Prudence
is the motive, and self-restraint the means by which this curtailment is
made possible. But prudence and self-restraint are the characteristic
attributes of the best citizens. They are conspicuous by their absence
in the worst; and it is a matter of common observation that the
hopelessly poor, the drunken and improvident, the criminal and the
defective have the largest families, while those in the higher walks of
life rejoice in smaller numbers. The very qualities, therefore, that
make the social unit a law-abiding and useful citizen, who could and
should raise the best progeny for the State, also enable him to limit
his family, or escape the responsibility of family life altogether;
while, on the other hand, the very qualities which make a man a social
burden, a criminal, a pauper, or a drunkard--improvidence and defective
inhibition--ensure that his fertility will be unrestrained, except by
the checks of biological law. And it now comes about that the good
citizen, who curtails his family, has the defective offspring of the bad
citizen thrown upon his hands to support; and the humanitarian zeal,
born of Christian sentiment, which is at flood-tide to-day, ensures that
all the defectives born to the world shall not only be nursed and
tended, but shall have the same opportunities of the highest possible
fertility enjoyed by their defective progenitors.
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