53 z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is what we might call a bilateral question. The right to place chil- 

 dren in the world is not a right merely individual and personal ; there 

 is in it an act that concerns not the parents alone, hut all society as 

 well. When the idle and careless call new beings into life, the task 

 of feeding them falls back unjustly upon industrious and thrifty men. 

 One does not have to take his children to the dispensary to put them in 

 charge of society ; the man who fills his house with children he can not 

 support changes his house itself into a hospital, and that by his OAvn 

 authority, without consulting the convenience or considering the re- 

 sources of any other one. The act involves an evident violation of 

 stipulative justice. The state might, in such a case, say to the la- 

 borer : " You demand a promise of me, but are you disposed to give 

 another one in exchange for it '? My duty is correlative with your 

 duty, and your right is not unconditional, but is subordinate to indis- 

 pensable conditions. Will you give up the right of propagation ? If 

 you will, assistance is possible ; if not, it is not, for you can not re- 

 quire those who have labored, produced, and saved, before you, to 

 abstain from the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor till they have 

 assured the support of all the beings whom it may be convenient for 

 you or your descendants to call into existence." The procreation of 

 children is not an act of individual whim, it is of the nature of a social 

 act and of a contract. It is proper to have paternal and maternal du- 

 ties determined by law. The false principle that every one has the 

 right to procreate according to his fancy, without showing any more 

 foresight than a brute, will eventually be rejected, says Stuart Mill, 

 the same as the right of a merchant to buy and sell without keeping 

 accounts is already rejected. To place children in the world without 

 being able to support them will be regarded as a new kind of failure ; 

 it is, in fact, frequently more than a failure ; it is a homicide by im- 

 prudence, because the children are destined to a certain misery and an 

 almost certain death. All liberty involves responsibility. 



Stuart Mill undoubtedly attaches too much importance to the legal 

 regulation of population for the present time. In some countries, as 

 in France, the population is now tending to diminish, rather than to 

 increase too much. Furthermore, the bringing of American and Aus- 

 tralian lands under cultivation assures subsistence to mankind for a 

 long time, even if the population should increase rapidly. It never- 

 theless remains true that the relief given by the state can not be un- 

 limited, and that assistance can not be erected into a right on which 

 the individual can found a claim. Experience has shown us what kind 

 of work we may look for out of the shops opened by public jmilan- 

 thropy. " When we do not give wages for work that we need," says 

 Stuart Mill, " but give out work so as to furnish wages to those who 

 need them, we may be sure that the work will not be worth what it 

 costs." When we shall have no longer the power of dismissing the 

 workmen, we shall not be able to get work except by the lash. Assist- 



