, a handful of workers have to bear in a sparse
population of 800,000 souls in one of the finest countries on which the
sun of heaven ever shone.

The burden which the fit have to bear has often been referred to by Dr.
MacGregor, who states in one of his reports, "Wives and husbands,
parents of bastards, all alike are encouraged by lavish charity (falsely
so called) to entirely shirk their responsibilities in the well grounded
assurance that public money will be forth-coming to keep them and their
families in quite as comfortable position as their hardworking and
independent neighbours."

The state can not decree that men shall marry, or that women shall
marry, or that women shall procreate. All it can do is to discover why
its subjects are not fertile, and remove the causes so far as it is
possible.

As people become educated they become conscious of their limitations,
and endeavour to break through them and better their conditions.

The more difficult this process is, the less likely will men and women
be to incur the burden of a large family. The more the conditions of
existence are improved, the more completely is each man's wish realized,
and the more readily will he undertake the responsibilities of a family.

If the State can and will lighten the burden of taxation and modify the
strain and stress of life, it will indirectly encourage procreation.

No direct encouragement is possible. It was tried and it failed in
Sparta, it was tried by Augustus and it failed in Rome, it must fail
everywhere, for the most willing and the most ready to respond to any
provision made to encourage increase, are the unfit, and it is the
fertility of the unfit that is the very evil that has to be attacked.

It is the fertility of the unfit that makes the burden of the fit, and a
tax on bachelors, or a bonus on families, would be responded to by the
least fit, long before it affected those whose response was anticipated,
and the problem sought to be solved would only be aggravated thereby.

No encouragement whatever can the State afford to give to the natural
increase of population till it has successfully grappled with the
propagation of defectives.

The burden of life would be lessened by nearly one-third if the
fertility of defectives could be stopped.

The State would have to support only those who acquired defects, the
scars of service more honourable than wealth, in their efforts to
support themselves and families, and