846 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



alone, for it may be that a certain proportion of them must be ascribed to 

 middle or upper class parents. Of course these rude statistics must be corrected 

 by others collected on a laro;e scale all over the country before we can form a 

 final judgment; but I believe that the evidence already to hand makes it 

 improbable that more than a very limited percentage of the children of the 

 working classes have the same ability as the average child of the middle classes. 



In ancient days the chief end of the legislator was to produce a stalwart 

 brood of citizens capable of bearing arms in defence of their country and 

 advancing her material prosperity. Still more ought this to be the aim of our 

 legislators to-day, for under modern conditions gTeat masses of population are 

 huddled together in a manner hardly known to ancient cities. To accomplish 

 this great end, the legislator must not merely look to improved housing of 

 the poor and the development of the physique of city populations. He nTust, 

 as far as possible, conform to the principles of the stockbreeder, whose object 

 is to rear the finest horses, cattle, or sheep. Amongst wild animals Nature 

 selects the fittest for continuing the race, and the wise breeder simply aids 

 Nature by selecting still more carefully the best animals. The legislator, 

 on his part, ought similarly to fo.ster the increase of the best element 

 in the State, and on the other hand discourage the multiplication of the 

 worst. Yet in our community statesmen of both parties have adopted the 

 very opposite policy. The children of the working classes are educated at the 

 cost of the State, the offspring of the wastrels are given free meals, and 

 already there are demands that they shall be clothed at the expense of the rate- 

 payers, and that the parents shall even be paid for providing them with 

 lodging. It is not impossible that before long these demands will be conceded by 

 either party in the State. The heavy additional expense incurred in this policy 

 falls upon the middle-class ratepayers and taxpayers, who have to feed, educate', 

 and clothe their own children at their own expense. It may be said that they 

 can get free education for their cliildreu by sending them to the State schools"; 

 but this is to level down instead of to level up ; for if thev do so, they will be 

 lowering the general morale of their own class, the most priceless asset of the 

 nation. The heavy burden of taxation entailed by this policy, falling as it does 

 with special weight on the middle classes, renders it more difficult each year for 

 the young men and the young women in that class to marry before thirty, for 

 they naturally shrink from the expense of bringing up large or even moderate- 

 sized families. We need not then wonder at the falling-ofl" in the rate of increase 

 of the middle classes. Our legislators are bad stockmasters, for they are selecting 

 to continue the race the most unfit physically and morally, whilst they dis- 

 courage more and more the increase of what we have proved' to be the outcome 

 of a long process of natural selection. The present policy therefore tends to reduce 

 that which in all ages has been the mainstay of every State, the middle class. The 

 yeomen of England, the free burghers of Germany and of Italy, formed the best 

 element in the Middle Ages. So was it also with the great republics of the 

 ancient world. Aristotle, in more than one passage, has pointed out that the 

 middle class, that which stands between the ' excessively wealthy' and the ' very 

 poor,' between the ' millionaire ' and the ' wastrel,' are the mainstay of every State, 

 and he shows that, where the middle class has been crushed out by the millionaire 

 or the mob, ruin has inevitably overtaken the State. Indeed, it'is clear that the 

 chief defect in the Greek democracies was the smallness and weakness of the middle 

 class, whilst it is notorious that Rome prospered only as long as the middle-class 

 citizens flourished. Her downfall came when they were extinguished by the 

 great capitalists, who made common cause with the masses against them. The 

 latter had no patriotism, were incapable of bearing arms, and had no aspirations 

 beyond free meals and popular entertainments at the expense of the State. 



It is of great scientific interest to discover how the short-skulled peoples of 

 Asia and Europe became differentiated from their long-skulled congeners ; it is of 

 great practical importance to apply to the administration of our great depen- 

 dencies and colonies the lessons taught by anthropology ; but it is inlinitely more 

 important to maintain a vigorous stock of citizens for the kingdom and the 



