necessary proportion of his earnings is devoted towards discharging the responsibilities which he has incurred. A notable consequence must follow from many such reforms as this chapter suggests. The marriage rate must fall, and the birth-rate, already falling, must fall much further; and so assuredly in any case they will; nor need anyone be alarmed at such a prospect. Even from the point of view of quantity, the future supply of "food for powder," and so forth, the question is not how many babies are born, as people persist in thinking, but how many babies survive. For seven years past I have been preaching, in season and out of season, that our Bishops and popular vaticinators in general are utterly wrong in bewailing the falling birth-rate, whilst the unnecessary slaughter of babies and children stares them in the face. How dare they ask for more babies to be similarly slain! It may be permitted to quote a passage written several years ago. "My own opinion regarding the birth-rate is that so long as we continue to slay, during the first year of life alone, one in six or seven of all children born (the unspeakably beneficent law of the non-transmission of acquired characters permitting these children to be born amazingly fit and well, city life notwithstanding), the fall in the birth-rate should be a matter of humanitarian satisfaction. Let us learn how to take care of the fine babies that are born, and when we have shown that we can succeed in this, as we have hitherto most horribly failed, we may begin to suggest that perhaps, if the number were increased, we might reasonably expect to take care of that number also. Babies are the national wealth, and in reality the only national wealth; and just as a sensible father will satisfy himself that his son can take care of his pocket-money, before he listens to a demand for its augmentation, so, as a people, we are surely responsible to the Higher Powers, or our own ideals, for the production of proof that we can take care of the young helpless lives which are daily entrusted to us, before we cry for more. It would be easy to quote episcopal denouncements regarding the birth-rate, but I am at a loss for references to similarly influential opinions about the slaughter of the babies that are born--a matter which surely should take precedence. May I, in all deference, commend for consideration a parable which always comes to my mind when I read clerical comments on the birth-rate, without reference to the infant-mortality? It was figured by the Supreme Lover of Children that a wicked servant, entrusted with a portion of his master's wealth to turn to good account, went and hid it in the earth. He was not rewarded by the charge of more such wealth. We, as a people, are entrusted with living wealth, and, whilst we demand more, we go and bury much of it in the earth--whence, alas! it cannot be recovered. Not an increase of opportunity, thus wasted, was the reward of the unprofitable servant,