This error is one which would justify abortion as necessary for the mother’s own good; a selfish plea. The other is based on a more generous motive. It is that the fewer one’s children, the more healthy they are likely to be, and the more worth to society. It is, however, equally fallacious with the first, and is without foundation in fact. The Spartans and Romans, so confidently appealed to, gave birth probably to as many weakly children as do our own women; that they destroyed many for this reason in infancy, is notorious. The brawny Highlanders are not the only offspring of their parents; the others cannot endure the national processes of hardening by exposure and diet, and so die young from natural causes. But were this theory true even so far as it goes, the world, our own country, could ill spare its frailer children, who oftenest, perhaps, represent its intellect and its genius. In asserting that the doctrines of the leading political economists for the last half century are accountable for much of the prevalence and increase of the crime, ignorant or careless as these writers all seem of the dire means that would be resorted to for the attainment of their ends, I have in no way exaggerated. Malthus remarks in his well-known Essay on Population, that “in the average state of a well-peopled territory, there cannot well be a worse sign than a large proportion of births, nor can there well be a better sign than a small proportion;”[83] and he endorses the assertion of Hume, subsequently proved false by Sadler,[84] that the permission of child-murder, by removing the fear of too numerous a family in case of marriage, tends to encourage this step, and thereby the increase of population; “the powerful yearnings of nature preventing parents from resorting to so cruel an expedient, except in extreme cases.”[85] Sismondi[86] and a host of others might also be quoted, but a few extracts from a later writer, standard in this country at present, and taught in our universities, till very lately in that at Cambridge, for instance, will suffice. “We greatly deprecate,” says Mill, “an increase of population, as rapid as the increase of production and accumulation.”[87] “There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for an immense increase of population. But although it may be innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it.” “I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before necessity compels them to it.”[88]