"I hurried home from Manchester to meet an expected widow friend here, who has just left me. Somehow or other she and her little girl engrossed me much, and made me neglect my intended warm thanks for your very kind letters, and for your phrases even of affection, to which, be assured, I am not inattentive or apathetic, though I imperfectly know how to respond to that which I do not seem to have duly earned. "Your children were as kind and attentive to me as you could have been yourself; but I much regret not to have met you and Mr. Kingsley, to whom I beg you to give my kind regards, and believe that it is always a pleasure to meet you, and that I am necessarily proud of having made so _fruitful_ a convert ... though our severe ones will remind me that you do not wholly abstain from fish! "Believe me, yours heartily, "Francis W. Newman. "I am bringing out a _dreadful_ pamphlet!" "28 Cumberland Terrace, "Regent's Park, London, "_25th May_, 1878. "Dear Mrs. Kingsley, "Concerning the controversy about increase of population, I forgot to add what I think has moral weight, that the theory which makes men bewail every increase on the ground that _at length_ the earth will be overfilled would be in argument just as powerful if the size of the earth were increased to that of Jupiter, or to that of the sun. It simply deduces from the axiom / _fact_ that any finite area whatsoever will at length be overfilled by a constant unchecked increase--a reason why we should actively check the increase NOW and HERE--a deduction wholly void of good sense. "Again, I did not mention what reduces John Mill's school to something worse than negative error, the certainty that their doctrine will not be obeyed by any but those whom we would desire to have the peopling of the earth, viz. the people of most intellect. If the highly intelligent and conscientious obey John Mill, we evidently must look forward to the peopling of every land by the most backward and least intelligent part of the nation.... Malthus was shocked by the system of encouraging very early marriage and large families for the mere sake of getting men as food for gunpowder: but if people marry (say young men at 27 or 28, not at 17 or 18) he denounces as unnatural and unimaginable that society or law should frown upon a family as being too numerous. In every moral aspect of the case, John Mill is opposed to Malthus, and his followers have no right to call themselves Malthusians. I feel confident that human population would waste _if_ every man adopted the doctrine _either_ of John Mill _or_ of certain American theorists.... "With best regards to all yours, "I am, yours most sincerely, "F. W. Newman." "15 Arundel Crescent, "Weston-super-Mare, "_12th Feb_., 1880. "Dear Mrs. Kingsley,