The often debated problem dealing with the human refuse of bad stocks is one which presses most on an advanced civilisation. We will not do like the Christian Norseman, when he put the ne'er-do-weel family into a wide grave in the churchyard, and wiped his hands of them. We will not even leave them to exterminate themselves by their own follies, vices, and ignorance. But if the state takes up the burden of such wastrels it must have an entire control of them. Responsibility without rule is worse than rule without responsibility. The only safe course is a rigorous enforcement of parental duties; with the alternative of penal servitude in state workshops, the mother and children together, the father elsewhere. There is no middle course, of semi-maintenance by school meals, which will not injure the children by their being correspondingly neglected at home, injure the parents by lowering the spur of necessity to work, and injure the state by flooding it with the worst types. Much more drastic treatment of the unfit has been advocated, as by Dr. Rentoul. In a future period of civilisation a logical course of treatment might have a chance of adoption; but in our age any serious changes of the habits of thought and action will not be tolerated, unless brought about very gradually under small influences, such as we have noticed as acting through taxation. What we need is to try to give effect to the gospel of giving to him that hath, and taking away from him that hath not. The most likely opening for such a line of advance would be giving partial state maintenance to the best stocks, so as to ensure large returns from them, and taxing down the worst stocks—exactly the opposite course to the present craze. Let us try to realise if there be a practical system for this advance.