revented annually in the United
States, 400,000 in Germany, 50,000 in Paris, and 19,000 in Lyons. In our
own country it is exceedingly common in the northern towns, and attempts
are now being made to prohibit the sale of certain preparations of lead
which are used for this purpose. Alike on grounds of public health and
of morality, it is most desirable that this mischievous practice should
be checked. Its great prevalence in the United States is to be
attributed mainly to the drastic legislation in that country against the
sale and use of preventives, to which many persons take objection on
moral or aesthetic grounds, but which is surely on an entirely different
level from the destruction of life that has already begun. The
'Comstock' legislation in America has done unmixed harm. It is worse
than useless to try to put down by law a practice which a very large
number of people believes to be innocent, and which must be left to the
taste and conscience of the individual. To the present writer it seems a
_pis aller_ which high-minded married persons should avoid if they can
practise self-restraint. Whatever injures the feeling of
'sanctification and honour' with which St. Paul bids us to regard these
intimacies of life, whatever tends to profane or degrade the sacraments
of wedded love, is so far an evil. But this is emphatically a matter in
which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must refrain
from judging others.

In every modern civilised country population is restricted partly by the
deliberate postponement of marriage. In many cases this does no harm
whatever; but in many others it gravely diminishes the happiness of
young people, and may even cause minor disturbances of health. Moreover,
it would not be so widely adopted but for the tolerance, on the part of
society, of the 'great social evil,' the opprobrium of our civilisation.
In spite of the failure hitherto of priests, moralists, and legislators
to root it out, and in spite of the acceptance of it as inevitable by
the majority of Continental opinion, I believe that this abomination
will not long be tolerated by the conscience of the free and progressive
nations. It is notorious that the whole body of women deeply resents the
wrong and contumely done by it to their sex, and that, if democracy is
to be a reality, the immolation of a considerable section of women drawn
from the poorer classes cannot be suffered to continue. It is also plain
to all w