far amongst those suburban populations in which a few years ago the discrepancy between the standard of comfort and the means available for its satisfaction was most conspicuous. The endurance of a continual indebtedness and frustration of desire, the indignation which will convert that endurance into a hunger for reform, the anger and envy against more prosperous people which is excited by the contrast of human inequalities under such conditions of torment, is being assuaged, not by reform itself, nor by any accepted reduction of the individual demands, nor by any falling back upon supernatural consolations. It is being averted by the repudiation of marriage, or its postponement, or its acceptance without the accompaniment of children. Here is a kind of ingenious method of turning the position, of climbing through the window when the door is closed. Judgment may vary between approval or regret, in accordance with the point of view of the critic. The nation must inevitably suffer from an artificial restriction of children amongst those very classes and families who should be most encouraged to produce them; who offer the best chances of raising, from a healthy stock and in simple homes, the men and women who will be the most desirable citizens of the future. And a nation is in a serious condition if its better stocks are producing smaller families or no families at all, and its least capable are still raising an abundant progeny. An appreciable amount of human discontent, on the other hand, is doubtless arrested by this method of eluding Nature’s blind struggle for existence; and those who have vested interests in contentment--who see changes bringing them less opportunity of life’s good things--will, no doubt, hail with approval so satisfactory a method of averting the operation of “natural” law. By such limitation of family the standard of comfort is reduced to the level of the income, and the clerk and professional classes can be identified with the prevailing order, instead of becoming centres of social upheaval.