evening shadows are lengthening around them. The blessings
+of domestic comfort, of intimate companionship and of family love
+are opened to them in the noontide of life, when the possibility of
+enjoyment is at its highest point. Mrs. Annie Besant says: "To be
+in harmony with nature, men and women should be husbands and wives,
+fathers and mothers, and until nature evolves a neuter sex celibacy
+will ever be a mark of imperfection.... No one who desires society
+to be happy and healthy should recommend late marriage as a cure for
+the social evils around us. Early marriage is best, both physically
+and morally; it guards purity, softens the affections, trains the
+heart, and preserves physical health; it teaches thought for others,
+gentleness and self-control; it makes men gentler and women braver
+from the contact of their differing natures. The children that spring
+from such marriages--where not following each other too rapidly--are
+more vigorous and healthy than those of middle-aged parents; and in
+the ordinary course of nature the parents of such children live long
+enough to see them make their start in life, to aid, strengthen,
+and counsel them at the beginning of their career."
+
+Medical science has shown that the size of families is absolutely
+under the control of parents, if they will but exercise a reasonable
+degree of care and forethought. A young couple may now enter the
+marriage-state without misgiving: for the number of their offspring
+can be regulated in proportion to their means as surely as they can
+determine the amount of their expenditure upon clothing or luxuries.
+
+Thus the teachings of Malthusianism, combined with the later
+development of innocent prudential checks, open up boundless
+possibilities for the improvement of social conditions. When the law
+of population--a law of nature--is clearly understood, it becomes
+possible for man, by the exercise of his reason, to control its
+operation, just as he constructs dykes to protect his crops from
+floods, or diverts the lightning harmlessly into the ground.
+
+Let us see, then, how the general adoption of the New-Malthusian
+principle of early marriage and limited families would affect the
+welfare of individuals and of the nation at large.
+
+The knowledge of prudential checks immensely increases the
+possibility of happiness for every man and woman whose means are
+"limited." Marriage ceases to be a hazardous enterprise, which may
+bring in its train liabilities terribly out of proportion to the
+power of meeting them. The husband is relieved from anxiety lest
+his children may increase whilst his ability to provide suitably
+for them remains a fixed, or even diminishing, quantity. The wife
+need no longer dread the burden of continual child-bearing and the
+incessant servitude of domestic drudgery. How much of the drunkenness
+that exists amongst the working-class is due to the discomfort of a
+crowded and cheerless home! The husband, wearied with his day's toil,
+returns to his narrow lodgings to find his wife, harassed and soured
+by the petty cares of a large family, sharp in temper and tongue. The
+tender romance of courtship is dispelled by the never-ending round
+of household slavery, with the constant need of "making both ends
+meet," of contriving that every sixpence shall do the work of a
+shilling. And over all there hangs the haunting fear that sickness
+or loss of employment may disable the bread-winner, and that the
+wolf of hunger, ever waiting outside, may show his fangs within
+the door. Little cause is there for wonder that in many cases the
+sweetheart of happier days becomes a shrew and slattern, or that the
+toil-worn husband flies to the ruinous joys of the tap-room in a vain
+attempt to escape from the vexations that surround him in his "home."
+
+And what of the children? They are at once the innocent cause and
+the helpless victims of the misery that encompasses them. The wage
+that would amply provide for two or three is inadequate for the
+proper support of seven or eight, and their little frames suffer from
+insufficient nourishment. The overburdened mother cannot bestow upon
+so large a flock the loving care and attention that children need for
+their proper physical and mental development. Thus they grow up (if
+haply they survive), enfeebled in mind and constitution, transmitting
+to the next generation their own defects in an aggravated form.
+
+It is amongst the very poorest of our fellow-creatures that we see
+the horrors of over-population in their most heartrending aspect. In
+the squalid courts and alleys of our great cities the dismal stream
+of child-life is constantly at high-water mark. The parents, ignorant
+and hopeless, callous by reason of their daily contact with misery,
+"increase and multiply" instinctively, as do the beasts of the
+field. Amongst the poor the birth-rate is (broadly speaking) double as
+high as that of the richer classes. A few years ago the birth-rate in
+wealthy Kensington was 20 per 1,000; in the poor district of Bethnal
+Green it was 40 per 1,000. This deplorable state of things is not
+peculiar to Great Britain: it prevails, with slight variations as to
+details, in all so-called civilised countries.
+
+But the birth-rate tells only one-half of the piteous tale: it is the
+death-rate which completes the measure of human suffering caused by
+the insensate increase of population. In the course of his address
+to the Association of Sanitary Inspectors in 1888, Sir Edwin Chadwick
+stated that amongst the gentry and professional persons the deaths of
+children under five years of age in Brighton formed 8·93 per cent. of
+the total deaths, while among the wage-earning class they formed
+45·44 per cent. He also said that in Brighton the mean (or average)
+age at death for wage-earners is 28·8 years; for the rich it is 63
+years. Dr. Playfair has shown that 18 per cent. of the children of
+the upper class, 36 per cent. of those of the tradesman class, and
+55 per cent. of those of the workmen die before they reach the age
+of five years.
+
+Here we see the painful positive or natural checks to population at
+work in our very midst. Death stands with his sword and ruthlessly
+strikes out the redundant lives. What pen can picture the frightful
+suffering indicated by the figures given above? The mother's pangs
+of child-birth: her protracted agony of grief as she watches the
+ravages of disease upon the weakly frame of her ill-fed, ill-clothed,
+ill-tended babe: the last dread scene when death releases from
+its misery the child that should never have been called into
+existence! This squalid tragedy is enacted a thousand times; and the
+upshot of it all is five hundred little coffins hastily thrust into
+the earth.
+
+And what of those that survive? Here and there one may rise above
+his fellows in the struggle for existence; but the vast majority of
+those who pass through the valley of the shadow of death emerge into
+a laborious and joyless existence. Of the males a section will drift
+into pauperism or crime; many of the females will be driven by want
+to the shameful traffic of prostitution. The honest and industrious
+are doomed to a life of incessant toil and privation; and with their
+numerous offspring will begin another cycle of the obscure tragedy.
+
+In this way, the nation ever renews within itself the elements
+of its own weakness and despair. The question of the unemployed is
+ultimately a question of over-population; and wages are reduced by the
+competition, one against another, of desperate men seeking bread for
+their wives and families. Trade Unions and other forms of combination
+may partially and temporarily improve the condition of a section of the
+workers; but in the long run every advance in comfort is overtaken and
+swallowed up by the increase of population stimulated by prosperity.
+
+Thus, unless the teachings of New-Malthusianism be generally acted
+upon, poverty will remain a permanent feature of society; and, as we
+have already said, the element of poverty is a constant menace to the
+community at large. The strength of a chain is that of its weakest
+link. The wealth, luxury, and refinement of society exist upon a frail
+tenure if the desperation of the poorest class is suffered to pass
+a certain limit. History has shown us the civilisation of centuries
+extinguished by hordes of barbarians, driven by hunger from their
+sterile lands. In Paris, during times of revolutionary excitement,
+the Faubourg St. Antoine pours forth its thousands of gaunt and
+tattered spectres to make war upon society.
+
+Prudence in the matter of population, then, is seen to be the only
+way of conserving the most valuable and progressive elements in
+human society. In this, as in other countries, the apostles of the
+new teaching have been confronted by the prejudices handed down from
+previous generations; and in the succeeding chapter we shall trace
+the history of the Malthusian movement in England and abroad.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE MALTHUSIAN MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+For many years after the publication of Mr. Malthus's great essay,
+the principle which he had formulated did not pass beyond the region
+of more or less academic controversy. The "theory of population" was
+denounced from countless pulpits and assailed by the pens of ready
+writers; but, being based upon a patient and accurate observation
+of the facts of nature, it remained unshaken when the preachers and
+critics were forgotten.
+
+It would be absurd to doubt that so important a contribution to
+social science influenced the minds and helped to shape the conduct of
+thoughtful men; but it is beyond question that no organised attempt to
+popularise and propagate the teachings of Malthus, and to make known
+the nature of preventive checks amongst the people of this country, was
+undertaken until the year 1877. In the first quarter of the century,
+Richard Carlile published a small pamphlet on the subject; but there
+is no reason to suppose that its effect was appreciable. Mr. Francis
+Place and Mr. Robert Dale Owen in later years wrote essays embodying
+practically the modern Malthusian view.
+
+In 1833, Dr. Charles Knowlton, of Boston (U.S.A.), issued a small work
+on the subject of population, entitled The Fruits of Philosophy. For
+over forty years the book was sold in England, but its sale was so
+small that very few people were even acquainted with its title, and
+it remained in its native obscurity until it was dragged into the
+light of day by the fortunate folly of persons who imagined that it
+was possible to check the spread of moral enlightenment by means of
+legal "repression."
+
+In 1876 a police prosecution was instituted against a man in
+Bristol for selling The Fruits of Philosophy, and a conviction was
+obtained. In the following year the publisher of the pamphlet was also
+indicted and committed for trial; but he was liberated on promising
+that he would no longer issue the work. Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and
+Mrs. Annie Besant thereupon undertook the task of defending the right
+of publication. They reprinted and published the pamphlet, formally
+inviting the authorities to prosecute them. "It was for the sake of
+free discussion that we published the assailed pamphlet when its
+former seller yielded to the pressure put upon him by the police;
+it was not so much in defence of this pamphlet, as to make the way
+possible for others dealing with the same topic that we risked the
+penalty which has fallen upon us." [2]
+
+The police authorities accepted the challenge, and a prosecution was
+immediately commenced. The trial, which lasted four days, took place
+in the Court of Queen's Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn
+and a special jury. Sir Hardinge Gifford (then Solicitor-General),
+Mr. Douglas Straight and Mr. Mead appeared for the prosecution;
+Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant appeared in person.
+
+The indictment charged the defendants with having published and
+sold an obscene book, with intent to contaminate and corrupt
+public morals. The author of The Fruits of Philosophy advocated
+early marriage with limitation of families, and referred in the
+course of his work to such preventive checks as were known at that
+time. The Solicitor-General, in opening the case, sought to persuade
+the jury that Dr. Knowlton speciously used that line of argument as
+a disguise and pretext for suggesting illicit intercourse without
+risk of pregnancy ensuing. An indignant rebuke from Sir Alexander
+Cockburn caused the Solicitor-General to abandon that line of false
+suggestion, and to fall back upon the contention that it was illegal
+to issue a work containing "a chapter on restriction, not written
+in any learned language, but in plain English, in a facile form,
+and sold ... at sixpence." He therefore asked the jury to declare
+that the book was an "obscene publication."
+
+The speech of the Solicitor-General and his general conduct of the case
+are matters of trivial importance; the notable features of the trial
+were the addresses of the two defendants and the summing-up by the Lord
+Chief Justice. Mrs. Besant's speech to the jury was a remarkable and
+memorable effort. She examined and discussed the population question
+in every aspect, contending that, in view of the evils arising from
+excessive increase, the advocacy of prudential methods was a sacred
+duty to humanity. In the opening passages of her speech she pointed
+out, in the most impressive manner, that she pleaded for the welfare
+of others:
+
+
+    It is not as defendant that I plead to you to-day--not simply
+    as defending myself do I stand here--but I speak as counsel
+    for hundreds of the poor, and it is they for whom I defend this
+    case. My clients are scattered up and down through the length
+    and breadth of the land; I find them amongst the poor, amongst
+    whom I have been so much; I find my clients amongst the fathers,
+    who see their wage ever reducing, and prices ever rising; I
+    find my clients amongst the mothers worn out with over-frequent
+    child-bearing, and with two or three little ones around too young
+    to guard themselves, while they have no time to guard them. It
+    is enough for a woman at home to have the care, the clothing,
+    the training of a large family of young children to look to;
+    but it is a harder task when oftentimes the mother, who should
+    be at home with her little ones, has to go out and work in the
+    fields for wage to feed them when her presence is needed in the
+    house. I find my clients among the little children. Gentlemen,
+    do you know the fate of so many of these children?--the little
+    ones half-starved because there is food enough for two but not
+    enough for twelve; half-clothed because the mother, no matter what
+    her skill and care, cannot clothe them with the money brought
+    home by the breadwinner of the family; brought up in ignorance,
+    and ignorance means pauperism and crime--gentlemen, your happier
+    circumstances have raised you above this suffering, but on you
+    also this question presses; for these over-large families mean
+    also increased poor-rates, which are growing heavier year by
+    year. These poor are my clients, and if I weary you by length
+    of speech, as I fear I may, I do so because I must think of them
+    more even than I think of your time or trouble.
+
+
+With righteous indignation Mrs. Besant repelled the accusation that
+The Fruits of Philosophy was an "obscene" publication. She showed
+by a quotation from Lord Campbell's Act (upon which the prosecution
+was based) that the statutory definition of obscenity could not
+possibly be applied to a book containing "dry physiological details
+put forward in dry, technical language." She next proceeded to urge
+that the right of free discussion upon matters of public welfare was
+really attacked by the prosecution:
+
+
+    Do you, gentlemen, think for one moment that myself and my
+    co-defendant are fighting the simple question of the sale or
+    publication of this sixpenny volume of Dr. Knowlton's? Do you
+    think that we would have placed ourselves in the position in
+    which we are at the present moment for the mere profit to be
+    derived from a sixpenny pamphlet of forty-seven pages? No, it
+    is nothing of the sort; we have a much larger interest at stake,
+    and one of vital interest to the public, one which we shall spend
+    our whole lives in trying to uphold. The question really is one of
+    the right to public discussion by means of publication, and that
+    question is bound up in the right to sell this sixpenny pamphlet
+    which the Solicitor-General despises on account of its price.
+
+
+It would, however, be impossible to give, by extracts of reasonable
+length, an adequate idea of the striking and eloquent speech which
+Mrs. Besant addressed to the jury in her defence. The whole question
+of over-population and its consequences was examined with the greatest
+care and completeness. Profoundly convinced of the justice of her
+cause, Mrs. Besant pleaded that the teachings of New-Malthusianism,
+by making early marriage possible, promoted happiness and morality. She
+said:
+
+
+    I think, therefore, I may fairly put it that every young man
+    naturally desires to make a home and enter upon married life
+    when first he comes out into the world. I do not believe that
+    any young man sets out with the intention of rushing into fast
+    life and dissipation, but men are frequently drawn into habits
+    of that kind because they fear the results that follow from
+    early marriage. Since I am told that our object is to increase
+    immorality, and that we only use the word "marriage" to conceal
+    the foulest designs upon the purity of society, I may say freely
+    that I hold early marriages to be the very salvation of young men,
+    and especially of young men in our large cities. I hold the belief
+    with a depth of conviction which I cannot put to you in words,
+    that for one man and one woman to help, comfort, and support
+    one another, which they are by nature adapted to do, is a state
+    which is to be reached, which is to be perpetuated, by marriage
+    and in no other way. It is only by companionship, and the union
+    between a man and a woman, that this is possible. Shut a man out
+    from the loving influence of home, the golden institutions of
+    the fireside, his wife's society, and the happiness of becoming
+    a father, and you induce a life of profligacy. Gentlemen, do not
+    be deceived. There is no talk in this book of preventing men and
+    women from becoming parents; all that is sought here is to limit
+    the number of their family. And we do not aim at that because
+    we do not love children, but, on the contrary, because we do
+    love them, and because we wish to prevent them from coming into
+    the world in greater numbers than there is the means of properly
+    providing for. Children, I believe, have an influence upon parents
+    purifying in the highest degree, because they teach the parents
+    self-restraint, self-denial, thoughtfulness, and tenderness to an
+    extent that cannot possibly be over-estimated; and it is because
+    I wish to have it made possible for young men and for young women
+    to have these influences brought to bear upon them in their youth,
+    that I advocate the circulation of a book that will put within
+    their reach the knowledge of how to limit the extent of their
+    families within their capabilities of providing for them; for
+    no man can look with pride and happiness upon his home if he has
+    more children than he can clothe and educate. It is because I wish
+    them to marry in the springtime of their youth that I ask you by
+    your verdict in this action to make discussion on these subjects
+    possible, and that men should not be driven to find a substitute
+    for true and pure womanhood and wifehood in other directions. If
+    you render this possible you will make your streets purer and
+    your families happier than they are at present.
+
+
+Having in the course of a prolonged speech explained and vindicated the
+New-Malthusian doctrine from misrepresentations inspired by ignorance,
+prejudice, and bigotry, Mrs. Besant concluded her memorable address
+in the following words:
+
+
+    I fairly put it that unless you honestly believe that my whole
+    speech to you has been one mass of falsehoods; unless you
+    believe my intent to be a bad intent; unless you believe I have
+    been deliberately deceiving you throughout, and stand here before
+    you in the very worst character a woman could take upon herself,
+    namely, that of striving to corrupt the morals of the young under
+    the false pretence of purity here put forward, and unless you think
+    that, for the after-part of my life, I deserve to pass through it
+    with the brand upon me that twelve gentlemen, after all patience,
+    thought not only that the book was a mistake, the opinions wrong,
+    and the arguments unconvincing, but, in the terrible language
+    of the indictment, that I am guilty of "wickedly devising and
+    contriving as much as in me lay to vitiate and corrupt the morals
+    of youth" as well as of others,--unless, I say, you believe that
+    that has been my object and purpose, on this indictment, I shall
+    call upon you, gentlemen, to return a verdict of "Not Guilty,"
+    and to send me home free, believing from my heart and conscience
+    that I have been guilty only of doing that which I ought to do in
+    grappling honestly with a matter I consider myself justified in
+    grappling with--that terrible poverty and misery which is around
+    us on every hand. Unless you are prepared, gentlemen, to brand
+    me with malicious meaning, I ask you, as an English woman, for
+    that justice which it is not impossible to expect at the hands
+    of Englishmen--I ask you to give me a verdict of "Not Guilty,"
+    and to send me home unstained.
+
+
+Mr. Bradlaugh, in his speech, dealt more fully than his co-defendant
+had been able to do with the legal and physiological aspects of
+the case. In the clearest fashion he maintained the lawfulness of
+disseminating the knowledge of innocent prudential checks:
+
+
+    I submit to you, gentlemen of the jury, that it is moral to teach
+    poor people to marry early, and that this teaching avoids and will
+    diminish illicit intercourse. I will not weary you with reading
+    the whole of the report on the "Employment of Women and Children
+    in Agriculture," from which my co-defendant quoted that terrible
+    extract from the report of Bishop Fraser. You will there find
+    that the illicit intercourse which we are charged with trying to
+    produce is an illicit intercourse which is going on and bringing
+    with it the birth of the child, and bringing with it the murder of
+    the child by the mother, because there is the pang of starvation
+    and misery and shame to contend with. I say that it is amongst the
+    poor married people that the evils of over-population are chiefly
+    felt, and that it cannot tend to deprave their morals to teach
+    them how to intelligently check this over-population.... I submit
+    that the advocacy of all checks is lawful except such as advocate
+    the destruction of the foetus after conception or of the child
+    after birth. I say that the advocacy of every birth-restricting
+    check is lawful which is not the advocacy of the destruction of
+    human life in any form after that life has been created.
+
+
+Assuming the legality of such advocacy, it is useless unless conveyed
+in plain and simple language:
+
+
+    I say that the advocacy of any check amongst the masses to be
+    useful must of necessity be put in the plainest language and in
+    the cheapest form, and be widely spread; and I press that upon
+    you because I understand that the learned Solicitor-General in
+    his argument put it that one of the faults of this pamphlet was
+    that it was not obscured in learned language. If we possessed the
+    facility of expressing ourselves in French, or Italian, or Greek,
+    or Latin, or Hebrew, or Arabic, what earthly use would that be
+    to the poor unfortunate wretches whose misery we want to address?
+
+
+After traversing with his accustomed skill and acumen the charges
+formulated by the prosecution, Mr. Bradlaugh concluded his address
+with a peroration full of passionate eloquence:
+
+
+    We want (he said) to make the poor more comfortable; and you
+    tell us we are immoral. We want to prevent them bringing into
+    the world little children to suck death, instead of life, at
+    the breasts of their mother; and you tell us we are immoral. I
+    should not say that, perhaps, for you, gentlemen, may judge things
+    differently from myself; but I know the poor. I belong to them. I
+    was born amongst them. Among them are the early associations of my
+    life. Such little ability as I possess to-day has come to me in
+    the hard struggle of life. I have had no University to polish my
+    tongue; no Alma Mater to give to me any eloquence by which to move
+    you. I plead here simply for the class to which I belong, and for
+    the right to tell them what may redeem their poverty and alleviate
+    their misery. And I ask you to believe in your heart of hearts,
+    even if you deliver a verdict against us here--I ask you, at least,
+    to try and believe both for myself and the lady who sits besides
+    me (I hope it for myself, and I earnestly wish it for her), that
+    all through we have meant to do right, even if you think that we
+    have done wrong.... My co-defendant referred, in earnest language,
+    to the letters which she had received from women, and clergymen,
+    and others throughout the country. I, too, have received many warm
+    words of sympathy from those who think that I am right. It is true
+    many of them may be ignorant people, and therefore may be wrong;
+    but they have written to encourage me with their kindly sympathy
+    in my pleading before you. If we are branded with the offence of
+    circulating an obscene book, many of these poor people will still
+    think "No." They think such knowledge would prevent misery in
+    their families, would check hunger in their families, and would
+    hinder disease in their families. Do you know what poverty means
+    in a poor man's house? It means that when you are reproaching a
+    poor and ignorant man with brutality, you forget that he is merely
+    struggling against that hardship of life which drives all chivalry
+    and courtesy out of his existence. Do not blame poor men too much
+    that they are rough and brutal. Think mercifully of a man such as
+    a brick-maker, who, going home after his day's toil, finds six
+    or seven little ones crying for bread, and clinging around his
+    wife for the food which they cannot get. Think you such a scene
+    as that is not sufficient to make both himself and her hungry and
+    angry too? Gentlemen, it is for you, in your deliverance of guilty
+    or not guilty, to say how we are to go from this court--whether,
+    when we leave this place, if you mark us guilty, his lordship
+    may feel it to be his duty to sentence us, and put upon us the
+    brand of a doom such as your verdict may warrant; or whether, by
+    your verdict of not guilty--which I hope for myself and desire
+    for my co-defendant--we may go out of this court absolved from
+    that shame which this indictment has sought to put upon us.
+
+
+We must pass over the evidence given by Dr. Alice Vickery,
+Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Mr. Bohn and others for the defence; and refer
+briefly to the summing-up of the Lord Chief Justice (Sir Alexander
+Cockburn). His lordship dwelt upon "the mischievous character and
+effect" of the prosecution, and declared that "a more ill-advised and
+more injudicious proceeding" had probably never been brought into a
+court of justice. He adverted in terms of severity to the secrecy that
+had been maintained as to the real originators of the prosecution. In
+discussing the questions involved, his lordship referred to the
+theory of Malthus as "a theory which astonished the world, though
+it is now accepted as an irrefragable truth, and has since been
+adopted by economist after economist. That the evils arising from
+over-population," he continued, "are evils which, if they could be
+prevented, it would be the first business of human charity to prevent,
+there cannot be any doubt. That the evils of population are real,
+and not imaginary, no one acquainted with the state of society in
+the present day can possibly deny." Upon the question whether or not
+the advocacy of prudential checks tended to corrupt public morals,
+his lordship said to the jury: "You must decide that with a due
+regard and reference to the law, and with an honest and determined
+desire to maintain the morals of mankind. But, on the other hand, you
+must carefully consider what is due to public discussion, and with
+an anxious desire not, from any prejudiced view of this subject, to
+stifle what may be a subject of legitimate enquiry." The concluding
+passages of the charge to the jury are so significant that they are
+here reproduced entire:
+
+
+    If you are of opinion that this work of Knowlton's, although well
+    intended, and although the publication of it by the defendants
+    may be intended for the benefit of mankind, if you think they
+    have taken an erroneous view as to the effect of the work, and
+    that its entire scope is subversive of the morals of society,
+    if that is your opinion, it is then your bounden duty to find
+    the defendants liable. But whilst that is the case, it is for
+    the prosecution to make out the charge they have undertaken to
+    establish. If you think they have failed--if you think these are
+    matters which may fairly be discussed--that the proper answer to
+    them is by refuting them by argument and not by prosecution, the
+    defendants are entitled to your verdict. Or if you have any doubt
+    as to the effect of this work you are bound to bring them in not
+    guilty. I would only say in conclusion, that whatever outrages
+    decency, whatever tends to corrupt the morals of society, and
+    especially the morals and purity of women--whatever tends to have
+    that result is, when published, an offence against the law. But
+    that offence like every other must be made out. If you think it
+    is made out, if there is a conviction in your minds that though
+    they have acted from a desire to do good, yet in your opinion
+    they have done wrong, they have then brought themselves within
+    the definition of the statute.
+
+
+Despite the powerful speeches of the defendants and the obviously
+sympathetic charge of the judge, the jury were not equal to their
+opportunity to make a clear stand for freedom of discussion. They
+returned a halting "special" verdict, declaring that the book was
+"calculated to deprave public morals," but at the same time they
+entirely exonerated the defendants from any corrupt motives in
+publishing it. Upon this the judge reluctantly directed the jury to
+return a verdict of guilty.
+
+The remainder of the story is most concisely told in Mrs. Besant's
+own words: "Obviously annoyed at the verdict, the Lord Chief Justice
+refused to give judgment, and let us go on our own recognisances. When
+we came up later for judgment, he urged us to surrender the pamphlet as
+the jury had condemned it; said our whole course with regard to it had
+been right, but that we ought to yield to the judgment of the jury. We
+were obstinate, and I shall never forget the pathetic way in which the
+great judge urged us to submit, and how at last when we persisted that
+we would continue to sell it till the right to sell it was gained, he
+said that he would have let us go free if we would have yielded to the
+court, but our persistence compelled him to sentence us. We gave notice
+of appeal, promising not to sell till the appeal was decided, and he
+let us go on our own recognisances. On appeal we quashed the verdict,
+and went free; we recovered all the pamphlets seized, and publicly
+sold them; we continued the sale till we received an intimation that
+no further prosecution would be attempted against us, and then we
+dropped the sale of the pamphlet and never took it up again." [3]
+
+
+
+Having given an account of this memorable trial, we proceed to trace
+some of its far-reaching effects. In the first place, Dr. Knowlton's
+pamphlet gained immediately an enormous circulation. Before the
+prosecution the annual sales were very small; within three months from
+the time when proceedings were instituted against the publishers,
+125,000 copies were sold. But this result, startling as it appears,
+was by no means the most important phase of the impetus given to the
+public mind upon the question of population by the cause célèbre of
+"The Queen versus Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant." During the
+trial the newspapers of this country contained lengthy reports of
+the proceedings, and the remarkable speeches of the defendants
+were thus carried far and wide. Their popular statements of the
+Malthusian position, their description of the evils arising from
+over-population and the remedies that they proposed were sent
+forth into many thousands of homes into which no hint of the truth
+would otherwise have penetrated. The press, with its myriad voices,
+became, for the time, a mighty organ of New-Malthusian propaganda,
+repeating, in tones that echoed round the world, the eloquent words
+of two social reformers to whom the miseries of the poor were known,
+and who had faced the danger of imprisonment and of social obloquy
+in order to proclaim that which they felt to be the only efficient
+remedy for poverty.
+
+Amidst the public excitement caused by this famous trial, The
+Malthusian League was called into existence, and has since carried
+forward the work of propaganda in an organised and systematic
+fashion. It was founded to promote the following objects:
+
+I. To agitate for the abolition of all penalties on the public
+discussion of the Population Question, and to obtain such a statutory
+definition as shall render it impossible, in the future, to bring
+such discussions within the scope of the common law as a misdemeanor.
+
+II. To spread among the people, by all practicable means, a knowledge
+of the law of population, of its consequences, and of its bearing
+upon human conduct and morals.
+
+Dr. Charles R. Drysdale, M.D., F.R.C.S., Eng., has from the first
+been the President of the League, and has devoted himself to the
+work of explaining and advocating the New-Malthusian principle. The
+list of Vice-Presidents has included the names of the late M. Yves
+Guyot, a distinguished French deputé and Minister of State, and of
+Mr. J. Bryson, President of the Northumberland Miners' Association. A
+reference to its present composition will show the reader that the
+efforts of the League to spread enlightened views on the population
+question have the approval and sympathy of influential persons in
+this and in other countries. [4]
+
+The work of the League is chiefly carried on by public lectures and
+meetings, the dissemination of literature, and letters addressed
+to the editors of newspapers. By these means the public mind is
+constantly being influenced in the direction of rational views upon
+the population question.
+
+The annual meetings of members and friends of the League have afforded
+valuable opportunities of obtaining expressions of opinion upon
+the subject of Malthusianism from many influential persons. Letters
+expressing hearty approval of the movement have been received from
+Mrs. Mona Caird, Lord Derby, Lord Pembroke, the late Lord Bramwell,
+Mr. Leonard Courtney, M.P., Mr. W. B. Maclaren, M.P., Professor Bain,
+Mr. Arnold White, Mr. G. H. Darwin and others.
+
+Four years after the formation of the League, a "Medical Branch"
+was established for the following purposes:
+
+I. To aid the Malthusian League in its crusade against poverty and
+the accompanying evils by obtaining the co-operation of qualified
+medical practitioners, both British and foreign.
+
+II. To obtain a body of scientific opinion on points of sexual
+physiology and pathology involved in the "Population Question," and
+which can only be discussed by those possessed of scientific knowledge.
+
+III. To agitate for a free and open discussion of the Population
+Question in all its aspects in the medical press, and thus to obtain
+a recognition of the scientific oasis and the absolute necessity
+of Neo-Malthusianism.
+
+It will be seen that the work of this section is of a special and
+scientific character. The names of the officers and members (given
+in the appendix) will show that the advocacy of prudential checks
+to population is sanctioned by a body of physicians of unquestioned
+eminence.
+
+Having given an outline of the permanent organisation of Malthusian
+propaganda which grew out of the events of 1877, we proceed to trace
+briefly the history of the movement from that period. It is in the main
+a story of petty persecutions on the one side, and, upon the other,
+of steady persistence in the work of informing the public mind. The
+principal obstacle to the progress of the movement, and one which it
+is slowly but surely surmounting, is the prejudice born of ignorance
+and bigotry. Journalists, statesmen and other leaders of opinion do not
+hesitate to avow their adhesion to the principle formulated by Malthus;
+but they are, almost without exception, dominated by the fear of
+Mrs. Grundy, and shrink from incurring the odium which, they imagine,
+would result from a frank recognition of the only logical outcome
+of that principle. They join loudly in the chorus on the evils of
+over-population; but, as a rule, they will lend no public countenance
+to the distinct advocacy of prudential checks. Hence the task of the
+pioneers of the movement is rendered excessively difficult; but from
+the very inception of the Malthusian League, the work of propaganda has
+been carried forward with unfailing devotion and singleness of purpose.
+
+In its earliest days, the League was called upon to support one of
+its most respected members under stress of persecution. In February,
+1878, Mr. Edward Truelove was prosecuted and tried before Lord Chief
+Justice Cockburn for publishing the Hon. Robert Dale Owen's pamphlet
+entitled Moral Physiology, and an essay on Individual, Family,
+and National Poverty, by an anonymous author. Mr. W. A. Hunter, in
+defending the case, made a most powerful speech in support of the
+Malthusian position. The jury were unable to agree upon a verdict,
+and the proceedings came to an abortive termination. Three months
+later, however, Mr. Truelove was a second time placed upon his trial,
+the venue meanwhile being changed from the Court of Queen's Bench
+to the Old Bailey. A common jury found no difficulty in returning a
+verdict of guilty, and Mr. Truelove (then in his sixty-eighth year)
+was sentenced to pay a fine of £50 and to be imprisoned for four
+months. A great public meeting was held at St. James's Hall on June
+6th, when Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant, Dr. Drysdale and other friends
+of the movement protested against the action of the authorities in
+thus interfering with the right of free discussion, and expressed
+their admiration of Mr. Truelove's courage and consistency.
+
+Mr. Truelove endured the privations of imprisonment with fortitude and
+dignity, sustained by the knowledge that his cause was righteous. He
+was taken to Coldbath Fields in a prison-van, handcuffed like a
+dangerous criminal; compelled to lie on the "plank-bed," and subjected
+to all the rigors of gaol discipline. During the first three months
+he was allowed no meat; after that time he was permitted to have six
+ounces of Australian tinned meat per week. Happily the confinement
+and hardships did not prejudicially affect his health.
+
+On September 12th he was welcomed back to liberty by a large and
+enthusiastic gathering of friends at the Hall of Science, London. The
+leading members of the Malthusian League were present, and Mr. Moncure
+D. Conway, and the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam attended to do honor to
+one who had suffered for conscience sake. A purse containing £200
+was presented to Mr. Truelove, together with the following testimonial:
+
+
+    To Edward Truelove, on his release from four months' imprisonment
+    in Coldbath Fields Prison--suffered in defence of the Liberty of
+    the Press.
+
+
+    The undersigned, on behalf of the National Secular Society and
+    of the Malthusian League, desire to welcome you on your return to
+    liberty, and to offer you their heartiest thanks for the courage
+    and endurance you have displayed, in defending the right of free
+    publication of opinion.
+
+    The battle for the liberty of the press has been steadily waged
+    ever since the invention of printing, and a long muster-roll of
+    names might be given of those who, first at the stake, and since in
+    prison, have in turn paid their share of the penalty-purchase for
+    the victories already achieved. You have worthily entitled yourself
+    to an honorable place in this muster-roll, the more so that you
+    have stood firm in a day when too many temporise and flinch. From
+    almost every part of England, and from remote districts, as well as
+    from the great centres of Scotland, many thousands of your fellow
+    countrymen and countrywomen have pleaded for your release, and from
+    all parts of the civilised world expressions have been received,
+    of sympathy with you, and of indignation against your persecutors.
+
+    As some slight mark of our gratitude and affectionate esteem,
+    and in recognition of the honor with which you have crowned a long
+    life of unwavering courage, we present you this address, and the
+    accompanying purse of gold, begging you to accept with them our
+    sincerest wishes for your future welfare. Signed on behalf of
+
+
+    The National Secular Society.
+
+    Chas. Bradlaugh, President.
+    Robert Forder, Secretary.
+
+    The Malthusian League.
+
+    C. Drysdale, M.D., President.
+    Annie Besant, Hon. Sec.
+
+    Hall of Science, 12th September, 1878.
+
+
+The case of Mr. Truelove was the last prosecution of importance in
+this country for the publication of works dealing with the population
+question. The proceedings against Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant,
+after being quashed in the Court of Appeal upon a writ of error, were
+never renewed. Dr. Knowlton's pamphlet, The Fruits of Philosophy,
+was withdrawn from circulation, and Mrs. Besant wrote a small book,
+The Law of Population: its consequences and its bearing upon human
+conduct and morals, to take its place. Of this work nearly 200,000
+copies were circulated in Great Britain; many pirated editions were
+published in America and Australia; and it was translated into several
+European languages. It formed the basis of a remarkable judgment by
+Mr. Justice Windeyer (delivered in the Supreme Court of New South
+Wales), to which further reference will presently be made.
+
+In June, 1887, Dr. H. A. Allbutt, of Leeds, published a sixpenny
+pamphlet entitled The Wife's Handbook. The following paragraph,
+taken from the introduction to the book, will explain its object:
+"To save the lives and preserve the health of thousands of women, to
+rescue from death and disease children who may be born, to teach the
+young wife how to order her health during the most important period
+of her life, to remove from her mind the popular ignorance in which
+she may have been reared, and to enable her to learn truths concerning
+her duties as wife and mother, I have thought fit to write this little
+work." Shortly after its appearance, the spirit of persecution was
+again manifested, this time in an obscure and technical aspect. As a
+member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Dr. Allbutt
+was professionally amenable to the Council of that body; and he
+was summoned to appear and show cause why he should not be removed
+from the rolls for the offence of writing and publishing The Wife's
+Handbook. The matter was warmly taken up by the Malthusian League, and
+protests were addressed to the College from all parts of Great Britain
+and from France, Germany, Holland, Italy, India and Jamaica. Nothing
+more was heard of the affair until November, when Dr. Allbutt received
+a notice to appear before the General Medical Council, in London,
+to show cause why his name should not be struck off the register.
+
+On November 23rd the complaint against Dr. Allbutt was considered
+by the General Medical Council, a body composed of twenty-seven
+physicians. Dr. Allbutt was represented by Mr. Wallace (barrister),
+and the "prosecution" was conducted by Mr. Muir Mackenzie, the
+legal adviser of the Council. The following were the points which
+the Council proceeded to consider: "(1) Was The Wife's Handbook a
+fair medical treatise, or was it an indecent advertisement? (2)
+Was it practically an injury to the public and an insult to the
+profession?" Mr. Wallace, in a very able speech, traversed the
+suggestions made by the Council's solicitor, and challenged the right
+of an irresponsible body to determine whether any line of advocacy
+was "subversive of public morality." If Dr. Allbutt had violated the
+law, he was amenable to legal proceedings, and it was not for the
+Medical Council to sit in judgment upon him. Mr. Wallace justified
+the course that Dr. Allbutt had taken in publishing his work at a
+low price in order that it might be placed within the reach of the
+poorest classes. He called the attention of the members to a list of
+the petitions which had been presented to the Council on the subject
+from all parts of Europe. They amounted to over seventy; many of them
+came from medical, scientific, and political societies. He assured
+the Council that the members of the medical profession were by no
+means unanimous in condemning Mr. Allbutt, and it would run against
+the feelings of a very considerable minority if they decided adversely
+to his client. The book was written with the express object of saving
+poor people from the misery, poverty, and starvation which resulted
+from the over-production of children; and he asked the Council, in
+conclusion, to arrive at a decision which would relieve his client
+from the imputation which had been cast upon him, and which would
+restore him to his proper position.
+
+The Council having deliberated in private, the President delivered
+the following judgment:
+
+"In the opinion of the Council, Mr. Allbutt has committed the offence
+charged against him, that is to say, of having published and publicly
+caused to be sold a work entitled The Wife's Handbook, in London and
+elsewhere, at so low a price as to bring the work within the reach of
+the youth of both sexes, to the detriment of public morals. Secondly,
+the offence is, in the opinion of the Council, 'infamous conduct in
+a professional respect.' Thirdly, the Registrar is hereby ordered to
+erase the name of Mr. H. A. Allbutt from the Medical Register."
+
+Thus ended the futile attempt of the General Medical Council to
+put a stop to the publication of Malthusian works "at so low a
+price." Nobody was a penny the worse for the ponderous proceedings
+of this archaic tribunal. Dr. Allbutt has never ceased to practise
+legally as a physician; twenty editions of The Wife's Handbook have
+been issued and 180,000 copies sold.
+
+This case aroused much attention in the press. The Pall Mall Gazette
+declared that "the decision of the General Medical Council to erase
+from its rolls the name of a physician who published 'at a low
+price' information as to the best means for preventing the excessive
+multiplication of children beyond their parents' means of subsistence
+or the possibility of education and control, will before long become
+familiar as one of the most glaring illustrations of professional
+prejudice and human folly. When such a cool-headed respectable as
+Lord Derby feels bound to call attention to the increase of 400,000
+per annum in our population as one of the most pressing problems of
+our day, it is really too fatuous for the General Medical Council to
+brand as 'infamous' a practitioner who, in a work to which no objection
+is taken on the score of impropriety or immorality, supplies to the
+poor information already possessed by the rich."
+
+We have to record but one later attempt to interfere with the free
+discussion of the population question in this country. In October,
+1891, Mr. H. S. Young, M.A., was summoned to appear at Bow Street
+Police Court on a charge of sending through the post a leaflet
+entitled Some Reasons for Advocating the Prudential Limitation of
+Families. The proceedings were taken under the Post Office Protection
+Act. Mr. Besley, in conducting the prosecution, made the remarkable
+statement that the only check against immorality in this country was
+the fear of pregnancy! Speaking in his own defence, Mr. Young contended
+that there was no "obscenity" involved in pointing out to the poor
+how they might limit their families. The magistrate (Mr. Lushington)
+admitted that the leaflet was written in very careful language, and
+not intended to be at all offensive; but still he held that it was
+"obscene," convicted Mr. Young, and ordered him to pay a fine of £20
+and costs. The defendant applied to the magistrate to state a case,
+as he intended to appeal; but Mr. Lushington refused to do so.
+
+This prosecution led to the formation of a Free Discussion Committee,
+and public meetings were held in various parts of the metropolis,
+protesting against the infringement of public freedom by legal
+proceedings. Repeated attempts were made by Mr. Young and his advisers
+to bring the case before a court of law, but technical difficulties
+rendered this practically impossible, and the matter was allowed
+to drop.
+
+Meantime the propaganda of New-Malthusian views is steadily
+continued. The pages of The Malthusian, the monthly organ of the
+League, bear constant witness to activity which hastes not and rests
+not. Whether its energies are to be again stimulated by persecution,
+time alone can show.
+
+
+
+A brief statement concerning the position of the Malthusian movement
+in foreign countries may be usefully added to this chapter.
+
+Holland.--Several years ago a Dutch Malthusian League was established
+by Mr. S. Van Houten (Doctor of Laws, and Deputé), Mr. C. V. Gerritsen,
+Dr. C. de Rooy, Dr. Lobry de Bruyn and others. In 1887 the League
+numbered amongst its members, in Amsterdam alone, six Doctors
+of Medicine, eleven Doctors of Law, and three Professors of the
+University. At Amsterdam a dispensary has long been open, where a
+lady (Dr. Aletta H. Jacobs) and other medical members attend and
+give advice to those seeking practical information upon prudential
+checks. Large numbers of poor married women apply at the dispensary
+for instruction as to the best methods by which they can restrict
+the size of their families. Several pamphlets upon the population
+question have been issued by the Dutch Malthusian League. In 1887,
+thirty thousand copies of one of its publications had been circulated
+in a country with a smaller population than that of London. The most
+recent pamphlet on Malthusianism, from the pen of Mr. J. A. Van der
+Haven, is entitled The Dark Netherlands, and the way out of it. The
+author draws a sad picture of life in some of the poor quarters of
+Holland, where, he says, "laughter is seldom heard, and hunger and
+early death are constant visitors." There is, however, hope for a
+brighter future. Mr. Gerritsen states that in Holland "directors of
+large industrial establishments and railway societies make their
+workmen acquainted with the means of preventing themselves from
+drifting into poverty."
+
+Germany.--The Malthusian question has frequently been the subject
+of discussion in Germany. Dr. Stille, of Hanover, Dr. Hans Ferdy,
+Dr. Mensinga, Dr. Zacharias, and other physicians have again and
+again called public attention to the importance of the subject; but,
+until lately, no combined effort to influence public opinion has been
+possible. Mr. Max Hausmeister, of Stuttgart, has at length set on foot
+an organisation for the propaganda of New-Malthusian views. On February
+12th, 1892, a private meeting was held at Stuttgart "to consider
+the advisability of forming a Malthusian Society." This led to the
+establishment of the Sozial-Harmonische Verein (Social Harmony Union),
+and a monthly journal, Die Sozial Harmonie, was founded "to enlighten
+the people of Germany upon social, political and economic questions and
+the relation of these to sexual matters." (Subscription: 2·50 marks per
+annum.) Germany, with its teeming population of impoverished workers,
+affords an enormous field for Malthusian propaganda.
+
+In Holland and Germany alone, amongst continental countries, has the
+Malthusian view found organised expression. France, whilst extremely
+prudent in practice, is strongly anti-Malthusian in theory, at least
+so far as the governing class is concerned. Drs. Lutaud, Le Blond,
+and Rebanté, of Paris, are prominent amongst the adherents of the
+New-Malthusian movement in France.
+
+In India, public attention has lately been called to the population
+question by a prosecution instituted by the police authorities
+against Messrs. Taraporewalla & Sons, of Bombay, for selling copies
+of a pamphlet entitled True Morality; or, the Theory and Practice
+of New-Malthusianism, by Mr. J. R. Holmes. The Chief Presidency
+Magistrate convicted the defendants and imposed a fine of 201 rupees
+(about £12. 10s.). The conviction was not permitted to pass without
+public protest. The editor of a Bombay journal wrote: "The battle
+has been fought and won in the West, and the subject is more or less
+directly treated in the leading reviews, and books and pamphlets
+are openly sold in England. Our duty here is clear enough. Are the
+Freethinkers in India, whether New-Malthusians or not, to quietly
+stand by and see the free discussion of this question denied the
+public? We are perfectly aware that although there are many who will
+aid in this work, there are few--alas! how few!--who will openly
+bear the brunt of the fray. However, there is at least one who will
+do it. But will the others stand round and give whatever help they
+can, even if silently?" The standard of comfort amongst the teeming
+native population of India is deplorably low, the average income
+per head in the north-west provinces not exceeding 22 1/2 rupees
+(say £1. 8s. 6d.) per year. And yet, forsooth, those who seek to lift
+the poor ryots from their abysmal poverty and misery are confronted
+with the smug conventionalities of Western Europe, and punished as
+distributors of "obscene" literature!
+
+America has no Malthusian organisation, but there are many sympathisers
+with the movement in various parts of the country. Dr. E. B. Foote,
+jr., of New York, is a most active and earnest advocate of Malthusian
+views, and has written several popular works on the subject. The
+customs and postal prohibitions are very stringent as to the admission
+and transmission of Malthusian literature and appliances. Some years
+ago the late Mr. D. M. Bennett underwent a term of imprisonment at
+Auburn for sending through the post a pamphlet by Mr. Heywood on
+the marriage question. Just after his arrest Mr. Bennett stated: "My
+only object in selling this pamphlet is to vindicate the liberty of
+thought, of the press, and of the mails. I have always announced that
+I did not approve of it; but as long as Mr. Heywood does, I declare
+that he has a right to mail it as part of his right to publish it,
+and as a necessary part of the freedom of the press. If this means
+that I am to go to prison, to prison let it be."
+
+From this necessarily slight and incomplete sketch of the position
+of the movement abroad it will be seen that the theory of Malthus is
+gradually leavening the thought and helping to shape the destinies
+of the civilised world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A JUDICIAL VINDICATION OF NEW-MALTHUSIANISM.
+
+
+As we have shown in the preceding chapter, repeated attempts have been
+made to suppress, by legal process, the advocacy of New-Malthusian
+views. Those attempts have failed, as they were bound to fail. By the
+strange irony of fate, indeed, one of the most powerful, logical and
+convincing vindications of the prudential limitation of families has
+proceeded from the judicial bench. The famous judgment delivered by
+Mr. Justice Windeyer, Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of New
+South Wales, on December 12th, 1888, is so important a contribution
+to the discussion of this question that a chapter may profitably be
+devoted to a summary of its arguments and conclusions.
+
+A stipendiary magistrate in New South Wales convicted Mr. W. W. Collins
+on a charge of selling an "obscene" book, viz., The Law of Population,
+written by Mrs. Annie Besant. Mr. Collins appealed against this
+conviction to the Supreme Court, consisting of Chief Justice Darley
+and Justices Windeyer and Stephen. The sole question at issue was
+whether the work was "obscene"; and upon this the judgment of the
+Court (the Chief Justice dissenting) was given that the conviction
+should be set aside.
+
+In delivering judgment, Mr. Justice Windeyer said:
+
+
+    A court of law has now to decide for the first time whether it is
+    lawful to argue in a decent way with earnestness of thought and
+    sobriety of language the right of married men and women to limit
+    the number of the children to be begotten by them by such means as
+    medical science says are possible and not injurious to health. Of
+    the enormous importance of this question, not only to persons of
+    limited means in every society and country, but to nations, the
+    populations of which have a tendency to increase more rapidly
+    than the means of subsistence, there cannot be the slightest
+    doubt. Since the days when Malthus first announced his views on
+    the subject to be misrepresented and vilified, as originators of
+    new ideas usually are by the ignorant and unthinking, the question
+    has not only been pressing itself with increased intensity of
+    force upon thinkers and social reformers dealing with it in
+    the abstract, but the necessity of practically dealing with the
+    difficulty of over-population has become a topic publicly discussed
+    by statesmen and politicians. It is no longer a question whether
+    it is expedient to prevent the growth of a pauper population,
+    with all its attendant miseries following upon semi-starvation,
+    over-crowding, disease, and an enfeebled national stamina of
+    constitution; but how countries suffering from all these causes
+    of national decay shall avert national disaster by checking the
+    production of children, whose lives must be too often a misery
+    to themselves, a burden to society, and a danger to the State.
+
+
+His lordship pointed out that public opinion has so far advanced
+that the abstract necessity of prudential limitation is now generally
+admitted. "Statesmen, reviewers, and ecclesiastics join in a common
+chorus of exhortation against improvident marriages to the working
+classes, and preach to them the necessity of deferring the ceremony
+till they have saved the competency necessary to support the truly
+British family of ten or twelve children." It is, however, futile
+to hope that celibacy and continence will furnish the solution
+of the question. The Protestant world has rejected the idea of a
+celibate clergy as incompatible with purity and the safety of female
+virtue. How, then, can we expect that men and women, "with their moral
+nature more or less stunted, huddled together in dens where the bare
+conditions of living preclude even elementary ideas of modesty, with
+none of the pleasures of life save those enjoyed in common with the
+animals--... these victims of a social state, for which the educated
+are responsible if they do not use their superior wisdom and knowledge
+for its redress, to exercise all the self-control of which the celibate
+ecclesiastic is supposed to be incapable"?
+
+The judge then proceeded to argue that, as the evils of over-population
+were almost universally recognised, the duty of making known to
+the people the practical method of escaping from them must also
+be recognised:
+
+
+    Why is the philosopher who describes the nature of the disease from
+    which we are suffering, who detects the causes which induce it and
+    the general character of the remedies to be applied, to be regarded
+    as a sage and a benefactor, but his necessary complement in the
+    evolution of a great idea, the man who works out in practice the
+    theories of the abstract thinker, to be denounced as a criminal? It
+    was only when Jenner ventured to act on the theory which he had
+    founded upon his observations that he was denounced and vilified
+    in language which it is now almost impossible to conceive.
+
+
+All history, however, has shown that public opinion advances whilst
+the law remains stationary; and martyrs must suffer until the law is
+brought into conformity with the public conscience:
+
+
+    A certain number of prosecutions under the law, a certain number of
+    victims to the ignorance or superstition of those who framed it,
+    a certain number of refusals to convict under a growing sense of
+    its unwisdom, injustice and barbarity, seem to be in all societies
+    the stages passed through by laws established for the purpose
+    of coercing the opinions of mankind before they become obsolete,
+    if judge-made, or, if statutes, are repealed as inconsistent with
+    advancing knowledge.
+
+
+With regard to the pamphlet under consideration, the judge pointed
+out that it did not come before them as an obscene libel at common
+law. The question, therefore, whether the purpose advocated in the book
+(i.e., the limitation of families) was inconsistent with the morals of
+society, was not relevant. They had only to enquire if the details as
+to prudential checks, given in that pamphlet, were inconsistent with
+decency. It had been admitted in argument that the greater part of the
+work, dealing with the abstract necessity of limiting population, was
+not obscene. The only portion against which obscenity was alleged was
+the chapter in which the means by which conception could be prevented
+were stated, and in which the female sexual organs were described as
+far as necessary for the purpose.
+
+The question was thus raised--What is obscenity? After quoting
+the definition of the word which had been adopted in a previous
+case, Mr. Justice Windeyer laid down the principle that "it is
+the circumstances under which language is published, or acts done,
+that determine whether language or conduct is obscene. No natural
+function of the body is obscene itself. In the physical constitution
+of man, including all his natural instincts, there is nothing unholy
+or unclean." But certain natural actions, if performed in public,
+would be a gross outrage upon decency. In like manner, language that
+might be permissible and necessary if used on certain occasions,
+would manifestly be an outrage upon decency if used when occasion
+did not warrant it:
+
+
+    The question therefore is, when language is objected to as obscene,
+    whether the occasion upon which it has been used warrants its
+    use in the manner resorted to. This view of the law, I find,
+    is taken by the most distinguished writer upon the criminal law
+    of modern days--that most acute thinker, Sir James Stephen. That
+    learned judge, in his Digest of the Criminal Law, p. 105 submits
+    the following as the true view of the law with reference to the
+    publication of matter that would be obscene if not justified by
+    the occasion:
+
+    "A person (he says) is justified in exhibiting disgusting objects,
+    or publishing obscene books, papers, writings, pictures, drawings,
+    or other representations, if their exhibition or publication is for
+    the public good, as being necessary or advantageous to religion
+    of morality, to the administration of justice, the pursuit of
+    science, literature or art, or other objects of general interest;
+    but the justification ceases if the publication is made in such
+    a manner, to such an extent, or under such circumstances, as to
+    exceed what the public good requires in regard to the particular
+    matter published."
+
+
+Mr. Justice Windeyer said he accepted this view as the law, and
+the question for consideration was whether the chapter detailing
+prudential checks made the publication obscene. To determine this,
+it was necessary to consider the work as a whole, in order that it
+might be ascertained whether the language complained of was warranted
+by the occasion:
+
+
+    As it cannot be denied that the question propounded for discussion
+    is of enormous importance, and that it is right to advocate in
+    the abstract the expediency of checking the advancing tide of
+    population, it appears to me impossible to contend that language
+    which tells how this may be done is obscene if it goes no further
+    than is necessary for this purpose. Having carefully read the
+    third chapter of the pamphlet, it appears to me to be written in
+    all decent sobriety of language. I see nothing in its language
+    which an earnest-minded man or woman of pure life and morals might
+    not use to one of his or her own sex, if explaining to him or her
+    what was necessary in order to understand the methods suggested
+    by which married people could prevent the number of their children
+    increasing beyond their means of supporting them. There is nothing
+    which points to the conclusion that any language is used with
+    the intention of exciting feelings of wantonness and lust; and
+    it requires but slight acquaintance with the medical profession
+    to discover that the advice given in this chapter is frequently
+    given by them to women suffering from over-childbearing, and to
+    those to whom parturition is dangerous. The information afforded
+    in the third chapter of the pamphlet, if given by a medical man
+    to a patient suffering from over-maternity, or if whispered in
+    matrimonial confidence, or imparted in the privacy existing between
+    the author and the reader of her pamphlet, is not obscenity; though
+    the public proclamation of the same information on a placard in
+    George Street or Piccadilly, so that all who ran might read,
+    would be an obscenity of the grossest kind, so clearly do the
+    circumstances of a publication alter its character. If admitted,
+    as it is, that the information, physiological and otherwise, given
+    in Chapter III. can be found in medical works of an expensive kind,
+    it cannot affect the character of the information for obscenity
+    that it is given in a cheap form. Information cannot be pure,
+    chaste and legal in morocco at a guinea, but impure, obscene
+    and indictable in a paper pamphlet at sixpence. The information,
+    to be of value in a national point of view as a safeguard from
+    the miseries of over-population and overcrowding, must be given
+    wholesale to the masses likely to over-breed. The time is past when
+    knowledge can be kept as the exclusive privilege of any caste or
+    class. The fact that a book may excite prurient thoughts if used
+    for that purpose by the low-minded and the young, does not make
+    it obscene.
+
+    The objection which has been urged, that the means suggested for
+    the prevention of conception might be availed of by the unmarried
+    and immoral for the purpose of enabling them safely to indulge in
+    vice, is simply the application to this subject of the exploded
+    delusion that knowledge is a dangerous thing.... The time is
+    surely past when countenance can be given to the argument that
+    a knowledge of any truth, either in physics or in the domain of
+    thought, is to be stifled because its abuse might be dangerous to
+    society. The guardianship of the eunuch and the seclusion of the
+    harem were not necessary to build up the national character of
+    English women for chastity; and it is an insult to them to argue
+    that it is necessary to keep them in ignorance on sexual matters
+    to maintain it. Ignorance is no more the mother of chastity than
+    of true religion.
+
+
+Mr. Justice Windeyer then examined the contention that the prudential
+limitation of families is "a violation of natural laws and a
+frustration of nature's ends":
+
+
+    The argument that nature intends every woman to conceive as
+    often as is possible would, if carried to its logical conclusion,
+    result in the Indian custom of marrying every female child upon
+    reaching puberty in order that no opportunity of conception should
+    be lost. In all other matters of breeding but the all-important one
+    of the breeding of the human race, the aim of man is to defeat the
+    effects of nature's laws of reproduction, and to limit the number
+    and kind of animals produced to the amount required for the use
+    of man. The forces of nature, blind and ruthless in their effect,
+    we control and defeat in their operation by all the means that
+    science places at our command. To protect churches and hospitals
+    from the operation of nature's laws, we put up conductors to arrest
+    the inexorable effects of lightning, which would remorselessly
+    destroy what piety and humanity would protect. The course of
+    nature is to kill a noble woman, a devoted wife and loving mother,
+    if her pelvis is too small to admit the delivery of a child with
+    an abnormally large head. The practice of civilised man, aided by
+    science, is in such a case of parturition to destroy the infant
+    and to save the mother. The interference with the course of nature
+    is direct, the practice in no way natural; but enlightened public
+    opinion in no way condemns it. But if the pelvis of a woman is so
+    unusually small that she never can be delivered of a child but at
+    the peril of her life, where is the immorality in the husband and
+    wife resorting to any preventive checks that may preserve a life
+    that is dear and perhaps valuable to the world? It is unreasoning
+    prejudice alone that starts the objection that such prevention
+    of all the physical agony involved in a painful and dangerous
+    delivery and possible loss of life is immoral and unnatural.
+
+
+The case of the Queen versus Bradlaugh and Besant (referred to at
+length in the preceding chapter) had been cited as an authority
+in support of the contention that The Law of Population was an
+obscene book, inasmuch as the pamphlet which was the subject of that
+prosecution, and for the publication of which the defendants were
+convicted, advocated the adoption of preventive checks. Mr. Justice
+Windeyer, however, refused to accept that case as a binding precedent:
+
+
+    As I have already pointed out, the case cannot be regarded as
+    an authority upon that point, as there the question was whether
+    the pamphlet was an obscene libel. Whether the verdict of the
+    jury was right in that case is not a matter of law, but of
+    opinion. Reading the summing-up of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn
+    with some knowledge of judicial modes of putting criminal cases
+    to a jury, it appears to me that, though expressing no direct
+    opinion as to its character, the learned Chief Justice thought
+    that the book was not an obscene libel, and was cautiously guiding
+    the jury to that conclusion. By the opinion of a jury coming to
+    the consideration of so delicate a question of social science as
+    was submitted to them, probably without any previous acquaintance
+    with subjects of the kind, I decline to be in any way bound; and
+    I have no hesitation in saying that, had I been a member of the
+    jury, I should have acted upon the reasoning of Lord Chief Justice
+    Cockburn, and acquitted the defendants. Not only does the whole
+    tenor of his Lordship's summing-up appear to me argumentatively in
+    favor of the defendants, but, from certain passages, it appears
+    to me that the inference is clearly to be drawn that he neither
+    thought the physiological details of the book were obscene,
+    nor was of opinion that its teaching would promote immorality.
+
+
+Mr. Justice Windeyer quoted several passages from the judgment of Sir
+Alexander Cockburn in support of his view that the Lord Chief Justice
+did not regard the preventive checks recommended as immoral. How,
+he asked, could any reasonable man condemn as immoral the wish of
+married people to bring no more children into the world than they can
+support, and the adoption of the necessary means to effect that wish?
+
+
+    Instead of poor, let a case of consumptive parents be taken, or
+    of parents one of whom has developed symptoms of insanity. Who
+    could suppose that any jury would regard any means adopted by
+    them to prevent the procreation of a number of children, diseased
+    and rickety, or certain to inherit a taint of insanity, would be
+    otherwise than natural and right, and the adoption of any means
+    that medical science could suggest to prevent it not only not
+    immoral but laudable in the highest degree? If it is not immoral to
+    do what the pamphlet advocates, it seems to me impossible to argue
+    that the mere advocacy itself is a penal offence. The question is,
+    Where does the immorality come in? Wrongs can only be regarded
+    as such in their relation to others, or as self-regarding. Is
+    there in the adoption of preventive intercourse any invasion of
+    the rights of others? Certainly none. The use of the preventive
+    checks can only be viewed as a possible wrong in the light of a
+    self-regarding one. How can it be argued with any show of sound
+    reason that the use of preventive checks (adopted, perhaps,
+    from the determination not to bring into the world children that
+    cannot be even fed) can be morally injurious to persons animated
+    by a sense of duty founded upon the noblest altruism? The world
+    would have little need of penal statutes if a consideration of
+    the rights of others actuated the conduct of all mankind. Active
+    altruism--the distinctive feature of Christian teaching, inculcated
+    in the precept, "Do unto others as you would men should do unto
+    you"--can never in its application injuriously react upon the
+    moral nature of those who seek to put it in force with regard
+    to any conduct which may affect the happiness of others. The
+    profound law of ethics, that in trying to do good to others we
+    unconsciously benefit ourselves, is no less true here than in all
+    other phases of human conduct. Every thought entertained, every
+    effort made for the good of others, must elevate the thinker and
+    the actor. Who will say that the low and vicious parents of East
+    London's gutter children, brought up amidst all the moral horrors
+    of over-crowding, half-starved, and stunted in growth, without
+    elementary notions of decency or morality--who will say that such
+    parents would not have been morally superior if they could have
+    seen the wrong they were doing in bringing such offspring into
+    the world, and had taken measures to prevent it? Who will say
+    that the future of society would not have an infinitely better
+    outlook if the breeding of such children were to be prevented by
+    the conjugal prudence of parents in resorting to the use of such
+    means as would prevent their procreation? It is idle to preach to
+    the masse, the necessity of deferred marriage and of a celibate
+    life during the heyday of passion. To attempt to stifle the cry of
+    human nature uttered in the voice of its most powerful instinct,
+    is indeed to fly in the face of nature. Like all attempts to
+    regulate conduct by ignoring the facts of human nature, it must
+    signally fail. Prostitution with all its horrors is the outcome
+    of enforced unnatural celibacy. To use and not abuse, to direct
+    and control in its operation any God-given faculty, is the true
+    aim of man, the true object of all morality.
+
+
+In concluding this memorable judgment, Mr. Justice Windeyer declared
+that he would not seek to evade the responsibility of deciding the
+matter submitted to him by shielding himself behind the decisions
+of other judges whose unreasoned opinions were of no weight against
+unrefuted arguments:
+
+
+    So strong is the dread of the world's censure upon this topic,
+    that few have courage openly to express their views upon it; and
+    its nature is such that it is only among thinkers who discuss all
+    subjects, or amongst intimate acquaintances, that community of
+    thought upon this question is discovered. But let anyone inquire
+    amongst those who have sufficient education and ability to think
+    for themselves, and who do not idly float, slaves to the current of
+    conventional opinion, and he will discover that numbers of men and
+    women of purest lives, of noblest aspirations, pious, cultivated,
+    and refined, see no moral wrong in teaching the ignorant that it
+    is wrong to bring into the world children to whom they cannot do
+    justice, and who think it folly to stop short in telling them
+    simply and plainly how to prevent it. A more robust view of
+    morals teaches that it is puerile to ignore human passions and
+    human physiology. A clearer perception of truth and the safety of
+    trusting to it, teaches that in law as in religion it is useless
+    trying to limit the knowledge of mankind by any inquisitorial
+    attempts to place upon a judicial index expurgatorius works written
+    with an earnest purpose, and commending themselves to thinkers of
+    well-balanced minds. I will be no party to any such attempt. I do
+    not believe that it was ever meant that the Obscene Publication Act
+    should apply to cases of this kind, but only to the publication
+    of such matter as all good men would regard as lewd and filthy,
+    to lewd and bawdy novels, pictures and exhibitions evidently
+    published and given for lucre's sake. It could never have been
+    intended to stifle the expression of thought by the earnest-minded
+    on a subject of transcendent national importance like the present;
+    and I will not strain it for that purpose. As pointed out by Lord
+    Chief Justice Cockburn in the case of the Queen versus Bradlaugh
+    and Besant, all prosecutions of this kind should be regarded as
+    mischievous, even by those who disapprove of the opinions sought
+    to be stifled, inasmuch as they only tend more widely to diffuse
+    the teaching objected to. To those on the other hand who desire
+    its promulgation, it must be matter of congratulation that this,
+    like all attempted persecutions of thinkers, will defeats its
+    own object, and that truth, like a torch, "the more it's shook
+    it shines."
+
+    As it seems to me that this book is neither obscene in its
+    language, nor by its teaching incites people to obscenity, I am
+    of opinion that the prohibition should go.
+
+
+Mr. Justice Stephen concurred in the judgment given, and the conviction
+of Mr. W. W. Collins was therefore set aside.
+
+We may fittingly conclude this chapter by reproducing from The
+Malthusian a note in which the writer briefly describes the character
+of Mr. Justice Windeyer:
+
+"In early life I met Mr. Windeyer at his house at Tomago, on the Hunter
+River. His father, then dead, had been quite a notable man in the
+colony, as an able, intrepid, popular and high-minded politician; and
+young Windeyer seemed to be his father's son--frank, open, unaffected,
+and with a fine gentlemanly bearing. Since then, his career has quite
+fulfilled its early promise; and, for you, as a warm advocate of
+New-Malthusianism, the strength of support and encouragement lies,
+I think, very much in the fact that Justice Windeyer is not only a
+man of great legal ability but of high moral character."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+PRUDENTIAL CHECKS.
+
+
+If the validity of the Malthusian position be admitted, there is no
+logical escape from the conclusion that the knowledge of innocent
+means by which families may be limited should be conveyed to the
+people. Yet, with characteristic inconsistency, the public advocacy
+of Malthusianism in the abstract is regarded with approval, whilst
+the practical application of the principle is met with the parrot-cry
+of "obscenity," and menaced with penal infliction. In the Windeyer
+judgment it will be noted that the proceedings against Mr. Collins
+were based not upon those portions of Mrs. Besant's pamphlet in which
+the subject was philosophically discussed, but upon the passages
+in which the preventive checks were described. An eminent English
+statesman, Mr. John Morley, has insisted in a public speech upon the
+"vital importance" of the population question, and, he added, "I
+wish that we did not shirk it so much." A popular English clergyman,
+the Rev. H. R. Haweis, has declared in a popular weekly newspaper that
+the most important remedy for poverty is "to control the family growth,
+according to the family means of support." But when the social reformer
+passes from vague precept to direct instruction, he is confronted by
+an anomalous law which threatens him as a foe to public morality.
+
+The tragical element in this otherwise ridiculous inconsistency lies
+in the fact that the knowledge of prudential checks is denied to
+the very class which most urgently needs such information. It is the
+poor alone who suffer acutely from the effects of over-population:
+it is they who feel the actual sting of want when the small wage
+is distributed over a large family-area. For the well-to-do there
+is no mystery concerning prudential checks. The family doctor will
+whisper discreetly into the ear of the wealthy matron whose quiver
+is sufficiently filled. Expensive medical works containing full
+instructions are at the command of those who can afford to buy
+them. Why should the poor be kept in ignorance upon a matter of
+supreme importance to them?
+
+Upon the subject of prudential checks the medical profession as a
+body has afforded little or no assistance. Here, as in many other
+matters, "doctors differ"; and no steps have as yet been taken to
+ascertain, by scientific investigation, the best method of preventing
+conception. The checks now to be described are of two kinds--first,
+those in which success depends upon self-control; and, second, those
+in which mechanical appliances are used.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The practice of withdrawal immediately before the act of coition
+is completed obtains very extensively in France. This, the most
+ancient of known methods, is referred to in the Bible (Genesis
+xxxviii. 8-9). The efficacy of the check depends, of course, entirely
+upon the self-control of the husband, and failure is therefore
+always possible. It may be mentioned that this plan has sometimes
+been objected to on the ground of supposed injury to health; but no
+evidence has been adduced in support of the objection. On the other
+hand, Dr. C. R. Drysdale has ascertained by personal enquiry that 100
+members of the medical profession in Paris "had only 174 children in
+all their married lives, or not two as an average.... The question
+of the effect produced upon the health of the parents by the use of
+the physical check of Genesis xxxviii. was discussed at the meeting
+of the International Medical Congress at Amsterdam in 1879; and two
+medical men of great distinction--MM. Lutaud and Leblanc--asserted
+distinctly that these practices of family physical prudence in France
+were in no way productive of ill-health to either conjoint. And,
+as they were universally made use of by the medical men of Paris in
+limiting their own families, it was very unlikely that such damage
+to health as had been spoken of would not have been noted and clearly
+described long ago if it existed in nature."
+
+Abstinence from intercourse during a certain period is said to be an
+effectual method of avoiding conception. This, however, rests upon the
+assumption that a female is more likely to conceive immediately before
+or after "menstruation" (the monthly flow). If connection do not take
+place within five days before, or eight days after, menstruation,
+the probability of pregnancy is supposed to be diminished.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Of the various appliances which have been devised for the prevention of
+conception, the simplest and most effectual is the "sheath" (commonly
+known as the "French Letter"). This an envelope of skin or very thin
+rubber, and is used by the husband. It completely covers the male
+organ, and, being closed at the extremity, prevents the semen from
+being discharged into the vagina. It is obvious that, if the sheath
+remain intact, it is impossible for conception to take place. The
+only danger to be guarded against is the breaking or perforation of
+the sheath, which should in all cases be carefully examined before
+use. The material may be tested by stretching it gently over the inside
+of the thumb, when the smallest fracture can be detected. If sheaths
+of good quality (not necessarily expensive) be used, and reasonable
+care taken to avoid accidental breakage, this check is CERTAIN.
+
+The Enema Syringe is an instrument frequently employed for preventive
+purposes. A solution (composed of a teaspoonful of alum dissolved in
+a pint of cold or tepid water) is injected by the female immediately
+after connection. The vertical and reverse syringe is more likely to
+act efficiently than the ordinary enema.
+
+A very simple and inexpensive method is the use of a small piece of
+fine sponge, soaked in warm water, and placed in such a position as
+to cover the mouth of the womb. The chances of failure are diminished
+by saturating the sponge with a solution of quinine.
+
+Pessaries of various kinds are sometimes used to prevent
+conception. The simple pessary (of which there are several
+modifications) is a small dome-shaped appliance, made of thin rubber,
+and constructed to fit closely round the neck of the womb. If carefully
+adjusted and retained in position, the pessary may be relied upon.
+
+Of late years a new form of pessary has been introduced and is stated
+to have been used with marked success. It consists of a small cone
+of cacao-butter, charged with quinine. The pessary is inserted a few
+minutes before connection takes place; the quinine, being liberated
+by the dissolution of the fatty substance, destroys the vitality of
+the seminal fluid.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MALTHUSIAN LEAGUE.
+
+(Founded in 1877.)
+
+
+President:
+
+C. R. DRYSDALE, M.D., M.R.C.P. Lond., F.R.C.S. Eng.
+
+
+Vice-Presidents:
+
+Señor Aldecoa, Director of Government Charities, Madrid.
+
+Mr. G. Anderson, C.E.
+
+M. Yves Guyot, Deputé, Rue de Seine, Paris.
+
+Mr. Gerritsen, Amsterdam, Holland.
+
+Mr. S. Van Houten, Deputé, The Hague.
+
+Mr. P. Murugesa Mudaliar, Madras.
+
+Mr. T. Parris.
+
+Dr. Stille, Hanover.
+
+Dr. Giovanni Tari, Naples.
+
+Dr. Alice Vickeby.
+
+
+Hon. Secretary:
+
+Mr. W. H. Reynolds, New Cross, London, S.E.
+
+
+
+
+RULES.
+
+
+I.--Name.
+
+That this Society be called "The Malthusian League."
+
+
+II.--Objects.
+
+That the objects of this Society be:
+
+1. To agitate for the abolition of all penalties on the public
+discussion of the Population Question, and to obtain such a statutory
+definition as shall render it impossible, in the future, to bring
+such discussions within the scope of the common law as a misdemeanor.
+
+2. To spread among the people, by all practicable means, a knowledge
+of the law of population, of its consequences, and of its bearing
+upon human conduct and morals.
+
+
+III.--Principles.
+
+1. "That population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the
+means of subsistence."
+
+2. That the checks which counteract this tendency are resolvable into
+positive or life-destroying, and prudential or birth-restricting.
+
+3. That the positive or life-destroying checks comprehend the
+premature death of children and adults by disease, starvation, war
+and infanticide.
+
+4. That the prudential or birth-restricting check consists in the
+limitation of offspring by abstention from marriage, or by prudence
+after marriage.
+
+5. That prolonged abstention from marriage--as advocated by Malthus--is
+productive of many diseases and of much sexual vice; early marriage,
+on the contrary, tends to ensure sexual purity, domestic comfort,
+social happiness, and individual health; but it is a grave social
+offence for men and women to bring into the world more children than
+they can adequately house, feed, clothe and educate.
+
+6. That over-population is the most fruitful source of pauperism,
+ignorance, crime and disease.
+
+7. That the full and open discussion of the Population Question is
+a matter of vital moment to society, and such discussion should be
+absolutely unfettered by fear of legal penalties.
+
+
+IV.--Executive.
+
+1. That the officers of the League consist of a president,
+vice-presidents, council, treasurer, secretaries, solicitor and
+auditors.
+
+2. That the government of the League be vested in a council, consisting
+of a president, vice-presidents, and secretary (by virtue of their
+respective offices), of twenty members who shall be elected annually
+at a general meeting, and of a duly-appointed representative from
+each branch of the League which may hereafter be formed.
+
+3. That the council have power to appoint a treasurer and secretaries
+from amongst its own members; to elect a president, vice-presidents,
+and solicitor, subject to the approval of the next general meeting;
+to fill up vacancies in its own ranks, and to make the necessary
+bye-laws for carrying out these laws and for the general management
+of the League.
+
+4. That all candidates for election as officers shall be nominated
+one month before the annual general meeting, and that such nomination
+shall be publicly announced, the form and manner to be determined by
+the council.
+
+
+V.--Membership.
+
+That the conditions of membership be an annual subscription of one
+shilling, which shall be taken to imply adhesion to the rules of
+the League; or an annual subscription of two shillings, which shall
+entitle the subscriber to receive the Malthusian. To constitute life
+membership, a single payment of one guinea.
+
+
+VI.--General Meetings.
+
+1. That a general meeting be held once a year, at such place and time
+as the council shall determine, at which meeting the presentation of
+the report and balance sheet and the election of officers shall take
+precedence of all other business.
+
+2. That, on the receipt of a requisition signed by not less than
+twenty-five members, a special general meeting be, within one month,
+called by the council. No other business but that set forth on the
+notice calling the meeting shall be taken into consideration.
+
+3. That the voting at all meetings be taken by show of hands, except
+when a poll is demanded, when the voting shall be taken by ballot.
+
+
+VII.--Expulsion.
+
+That the council have power to expel any member, but the member so
+expelled shall have a right of appeal to the annual general meeting,
+or to a special general meeting called for that purpose.
+
+
+VIII.--Alteration of Rules.
+
+That no alteration be made in these rules, except at an annual general
+meeting, by the vote of two-thirds of those present, two months'
+notice of the proposed alteration having been given to the council.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OVER-POPULATION; a Lecture delivered for the Sunday Lecture Society,
+under the title "The Law of Population: its Meaning and Menace." By
+John M. Robertson. Post free, 2 1/2d.
+
+PLAIN HOME-TALK, by Edward B. Foote, M.D. (U.S.A.) embracing Medical
+Common Sense. 909 pages, with 200 illustrations.
+
+
+    Contents: The cause, Prevention, and Cure of Disease--The Food
+    we Eat--The Liquids we Drink--The Atmosphere we Live in--The
+    Clothes we Wear--Bad Habits of Children and Youth--Bad Habits of
+    Manhood and of Womanhood--Sexual Starvation--How to have Healthy
+    Babies--Private Words to Men--Impotency--History of Marriage, etc.
+
+
+    The book is carefully and thoughtfully written in plain language,
+    easily understood, and with the object of making its readers
+    better parents and better citizens through the knowledge obtained
+    of themselves and their duty to others. No parent should be
+    without this book. Useful for every-day reference.     Post free,
+    six shillings.
+
+
+DR. FOOTE'S HANDBOOK OF HEALTH, comprising information of the utmost
+importance to all who wish to enjoy life. 128 pages, post free, 1/1.
+
+THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF T. R. MALTHUS. By C. R. Drysdale, M.D. 120
+pages, with portrait of Malthus. Should be read by every student of
+social problems. Post free, 8d.
+
+THE POPULATION QUESTION. By Dr. C. R. Drysdale. A careful and complete
+statement of the Neo-Malthusian position. 100 pp., stout wrapper;
+post free 8d.
+
+THE OVER-GROWTH OF POPULATION, AND ITS REMEDY. An Address to men only,
+delivered at Lambeth Baths on Tuesday, January 15th, 1889, by William
+Lant Carpenter, B.A., B.Sc. Post free, 2d.
+
+EARLY MARRIAGE AND LATE PARENTAGE. The only Solution of the Social
+Problem. By Oxoniensis. Post free, 2 1/2d.
+
+THE CAUSE OF POVERTY. A paper read at the National Liberal Club,
+by Dr. C. R. Drysdale. Post free 2d.
+
+POVERTY: Its Cause and Cure. By M. G. H. Post free, 2d.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+[1] This has already been admirably done in two pamphlets by
+Dr. C. R. Drysdale, President of the Malthusian League: (1) The Life
+and Writings of Malthus; (2) The Population Question.
+
+[2] Preface to Special Report of Trial.
+
+[3] Lucifer, July, 1891.
+
+[4] See Appendix.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Malthusian Handbook, by Anonymous
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59480 ***