for 'em? You take the child,
Mr. Smug.

OFFICER (regardless of grammar). ME take the child! The parish has
enough to do to take care of foundlings and children whose parents can't
or don't work. You don't suppose we will look after the children of
those who can?

GINX. Jest so. You'll bring up bastards and beggars' pups, but you won't
help an honest man to keep his head above water. This child's head is
goin' under water anyhow!--and he prepared to bolt, amid fresh screams
from the Chorus.

VII.--Malthus and Man.

Two gentlemen, who had been observing the excitement, here came forward.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. This is our problem again, Mr. Philosopher.

Mr. PHILOSOPHER (to Ginx). You don't know what to do with your infant,
my friend, and you think the State ought to provide for it? I understand
you to say this is your thirteenth child. How came you to have so many?

This question, though put with profound and even melancholy gravity,
disconcerted Ginx, Officer, and Chorus, who united in a hearty outburst
of laughter.

GINX. Haw, Haw, Haw! How came I to have so many? Why my old woman's a
good un and----

In fact, after searching his mind for some clever way of putting a
comical rejoinder, Ginx laughed boisterously. There are two aspects of a
question.

PHILOSOPHER. I am serious, my friend. Did it never occur to you that you
had no right to bring children into the world unless you could feed and
clothe and educate them?

CHORUS. Laws a' mercy!

GINX. I'd like to know how I could help it, naabor. I'm a married man.

PHILOSOPHER. Well, I will go further and say you ought not to have
married without a fair prospect of being able to provide for any
contingent increase of family.

CHORUS. Laws a' mercy!

PHILOSOPHER (waxing warm). What right had you to marry a poor woman, and
then both of you, with as little forethought as two--a--dogs, or other
brutes--to produce between you such a multitudinous progeny--

GINX. Civil words, naabor; don't call my family hard names.

PHILOSOPHER. Then let me say, such a monstrous number of children as
thirteen? You knew, as you said just now, that wages were wages and did
not vary much. And yet you have gone on subdividing your resources by
the increase of what must become a degenerate offspring. (To the Chorus)
All you workpeople are doing it. Is it not time to think about these
things and stop the indiscriminate production of human beings, whose
lives you cannot prope