The first method hardly needs discussion here.  Its importance is too obvious.  It needs, however, more public discussion in England than it has hitherto received.  The second method—­operating at present only in a very casual and unsystematic way—­ought, one would say, to be very systematically considered and dealt with by the modern States.  For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very expensive one, considering the end in view.  And in such a case there would really be no adequate reason for jealousy between States having colonies in the neighbourhood of each other.  If Germany (or any other country) wishes to have a colony in East Africa or West Africa, it is really ridiculous to go to war about such a matter.  Any peaceful arrangement would be less expensive; and, as a matter of fact, a flourishing German (or other) colony in the neighbourhood of a British settlement would help to bring prosperity to the latter.  The two colonies would benefit each other.  It is only unreasoning jealousy which prevents people understanding this.

Finally, there is the third method, of the intentional limitation of families.  Surely the time has come when blind and unlimited propagation among civilized and self-respecting peoples must come to an end.  The old text “Blessed is he that hath his quiver full of them” has ceased to have any use or application.  Eugenic and healthy conditions of child-rearing and nurture demand small families.  The well-to-do and educated do already limit their families; and for the poorer classes to breed and propagate indefinitely is only to play into the hands of the dividend-hunting rich by increasing the supply of cheap labour, while at the same time the general standard of the population becomes more and more degraded.  It is indeed a curious question why, in the Press and among the official classes, every effort to spread abroad the knowledge of how in a healthy, humane, and eugenic way to limit the size of the family is discountenanced.  Sometimes one thinks that this is done partly in order to encourage that said pullulation of workers which is so favourable to, the keeping down of wages; but, of course, ancient reasons of ignorance and religious bias weigh also.  In the United States the persecutions of Comstockery are worse than here.

The aborigines of Australia are so ignorant that they do not even know that conception arises from the meeting of the male and female elements.  They think that certain bushes and trees are haunted by the spirits of babies, which leap unawares into the bodies of passing women.  It can be imagined what evils and delusions spring from such a theory.  We do not want to return to such a period; and yet it would seem that many folk do not want to go forward from our present condition, with all its evils and delusions, to something better and more intelligent.