and pleasure would be postponed or curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first defrayed:  in that case there would be few young married people indeed who would not speedily be able to purchase this small annuity of L35 a year.  And with every successive payment the sense of the value of the thing, its importance, its necessity, would grow more and more in the mind; and with every payment would increase the satisfaction of feeling that the child was removed from destitution by one pound a year more.  It took a very long time to create in men’s minds the duty of life insurance.  That has now taken so firm a hold on people that, although the English bride brings no dot, the bridegroom is not permitted to marry her until he settles a life insurance upon her.  When once the mother thoroughly understands that by the exercise of a little more self-denial her daughter can be rendered independent for life, that self-denial will certainly not be wanting.  Think of the vast sums of money which are squandered by the middle classes of this country, even though they are more provident than the working classes.  The money is not spent in any kind of riot:  not at all; the middle classes are, on the whole, most decorous and sober:  it is spent in living just a little more luxuriously than the many changes and chances of mortal life should permit.  It is by lowering the standard of living that the money must be saved for the endowment of the daughters; and since the children cost less in infancy than when they grow older, it is then that the saving must be made.  Everyone knows that there are thousands of young married people who can only by dint of the strictest economy make both ends meet.  It is not for them that I speak.  Another voice, far more powerful than mine, should thunder into their hearts the selfishness and the wickedness of bringing into the world children for whom they can make no provision whatever, and who are destined to be thrown into the battle-field of labour provided with no other weapons than the knowledge of reading and writing.  It is bad enough for the boys; but as for the girls—­they had better have been thrown as soon as born to the lions.  I speak rather to those who are in better plight, who live comfortably upon the year’s income, which is not too much, and who look forward to putting their boys in the way of an ambitious career, and to marrying their daughters.  But as for the endowment of the girls, they have not even begun to think about it.  Their conscience has not been yet awakened, their fears not yet aroused; they look abroad and see their friends struck down by death or disaster, but they never think it may be their turn next.  And yet the happiness to reflect, if death or disaster does come, that your girls are safe!