le diseases
ought not to be allowed to marry, or at any rate to have children.

Himself a man of splendid physique, Burton wanted to see every man in
England physically healthy and strong. He considered it abominable that
infant monstrosities or children born blind should be allowed to live,
and held that showmen and others who exhibit monstrosities should be
promptly jailed. "Indeed," he says, "it is a question if civilisation
may not be compelled to revive the law of Lycurgus, which forbade a
child, male or female, to be brought up without the approbation of
public officers appointed ad hoc. One of the curses of the 19th century
is the increased skill of the midwife and the physician, who are now
able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose
only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy." [534] He thought
with Edward FitzGerald and many another sympathiser with the poor, that
it is the height of folly for a labouring man living in a cottage with
only two small bedrooms and earning twelve shillings a week to burden
himself with a family of from ten to a dozen. Three or four children he
considered enough for anybody. At the same time he perceived that the
Neo-Malthusian system might be abused--that is to say, rich persons
who could well afford to bring up respectable-sized families might be
tempted to restrict the number to one or two. [535] Consequently, in the
Terminal Essay to the Arabian Nights, we find him recommending the study
of an Arabic work, Kitab al Bah not only to the anthropologist but also
to the million. He says, "The conscientious study would be useful to
humanity by teaching the use and unteaching the abuse of the Malthusian
system, [536] whereby the family is duly limited to the necessities of
society." At the present time--with the diminishing birth-rate and when
the subject is discussed freely in every upper and middle class home in
England--these ideas cause no wonderment; but in those days they were
novel.

148. New Projects.

We left the Burtons, it will be remembered, at Gibraltar. After a short
stay there, they crossed over to Morocco in a cattle tug. Neither of
them liked Tangiers, still, if the Consulate had been conferred upon Sir
Richard, it would have given them great happiness. They were, however,
doomed to disappointment. Lord Salisbury's short-lived administration
of 1886 had been succeeded by a Liberal Government with Lord Rosebery as
Premier; an