A notable consequence must follow from many such reforms as this chapter
suggests. The marriage rate must fall, and the birth-rate, already
falling, must fall much further; and so assuredly in any case they will;
nor need anyone be alarmed at such a prospect. Even from the point of
view of quantity, the future supply of "food for powder," and so forth,
the question is not how many babies are born, as people persist in
thinking, but how many babies survive. For seven years past I have been
preaching, in season and out of season, that our Bishops and popular
vaticinators in general are utterly wrong in bewailing the falling
birth-rate, whilst the unnecessary slaughter of babies and children
stares them in the face. How dare they ask for more babies to be
similarly slain! It may be permitted to quote a passage written several
years ago. "My own opinion regarding the birth-rate is that so long as
we continue to slay, during the first year of life alone, one in six or
seven of all children born (the unspeakably beneficent law of the
non-transmission of acquired characters permitting these children to be
born amazingly fit and well, city life notwithstanding), the fall in the
birth-rate should be a matter of humanitarian satisfaction. Let us learn
how to take care of the fine babies that are born, and when we have
shown that we can succeed in this, as we have hitherto most horribly
failed, we may begin to suggest that perhaps, if the number were
increased, we might reasonably expect to take care of that number also.
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