In social questions Burton took a keen interest.  Indeed he was in many respects a man far in advance of his age.  In denouncing various evils he betrays the earnestness of a Carlyle, and when propounding plans for the abolition of the Slave Trade in “that Devil’s Walk and Purlieu,” East Africa, Saul becomes one of the prophets.  That he was no saint we should have known if he himself had not told us; but he had, as he believed, his special work to do in the world and he did it with all his might.  Though a whirlwind of a man, he had, as we have seen, the tenderest of hearts, he thought with sorrow of the sufferings of the poor, and he often said to his wife:  “When I get my pension we’ll spend the rest of our lives in helping the submerged tenth.”  Although sympathising warmly with the efforts of General Booth and other men who were trying to grapple with social evils, he could see, nevertheless, that they touched only the fringe of the difficulty.  He was, broadly speaking, what is now known as a Neo-Mathusian, that is to say, he held that no man had a right to bring into the world a larger number of children than he could support with comfort, that the poor ought to be advised to limit their families, and that persons suffering from certain terrible diseases ought not to be allowed to marry, or at any rate to have children.

Himself a man of splendid physique, Burton wanted to see every man in England physically healthy and strong.  He considered it abominable that infant monstrosities or children born blind should be allowed to live, and held that showmen and others who exhibit monstrosities should be promptly jailed.  “Indeed,” he says, “it is a question if civilisation may not be compelled to revive the law of Lycurgus, which forbade a child, male or female, to be brought up without the approbation of public officers appointed ad hoc.  One of the curses of the 19th century is the increased skill of the midwife and the physician, who are now able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy."[FN#534] He thought with Edward FitzGerald and many another sympathiser with the poor, that it is the height of folly for a labouring man living in a cottage with only two small bedrooms and earning twelve shillings a week to burden himself with a family of from ten to a dozen.  Three or four children he considered enough for anybody.  At the same time he perceived that the Neo-Malthusian system might be abused—­that is to say, rich persons who could well afford to bring up respectable-sized families might be tempted to restrict the number to one or two.[FN#535] Consequently, in the Terminal Essay to the Arabian Nights, we find him recommending the study of an Arabic work, Kitab al Bah not only to the anthropologist but also to the million.  He says, “The conscientious study would be useful to humanity by teaching the use and unteaching the abuse of the Malthusian system,[FN#536] whereby the family is duly limited to the necessities of society.”  At the present time—­with the diminishing birth-rate and when the subject is discussed freely in every upper and middle class home in England—­these ideas cause no wonderment; but in those days they were novel.