for married persons to avail themselves of such precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent, might be removed from society, and the object of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Godwin, and of every philanthropic person, be promoted, by the increase of comfort, of intelligence, and of moral conduct, in the mass of the population.  The course recommended will, I am fully persuaded, at some period be pursued by the people even if left to themselves."[431]

It was not long before Place’s prophetic words began to be realized, and in another half century the movement was affecting the birthrate of all civilized lands, though it can scarcely yet be said that justice has been done to the pioneers who promoted it in the face of much persecution from the ignorant and superstitious public whom they sought to benefit.  In 1831, Robert Dale Owen, the son of Robert Owen, published his Moral Physiology, setting forth the methods of preventing conception.  A little later the brothers George and Charles Drysdale (born 1825 and 1829), two ardent and unwearying philanthropists, devoted much of their energy to the propagation of Neo-Malthusian principles.  George Drysdale, in 1854, published his Elements of Social Science, which during many years had an enormous circulation all over Europe in eight different languages.  It was by no means in every respect a scientific or sound work, but it certainly had great influence, and it came into the hands of many who never saw any other work on sexual topics.  Although the Neo-Malthusian propagandists of those days often met with much obloquy, their cause was triumphantly vindicated in 1876, when Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, having been prosecuted for disseminating Neo-Malthusian pamphlets, the charge was dismissed, the Lord Chief Justice declaring that so ill-advised and injudicious a charge had probably never before been made in a court of justice.  This trial, even by its mere publicity and apart from its issue, gave an enormous impetus to the Neo-Malthusian movement.  It is well known that the steady decline in the English birthrate begun in 1877, the year following the trial.  There could be no more brilliant illustration of the fact, that what used to be called “the instruments of Providence” are indeed unconscious instruments in bringing about great ends which they themselves were far from either intending or desiring.

In 1877, Dr. C.R.  Drysdale founded the Malthusian League, and edited a periodical, The Malthusian, aided throughout by his wife, Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery.  He died in 1907. (The noble and pioneering work of the Drysdales has not yet been adequately recognized in their own country; an appreciative and well-informed article by Dr. Hermann Rohleder, “Dr. C.R.  Drysdale,