the heavy expense of education and the burden of rates and taxes are probably the main reasons why larger families are not desired.  We may add that in almost all the professions old men are overpaid and young men under-paid.  Mr. and Mrs. Whetham[18] have found that, before 1870, 143 marriages of men whose names appear in ‘Who’s Who’ resulted in 743 children, an average of 5.2 each; after 1870 the average is only 3.08.  Celibacy also is commoner among the educated.  ’From the reports issued by two Women’s Colleges, it appears that, excluding those who have left college within three years or less, out of 3000 women only 22 per cent. have married, and the number of children born to each marriage is undoubtedly very small.’  The writers consider that this state of things is extremely dangerous for the country, inasmuch as we are now breeding mainly from our worst stocks (the feeble-minded are very prolific), while our best families are stationary or dwindling.  Without denying the general truth of this pessimistic conclusion,[19] it may be pointed out that the miners are, physically at least, above the average of the whole population, and that the very low birth-rate of residential districts is partly due to the presence in large numbers of unmarried domestic servants.  The death-rate of the slums is also very high.

The fears of the eugenist about the quality of the population are far more reasonable than the invectives of the fanatic about its defective quantity.  Of the latter class we may say with Havelock Ellis that ’those who seek to restore the birth-rate of half a century ago are engaged in a task which would be criminal if it were not based on ignorance, and which is in any case fatuous.’  And yet I hope to show before the close of this article that for two or three generations the British Empire could absorb a considerable increase, and that the Government might with advantage stimulate this by schemes of colonisation.  The lament of the eugenist resounds in all countries alike.  The German complains that the Poles, whom he considers an inferior race, breed like rabbits, while the gifted exponents of Kultur only breed like hares.  The American is nervous about the numbers of the negro; he has more reason to be nervous about the fecundity of the Slav and South Italian immigrant.  Everywhere the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a small aristocracy.  The Americans of British descent are threatened with this fate.  Pride and a high standard of living are not biological virtues.  The man who needs and spends little is the ultimate inheritor of the earth.  I know of no instance in history in which a ruling race has not ultimately been ousted or absorbed by its subjects.  Complete extermination or expropriation is the only successful method of conquest.  The Anglo-Saxon race has thus established itself in the greater part of Britain, and in Australasia.  In North America it has destroyed the Indian hunter, who could not