, 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,
but to be cast into outer darkness. Is there no moral here?"

Very distinguished recent aut