Population and Sustenance. 65 



is needed if anywhere, would be preposterous. It would be 

 urging a duty for which they have almost no motive. The 

 question of over-population and its alarming consequences, 

 can only arise in a community where by vicious and unequal 

 laws, the class of mere laborers, uneducated and unsagacious, 

 is kept unduly large, where there is a constant effort b}^ cap- 

 italists to keep labor cheap, and where, as in England,* small 

 properties are discouraged, and agriculture, mechanical pur- 

 suits and direct commerce are made subordinate to the trade 

 which keeps the producer and consumer at the greatest prac- 

 ticable distance. 



It is thus, nearly everywhere m modern civilized society^ 

 that where man is at the lowest grade of mental development, 

 where the animal subordinates the rational, there fecundity is 

 greatest. The cause is not gross sensuality ; for that is antag- 

 onistic to increase of population ; but one involved in the 

 very constitution of things and proceeding after a natural 

 order. As men rise above their lower grade and mind asserts 

 larger relative power, individuality becomes developed, self- 

 respect is generated and self-direction assumed, the number of 

 births diminishes. We may see some exemplification of it in 

 our own country. A few years ago some of us were startled by 

 the statistical reports concerning the relative number of birthg 

 among the immigrants and the native population in Massa- 

 chusetts. It was found that the former were greatly outnum- 

 bering the latter, and some fears were excited lest the old 

 Puritan stock should soon wholly disappear. Yet this is only 

 an illustration of what is taking place everywhere in the 

 world under the general law just stated, that fecundity is in- 

 versely as the social and intellectual development of man. 

 As education increases and the mental and moral predomi- 

 nate over the animal, the fecundity decreases. It is doubtless 



*In Great Britan we are informed that the number of land owners has diminished- 

 within a little more than a century from two hundred thousand to seventy thousand ae- 

 tome authorities say, or according to others to less than fojty thousand. 



