EUGENICS IN ENGLAND '297 



In England a genuine alann is felt as regards the character 

 of its future citizens, for there as here the cities draw from 

 the country. But the country population there is not only 

 not regenerated by unmigration but is further depleted of its 

 best elements by foreign emigration. The consequence is 

 that a eugenics movement has there been started, which 

 seeks to remove the indifference on the part of the best ele- 

 ments in the population to marriage and the rearing of chil- 

 dren. Just how this can be done, or whether it can be done 

 at all is uncertain. But the British eugenists are very much 

 in earnest and they base their appeal on both patriotic and 

 religious grounds. Professor and Mrs. Whetham (who have 

 written several books devoted to this subject) discuss pri- 

 marily conditions in Great Britain. Their point of view 

 is to some extent an aristocratic one. They recognize in the 

 hereditary aristocracy of England a genuinely and germinally 

 superior element of the population. The younger sons of 

 the titled families who inherit (it is supposed) the superior 

 germ-plasm but not the aristocratic titles, have frequently 

 married into successful families of the middle class, and 

 are believed thus to have improved the standard of the 

 entire nation. This theory sounds plausible, but an out- 

 sider free from class„prejudice might reasonably question 

 its validity. 



If the English aristocracy is really a biologically superior 

 race, how are we to account for the historical steady rise in 

 power and injQuence of the Commons ? Opportunity has 

 always favored the aristocratic families; in spite of this we 

 find the great men of the British nation usually coming from 

 the middle class, and not from the younger sons of aristo- 

 cratic families either. America's experience does not indicate 

 that the English aristocracy is either better or worse than the 

 English yeomanry as a biological human stock. What little 

 of aristocratic blood the colonies received went chiefly to 

 Virginia and previous to the Civil War an aristocracy of first 

 families comparable with that of England ruled Virginia and 

 furnished the nation with presidents and statesmen. Since 



