to the
number, but the character of its residents. The drunkards and the
paupers and the thieves and the idiots rather diminish than increase its
respectability. It seems to me that the world would be greatly benefited
by thinning out. Most of the places that I have seen would be much
improved by being decimated, not to say quinqueted or bisected. If
people are stubborn and rebellious, stiff-necked and uncircumcised,
in heart and ears, the fewer of them the better. A small population,
trained to honor and virtue, to liberality of culture and breadth of
view, to self-reliance and self-respect, is a thousand times better than
an overcrowded one with everything at loose ends. As with the village,
so with the family. There ought to be no more children than can be
healthily and thoroughly reared, as regards the moral, physical, and
intellectual nature both of themselves and their parents. All beyond
this is wrong and disastrous. I know of no greater crime, than to give
life to souls, and then degrade them, or suffer them to be degraded.
Children are the poor man's blessing and Cornelia's jewels, just so long
as Cornelia and the poor man can make adequate provision for them. But
the ragged, filthy, squalid, unearthly little wretches that wallow
before the poor man's shanty-door are the poor man's shame and curse.
The sickly, sallow, sorrowful little ones, shadowed too early by life's
cares, are something other than a blessing. When Cornelia finds her
children too many for her, when her step trembles and her cheek fades,
when the sparkle flats out of her wine of life and her salt has lost its
savor, her jewels are Tarpeian jewels. One child educated by healthy and
happy parents is better than seven dragging their mother into the grave,
notwithstanding the unmeasured reprobation of our little book. Of
course, if they can stand seven, very well. Seven and seventy times
seven, if you like, only let them be buds, not blights. If we obeyed the
laws of God, children would be like spring blossoms. They would impart
as much freshness and strength as they abstract. They are a natural
institution, and Nature is eminently healthy. But when they "come
crowding into the home-nest," as our book daintily says, they are a
nuisance. God never meant the home-nest to be crowded. There is room
enough and elbow-room enough in this world for everything that ought to
be in it. The moment there is crowding, you may be sure something wrong
is going on.