children out into the streets after a certain fixed time." He thought also, "that blame lay at the door of the newspaper offices, for that the issue of so many late editions contributed to the demoralization of children." There seemed no unanimity of opinion except on one point, viz. the necessity of doing something. The facts stated were, that from 250 to 300 children were regularly going about the streets of Leeds, selling newspapers and matches, and that they could make as much as 3s. 6d. in a day; but frequently parents took the money from them for the indulgence of their own drunken habits.

The account of this meeting given in the Leeds Mercury, is followed by a leader upon it, in which occurs this passage: "No one can watch from day to day the life which is thus growing up in the streets without feeling that with all our benevolence, and with all our charitable appliances, we have somehow or other failed to reach these poor victims of the improvident and the drunken, who are forced almost from the cradle into the gutters to earn their own living, and to supply the vicious cravings of those who should be their protectors. And yet it is doubtful whether a new organization is desirable. Whatever is done should be done thoughtfully."

...

Surely all who were present at that meeting felt keenly with Mr. Arnold that the knowledge how to prevent them accumulating is what we want, and that the thing of primary importance is to reduce the number of the births, and to restrain the drunken and improvident from furnishing an ever fresh perennial stream of gutter children.

With the new knowledge we possess, backed by a strong opinion in its favour from intelligent and thoughtful mindsminds that have grasped the facts in all their significance and their bearings-philanthropists may now succeed in checking the reckless multiplication of paupers without any appeal to legal force; but certainly the State should by law protect those children who are sufferers from the customs of the past, and wrest them promptly from all trades that are degrading and demoralizing. In the interests of the whole social body, no reversing of the relations of parents and children should be possible. If individuals seek the happiness and incur the grave responsibility of parenthood, they owe it to society and to their children to support them entirely during their tender years; whilst, on the other hand, children owe no support whatever to parents during the period of infancy. And if this

RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTHOOD.

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principle is not respected, society should teach the lesson, and in self-protection act upon it at all times stringently.

The State might also with propriety put down all charities which are subversive of this principle, and which tend to foster the immoral habit of reckless reproduction. What are called ladies' charities * are distinctly of this order. The work they do is not in any sense beneficial to society in general. On the contrary, it is materially and morally injurious. It fosters multiplication amongst units that are socially unfit for parental duties; it is grievously unjust towards the prudent and industrious poor; it saps the spirit of independence, and discourages the personal habits that ought to be promoted. As regards these so-called charities, there seems to me but two alternatives-either they should be suppressed, or wholly altered in character. As agencies for bringing educated women into contact with poor mothers who are ignorant, they might be made most valuable, both in giving knowledge requisite in the controlling of the physical conditions of reproduction, and enlightening these poor women on all that relates to parental health. If ladies who support these charities adopt this course, they will be public benefactors, and redeem, to some extent, the mischief already done by their foolish and baneful, although well-meant, benevolence. A few ladies are already carrying out this policy with marked success. The tract† they offer to over-burdened mothers has been received with gratitude, and its instructions acted on.

But now I must refrain from further comment on the many individual schemes of general benevolence. My purpose is accomplished if I have proved that in that field reform is absolutely necessary.

We live in a political age, and on political reforms attention is apt to be concentrated; whilst personal conduct, with its far-reaching results for good or evil, is overlooked, or little thought of. The general mind is critical of government, and wide awake to the importance of continual readjustment there, to meet the changes that time brings about; but it is not critical of long familiar habits and customs, although these may militate against the general happiness far more decisively than even bad government.

Our national prosperity is at this moment great, and yet * The charities that assist poor women in childbed.

"Law of Population," post free, 7d. Publishing Company, 63, Fleet Street, London.

we have amidst us miseries and evils so profound as to call forth in every earnest mind a sense of national disgrace. Political reform will very little-indeed scarcely at all-affect these miseries and evils; therefore political reform, although important, is of secondary importance.

The leading reforms that are of primary importance, are first-the regulation of the number of people to the available means of comfort and subsistence, that is, attention to the law of population, and wise limitation of human births; and second-the improvement of the stock of the human race by promotion of the best types, and repression of the increase of the worst, that is, attention to the law of heredity, and wise social action in accordance with that law.

In regard to the portion of the population which is so degraded as to be incapable of giving heed to the morals of parenthood, I believe a time must come when the State, profoundly convinced of its moral obligation to promote the welfare of posterity, will sequestrate and restrain the individuals who persist in parental action detrimental to society. It cannot be permitted that superior types of mankind should be lessened in number by the increase of the inferior.

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CHAPTER VIII.

SOCIAL PRESSURE IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES.

"There are many in the world whose whole existence is a makeshift, and perhaps the formula which would fit the largest number of lives is 'a doing without, more or less patiently." "-GEORGE ELIOT.

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'SPORTS," said Thomas Carlyle, are all gone from among men; there is now no holiday for rich or poor. Hard toiling, then hard drinking, or hard fox-hunting! This is not the era of sport, but of martyrdom and persecution. Will the new morning never dawn?"

Poor Carlyle! for him the new morning never dawned. The social pressure he was under throughout his youth, the hardness of his struggle for an honourable existence, and the accomplishment of what he thought his great mission, were too great. When his efforts were crowned by entire success, and he had won honour and wealth, his nature could not unbend; and life brought him but little of pleasant ease of mind and cheerful recreation.

Early in his career Lord Jeffrey had written to him: "You have no mission upon earth, whatever you may fancy, half so important as to be innocently happy; and all that is good for you of poetic feeling and sympathy with majestic nature will come of its own accord without your straining after it. That is my creed, and right or wrong, I am sure it is both a simpler and a humbler one than yours.

But Carlyle did not think so. He strove to check his natural joyous instincts; he preached to himself continually, and wrote in his diary, "Cultivate thyself in the want of enjoyment, gather quite peculiar experiences therein;" and

*"Life of Thomas Carlyle," vol. ii. p. 42.

this subjective repression of his nature, added to the objective repression of his hard surroundings, combined to make him stern, unsympathetic-a gloomy, discontented man. Repression (whilst absolutely necessary in some directions) when wrongly directed, or when too great, is full of injurious consequences. Carlyle's glorious powers and noble nature were distorted and deformed by it; and what the British race requires is precisely the opposite of Carlyle's doctrine, viz. to cultivate itself in aptitudes for innocent enjoyments, and never to repress itself unduly, or in wrong directions.

I have spoken of the strain upon our factory workers, the stupid, spiritless condition their hard lives reduce them to, and how when holidays are given, and for the moment repression is removed, the dull phlegmatic temperaments will only respond to coarse and pungent stimuli, and social gatherings with them become saturnalias. But in the higher classes also the same features are clearly discernible. Monsieur Taine's description of the Derby day shows what impression our national amusements may create in the mind of a being of a different race, who is simply a dispassionate spectator.

"It is the Derby day," he says, "a day of jollification; Parliament does not sit; for three days all the talk has been about horses and their trainers." Then, after a glowing picture of the beauty of outward nature, and the gay scene on the race-course, he goes on: The illuminated air, like a glory, envelops the plain, the heights, the vast area, and all the disorder of the human carnival.

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"It is a carnival, in fact; they have come to amuse themselves in a noisy fashion. They unpack; they proceed to drink and eat; that restores the creature and excites him ; coarse joy and open laughter are the result of a full stomach. In presence of this ready-made feast the aspect of the poor is pitiable to behold; they endeavour to sell to you penny dolls; to induce you to play at Aunt Sally, to black your boots. Nearly all of them resemble wretched, hungry, beaten, mangy dogs, waiting for a bone, without hope of finding much on it. They arrived on foot during the night, and count upon dining off the crumbs from the great feast. Many are lying on the ground among the feet of the passers-by, and sleep openmouthed, face upwards. Their countenances have an expression of stupidity and of painful hardness. . . . The great social mill crushes and grinds here, beneath its steel gearing, the lowest human stratum.