148 H. R. Storer on the decreasing increase 
Prudence,it is asserted, on the part of individuals checks and 
keeps within bounds the natural increase of the human race. 
We cannot well avoid allowing that this statement is true, and 
that it applies with even more pertinency to ourselves as a peo-' 
ple than to nations abroad. , 
It will be profitable for us to go a step further, and to enquire 
in what way this result is effected; and though I shall be com- 
pelled to refer to matters usually thought best to keep concealed, 
and to present a conclusion at once frightful, astounding, degra- 
ding, I shall not shrink from the duty. For the subject is one 
which concerns each one of_us, as philosophers, parents, as citi- 
zens, as christians. 
There is no reason to suppose, as West,* Husson and DeJonnés 
have thought, that the rapid and constant decrease of births I 
have shown to exist can be attributable to any progressive lack 
of fecundity on the part of women, or of generative power on 
that of men; nor is there reason to think that the passions of 
the race burn less freely than formerly, or that they are more 
generally under control. 
certain measure, no greater than formerly however, these 
needs are met by prostitution. Yet marriages and lawful con- 
nections have increased and now undoubtedly exist to a greater 
proportionate extent than ever before. They are confessed and 
easily proved, to be usually, either in whole or in great part, bar- 
ren of offspring—we have only to look about us, for abundant 
— of this—while formerly, as is equally known, such was 
e case. : 
_ Let all allowances be made for certain conjugal habits, exist- 
ng extensively among the French, and by no means rarely im! 
shall show that nearly as many pregnancies exist as ever- 
We are to consider these pregnancies, not as prevented, but a8 
terminated without the birth of a living child. 
* Med. Times and Gazette, June, 1856, p. 611. + Loe. cit., p- 234. 
