They are quite able to support and educate a fairly large family, but as children are hindrances, and increase the anxieties, the responsibilities and the expense, they must be limited to one or two.

There is still another class that consists of the purely selfish and luxurious members of society, who find children a bother, who have to sacrifice some of the pleasures of life in order to rear them.

Now all those who prevent have some rational ground for prevention, and at least are possessed of sufficient self-control to give effect to their wish.  They include the best citizens and the best stock, and from them would issue, if the reproductive faculty were unrestrained, the best progeny.

One grave aspect of this limitation is that, as a rule, the family is limited after the first one or two are born.  The small families, say of two, are born when the parents are both young, and carefully compiled statistics prove that these are not the best offspring a couple can produce.  Those born first in wedlock, are shorter and not so well developed as those born later in married life, when parents are more matured.

If it is substantially true, that the decline in the birth-rate is due to voluntary prevention, and that prevention implies prudence and self-control, it is safe to conclude that those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous, will be the most prolific.

But those in whom these qualities are absent or least conspicuous are our worst citizens, and, therefore, our worst citizens are the most prolific.  Observation and statistics lead to the same conclusion.

Amongst the very poor in crowded localities, the passion for marriage early asserts itself.

Its natural enemies are prudence and a consciousness of responsibility, and these suggest restraint.  But prudence and restraint are not the common attributes of the very poor.  Poverty makes people reckless, they live from hour to hour as the lower animals do.  They satisfy their desires as they arise, whether it be the desire for food or the desire of sex.

The very poor includes amongst its numbers, the drunkard, the criminal, the professional pauper, and the physically and mentally defective.

The drunkard is not distinguished by his prudence, nor by his self-restraint.  In fact the alcohol which he imbibes paralyses what self-control he has, and excites through an increased circulation in his lower brain-centres an unnatural sexual desire.  What hope is there of the drunkard curtailing his family by self-restraint?

Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) “So far as we have data with regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely used.”

Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of prudence and self-control.  They are conspicuous by their absence in him.