One might have the most perfect system of selection of the finest and highest individuals for parenthood; but the babies whose potentialities--heredity gives no more--are so splendid, are always, will be always, dependent upon motherhood. What was the state of motherhood during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire? This factor counts in history; and always will count so long as, three times in every century, the only wealth of nations is reduced to dust, and is raised again from helpless infancy. As to Rome we know little, whatever may be suspected: but we know that here in the heart of the greatest Empire in history--and it is at the heart that Empires rot--thousands of mothers go out every day to tend dead machines, whilst their own flesh and blood, with whom lies the Imperial destiny, are tended anyhow or not at all. It may yet be said by some enlightened historian of the future that the living wealth of this people, in the twentieth century, began to be eaten away by the cancer which we call “married women's labour,” and that, as will be evident to that historian's readers, its damnation was sure. To-day our historians and politicians think in terms of regiments and tariffs and “Dreadnoughts”: the time will come when they must think in terms of babies and motherhood. We must think in such terms too if we wish Great Britain to be much longer great. Meanwhile some of us see the perennial slaughter of babies in this land, and the deterioration of many for every one killed outright, the waste of mothers' travail and tears: and we recall Ruskin's words:-- “Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying:-- “These are MY Jewels.” Had all Roman mothers been Cornelias, would Rome have fallen?[80] Consider the imitation mothers--no longer mammalia--to be found in certain classes to-day--mothers who should be ashamed to look any tabby-cat in the face; consider the ignorant and downtrodden mothers amongst our lower classes; and ask whether these things are not making history.