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Title: The Malthusian Handbook

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MALTHUSIAN HANDBOOK ***




Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of
public domain material from the Google Books project.)









                        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.

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    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;
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THE OVER-GROWTH OF POPULATION, AND ITS REMEDY. An Address to men only,
delivered at Lambeth Baths on Tuesday, January 15th, 1889, by William
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EARLY MARRIAGE AND LATE PARENTAGE. The only Solution of the Social
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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.








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