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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.
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