Vice as an Eliminative Agent. 
275 
1883.J 
things, there is no created thing that preys on him and 
assists in keeping his excessive reproduCtiveness within the 
limits of subsistence. Most singular of all, not even a para- 
site wages destructive war against him.” 
Now we are of opinion that in many countries a not in- 
considerable number of human beings fall victims to tigers, 
cobras, &c. The Trichina is to man a fatal parasite ; so are 
the flies Lucilia humanivora and L. macillaria, which not 
unfreauently kill persons by depositing their eggs in the 
nostrils during sleep. And if Dr. Thomson, of Melbourne, 
and Prof. Koch, of Berlin, are not mistaken, the microbion 
of phthisis is a parasite which inflicts premature death upon 
about one- third part of the entire human race ! 
Still for all this mankind in all civilised countries threaten 
to outrun the means of subsistence. The farmers of Europe 
dread now American competition. But what will be the 
state of affairs in Europe when America has no surplus food 
to export ? Yet that time, if we may judge from the results 
of the last census in the United States, is already within a 
measurable distance. In short, as a late eccentric physician 
once observed to us, “ Nature, in her anxiety for the pre- 
servation of the human species, has sadly overshot the 
mark.” The late Mr. Bagehot wrote — “ How many Ireiands 
have there been where men might have lived happily had 
they been fewer in number ! ” 
Now in this grand system of over-produCtion, kept in 
check by massacre, there is something not soothing to our 
feelings. Mr. McElroy exclaims — “The benignity of this 
method of arranging the order of Nature is not so apparent 
as a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals might desire.” It is true that the weak, who are 
now produced to suffer and perish, might never have origin- 
ated. Suppose that every animal and plant, incapable of 
transmitting a healthy and vigorous organisation to its off- 
spring, had been ipso facto incapable of reproduction, a large 
fraction of the present over-population, and consequent dis- 
tress, might have been avoided. But we have to deal with 
what is, not with what might be. 
Mr. McElroy’s contention is, then, that the elimination of 
the surplus human population “ is accomplished by making 
vicious inclinations the agents to weed out the redundant 
growths, and to seleCt for extermination those which are 
inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preservation or repro- 
duction.” Again, “ The surplus ones relieve us from em- 
barrassment on this score by selecting and exterminating 
themselves. Their methods of suicide cover a wide range 
