“But if you be honest, upright, pure-minded—if you be unconscious of unworthy motive or selfish passion—if truth be your ambition, and the welfare of our race your object—then approach with me a subject the most important to man’s well-being; and approach it as I do, in a spirit of dispassionate, disinterested free inquiry. Approach it, resolving to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. The discussion is one to which it is every man’s and every woman’s _duty_ (and ought to be every one’s _business_) to attend. The welfare of the present generation, and—yet far more—of the next, requires it. Common sense sanctions it. And the national motto of my former country, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’[28] may explain the spirit in which it is undertaken, and in which it ought to be received.” PREVENTION TO CONCEPTION; CONSIDERED IN ITS SOCIAL BEARINGS. “What would be the probable effect, in social life, if mankind obtained and exercised a control over the instinct of reproduction? “My settled conviction is—and I am prepared to defend it—that the effect would be salutary, moral, civilizing; that it would prevent many crimes and more unhappiness; that it would lessen intemperance and profligacy; that it would polish the manners and improve the moral feelings; that it would relieve the burden of the poor, and the cares of the rich; that it would most essentially benefit the rising generation, by enabling parents generally more carefully to educate, and more comfortably to provide for, their offspring. I proceed to substantiate as I may these positions. “And first, let us look solely to the situation of married persons. Is it not notorious, that the families of the married often increase beyond what a regard for the young beings coming into the world, or the happiness of those who give them birth, would dictate? In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family, remain slaves throughout their lives, tugging at the oar of incessant labor, toiling to live, and living but to toil; when if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence! How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant—happy if it be not twins!—and compelled to toil on, even at those times when nature imperiously calls for some relief from daily drudgery—how often is the mother’s comfort, health, nay, her life, thus sacrificed! Or, if care and toil have weighed down the spirit, and at last broken the health of the father, how often is the widow left, unable, with the most virtuous intentions, to save her fatherless offspring from becoming degraded objects of charity, or profligate votaries of vice!