them when population-pressure becomes acute? The doctrine
of Free-will becomes a positive farce if Father Vaughan is right. If he
confined his remarks to people who deliberately refuse to have _any_
children, he would have found many adherents, but he alienates our
sympathy by the very excess of his denunciation. He even brands as
immoral the practice of regulating the time between the births of
children, which is so essential to the mother's health. Apparently he
would think it right for a woman to have a baby every eleven months or
so, irrespective of her husband's limited income, until she became an
ailing wreck or died of over-production, leaving her family in the
plight of being motherless. His remarks are of course directed
principally at 'smart' society people, but as Father Vaughan considers
lack of means no excuse for 'deliberate regulation of the marriage
state,' his strictures must be taken as applying to all alike. One feels
inclined to echo with a character in _The Merry-Go-Round_: 'In this
world it is the good people who do all the harm.'

I learn that as long ago as 1872, before there was any perceptible fall
in the birth-rate to consider, an article by Mr Montagu Crackenthorpe,
Q.C., appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_, contending that small
families were a sign of progress rather than of retrogression. This
article was recently republished in a book entitled _Population and
Progress_. There are many other books on the subject, and to them I must
refer those of my readers who desire further knowledge of this very
important problem. I have no space for an exhaustive consideration of it
here. It is a subject essentially considered by the majority from a
narrow, personal point of view, for it is impossible to expect people
struggling for existence to 'think imperially,' and put the needs of the
Empire before the limitations of their income. The question from the
economic standpoint has been exhaustively dealt with by that master of
political economy, Mr Sidney Webb in a pamphlet entitled _The Decline of
the Birth Rate_, published by the Fabian Society at 1d.

* * *

I wish I could convince people, however, of the mistake of having only
one child. The loss to the parents is heavy and to the child
incalculable. All parents who have tried it know what disadvantages they
experience in their early attempts at training, when there is 'no one to
play with,' and no one to give up to--perhaps the most impo