They are the figures for England and Wales for two typical periods. Period 1846-1850 33 8 births per 1000 Period 1896-1900 28 0 births per 1000 ---------------------------- 5.8 fall in the birth-rate. This as it stands is very striking. But if we take the death-rates of these two periods we find that they have fallen also. Period 1846-1850 23 3 deaths per 1000 Period 1896-1900 17 7 deaths per 1000 ---------------------------- 5.6 fall in the death-rate. Let us subtract death-rate from birth-rate and that will give the effective rate of increase of the population. Period 1846-1850 10 5 effective rate of increase Period 1896-1900 10 3 effective rate of increase --------------------------------- .2 fall in the rate of increase. But now comes a curious thing that those who praise the good old pre-Board School days--the golden age of virtuous innocence--ignore. The _Illegitimate births_ in 1846-1850 numbered 2.2 per 1000, in 1896-1900 they numbered 1.2 per 1000. So that if it were not for this fall in illegitimate births the period 1896-1900 would show a positive rise in the effective rate of increase of .8 per thousand. The eminent persons therefore who ascribe our falling birth-rate to irreligion and so forth, either speak without knowledge or with some sort of knowledge beyond my ken. England is, as a matter of fact, becoming not only more hygienic and rational, but more moral and more temperate. The highly moral, healthy, prolific, pious England of the past is just another poetical delusion of the healthy savage type.] These poor little souls are born, amidst tears and suffering they gain such love as they may, they learn to feel and suffer, they struggle and cry for food, for air, for the right to develop; and our civilisation at present has neither the courage to kill them outright quickly, cleanly, and painlessly, nor the heart and courage and ability to give them what they need. They are overlooked and misused, they go short of food and air, they fight their pitiful little battle for life against the cruellest odds; and they are beaten. Battered, emaciated, pitiful, they are thrust out of life, borne out of our regardless world, stiff little life-soiled sacrifices to the spirit of disorder against which it is man’s preeminent duty to battle. There has been all the pain in their lives, there has been the radiated pain of their misery, there has been the waste of their grudged and insufficient food, and all the pain and labour of their mothers, and all the world is the sadder for them because they have lived in vain. § 2