1883 .] Correspondence. 755 
man attributes debasing actions to the offspring of slaves or 
inferiors. There is an old pathetic song that has it : — 
“ They say I cannot love 
Because I am a slave ! ” 
War has certainly been a blessing in disguise for ages back. 
Then, again, Vice begets Immorality, and she is the mother of 
fewer children than her purer sister. Vice actually keeps down 
the populations of cities. Why does the political economist 
omit her from his unproductive persons ? Is she not productive 
in selfish good to the “ greatest number ” ? A former article in 
your Journal has shown how obligingly useful she is to rid us of 
our weak-brained competitors in life’s struggle : the pity is she 
is allowed to permeate her rottenness, through Act of Parliament, 
through the system of every offenceless babe. It is a false sen- 
timent that has any pity for the morally and physically debased. 
We are too apt to creep as in a dark, strange road, with a wretched 
lamp. There have been political revolutions and religious revo- 
lutions, but no moral revolutions. We allow our laws to make ille- 
gitimates and harlots, because the world does so ; we continue to 
force upon our unwilling intellect (and it must have its effect) 
the fossil ideas of our grandfathers. Both of us may be right ; 
it is a stable that needs a Hercules, only the dung is the land- 
marks of centuries here. The useless man is voted in the way, 
and yet the diseased is allowed to marry, the criminal is allowed 
to breed ; and these sons of Cain will wed with the daughters of 
Seths, and leave us all in a glorious muddle of degeneracy and 
decay. — I am, &c., 
D. Y. Cliff. 
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AND THE 
ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH. 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science. 
Sir, — In the Report of the Committee beginning with the 
“ Facial Characteristics of the Races and Principal Crosses in 
the British Isles,” it would seem that that of the Gipsies with 
native blood has not been included. As regards the “ Piets, 
Angles, and Jutes,” it may be said that the impression made by 
them on the population at large has been confined to the appear- 
ance and certain peculiarities of such as possess their blood, as 
would be shown in the crossing of domestic animals. But when 
