The Birth-rate Commissioners stated that the use of preventives was having a most injurious effect upon the health of the women who used them. Clearly then Morality and Nature are both opposed to their use. If men and women are becoming so selfish as to be determined to live contrary to their nature then Nature will deal with them according to Her terrible manner. If they are in an extremity and find that our social system makes it impossible for them to undertake the responsibilities of parentage, then the reorganization of our social system is a matter for urgent consideration. But Dr Chapple would only intensify the evil instead of remedying it. What he practically says is this:--Regard yourselves for the moment as being brute beasts and discuss the question upon that level. Murder the social instinct; murder the compassionate spirit; disregard the Divine Law and stifle all faith in the Providence of God; let the mission of life be the enjoyment of pleasure; shrink from the marriage that might be a burden, and dissolve the happy marriage should indications of future burdens present themselves. He would have us compelled to take our betrothed to a medical board and shamelessly confess ourselves. Confess ourselves under circumstances which would know no secrecy. He would have us regard our wives from the standpoint of selfishness and lust alone. But we are not brutes we are human, and we have instincts which the brutes have not. NOTE.--Dr. Chapple includes among the defectives not only the criminal but also the lunatic, the epileptic and the pauper. How far tubo-ligature would meet the cases of these defectives seems very uncertain. The information which the Doctor gives us, for the most part, is in direct opposition to him. On pages 74-76 he gives the history of eight families which it will repay to examine. Cases I.--Cancer, consumption and epilepsy in the family. In the third generation there are seven persons, of whom five married. The only healthy member left five children, three were childless and one who died at 56 left five children. That is to say, twelve children represent the fourth generation. Case II.--Insanity, idiocy and epilepsy. Of five persons the one sane member only has a family. Nine children, some (how many?) imbecile. Case III.--Drunkenness, insanity. Seven children, two died of convulsions. One an idiot, one a dement (suicidal), one repeatedly insane. These three are scarcely likely to be chosen in marriage. One peculiar and irritable, one nervous and depressed. Case IV.--In third generation there are two epileptics and one imbecile--scarcely likely to marry. Seven others are dead. (S. P.) Case V.--From an insane parent we have three children, one excitable, one dull and one imbecile. Case VI.--A family of mutes and scarcely relevant. Case VII.--Drunkenness, epilepsy, etc. In the third generation "family now extinct." No indications of tubo-ligature having been performed.