_The spread of moral restraint as a check.--Predicted by Malthus.--The declining Birth-rate.--Its Universality.--Most conspicuous in New Zealand.--Great increase in production of food.--With rising food rate falling birth-rate.--Malthus's checks.--His use of the term "moral restraint."--The growing desire to evade family obligations.--Spread of physiological knowledge.--All limitation involves self restraint.--Motives for limitation.--Those who do and those who do not limit.--Poverty and the Birth-rate. Defectives prolific and propagate their kind.--Moral restraint held to include all sexual interference designed to limit families.--Power of self-control an attribute of the best citizens.--Its absence an attribute of the worst.--Humanitarianism increases the number and protects the lives of defectives.--The ratio of the unfit to the fit.--Its dangers to the State.--Antiquity of the problem.--The teaching of the ancients.--Surgical methods already advocated._ A century has passed since Malthus made his immortal contribution to the supreme problem of all ages and all people, but the whole aspect of the population question has changed since his day. The change, however, was anticipated by the great economist, and predicted in the words:--"The history of modern civilisation is largely the history of the gradual victory of the third check over the two others" (_vide_ Essay, 7th edition, p. 476). The third check is moral restraint and the two others vice and misery. The statistics of all civilized nations show a gradual and progressive decline in the birth-rate much more marked of recent years. In Germany, between the years 1875 and 1899, it has diminished from 40 to 35.9 per thousand of the population. In England and Wales, it dropped from 35 to 29.3 during the same time; in Ireland, from 26 to 22.9; in France, from 26 to 21.9; in the United States of America (between the years 1880 and 1890) the decline has been from 36 to 30; while in New Zealand it gradually and persistently declined from 40.8 in 1880 to 25.6 in 1900. During the period, 1875-1890, the rapid strides made in industry and production have been unparallelled in the history of the world. Wealth has accumulated on all sides, and production and distribution have far outrun the needs and demands of population. To-day food is far more abundant, cheaper, and therefore more accessible to all classes of the people than it was 50 years ago, and coincident with this rapid and abundant increase in those things which go to supply the necessities, the comforts, and even the luxuries of life, there has been a constant and uniform decline in the birth-rate, and this decrease is even more conspicuous in those nations in which the rate of production has been most pronounced. It would even be true to say that the birth-rate during recent years is in inverse proportion to the rate of production.