156 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



as a principle of poor-law administration that those 

 who, without adequate cause, repeatedly fail to support 

 themselves, while we may allow them individual sus- 

 tenance from the community, have no claim to per- 

 petuate their weaknesses in future generations. The 

 burden of their support must carry with it the right 

 of preventing them from permanently contaminating 

 the race. 



The only direct means which has yet appeared of 

 encouraging by legislation the reproduction of desirable 

 elements of the nation is to lighten the burden of 

 taxation on parents of families. 



Now a bachelor living in rooms or chambers pays 

 a far smaller contribution to the national exchequer 

 in the shape of rates and house-duty, than does a 

 man who has to provide house-room for a large family. 

 Not only is the unmarried man contributing nothing 

 individually to the future resources of the nation, 

 since he is neither maintaining nor educating children 

 of his own, but he also bears a share of the general 

 expenses of rearing the present generation which is not 

 in just proportion to his ability to pay. Bachelors, as 

 a leading English humourist remarked, are luxuries. 

 We may perhaps be allowed to add that in many 

 respects their class, from the wider point of view, 

 is a mischievous one ; and in any circumstances it is 

 part of sound finance to tax the luxuries rather than 

 the necessities of the nation. 



A second injustice is found in the legislation which 

 allows a brother and sister or two sisters keeping house 

 together to pay income tax on their incomes calculated 



