nd
the unfit, and clauses permitting sterilization under some circumstances
would be required.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion let us briefly review the whole position taken up in this
imperfect study of a great question.

1. The birth-rate is rapidly and persistently declining.

2. The food-rate is persistently increasing.

3. The declining fertility is not uniform through all classes.

4. The fertility of the best is rapidly declining.

5. The fertility of the worst is undisturbed.

6. The policy of the State is inimical to the fertility of its
best, and fosters the fertility of its worst citizens.

7. The infertility of the best stock is due to voluntary
curtailment of the family, through sexual self-restraint.

8. No such-factor does or can obtain as a check to the fertility of
the unfit.

9. The proportion of the unfit to the fit is in consequence
annually increasing.

10. The _future_ of society demands that compulsory sterilization
of the unfit should be adopted.

11. No method ever tried or suggested offers the advantages of
simplicity, safety, effectiveness, and popularity, promised by
tubo-ligature.

12. The State must protect itself against the collateral danger of
artificial sterilization of its best stock.

The highest interest of Society and of the individual urgently requires
that the size of families be controlled.

The moral restraint of Malthus (delayed marriage) and post-nuptial
intermittent restraint are the only safe and rational methods, that our
civilization can possibly encourage, or physiology endorse.

These methods must of necessity be peculiar to the best class of people.
For the worst class of people, induced sterility, or prohibited
fertility, is an absolute necessity, if Society and civilization must
endure.

Now what are likely to be the results of, first, the moral methods, and,
second, the surgical method of our curtailment.

"It does not appear to me," says Dr. Billings (Forum, June, 1893), "that
this lessening of the birth-rate is in itself an evil, or that it will
be worth while to attempt to increase the birth-rate merely for the sake
of maintaining a constant increase in the population, because to neither
this nor the next generation will such increase be specially
beneficial."

To Aristotle, the great advantage of an abundant population was, that
the S