empt to solve it will be discussed in detail in a subsequent chapter.
Let it suffice to say now, that the right of the State to interfere
directly with the limitation of families amongst the best classes would
find few advocates amongst reformers.

The right of the State to say, however, that the criminal, the drunkard,
the diseased, and the pauper, shall not propagate their kind should be
stoutly maintained by all rational men.

Most of the nations of history have recognized the gravity of the
population question, but they were mostly concerned with the tendency of
the numbers in the State to increase beyond the means of subsistence,
instead of the tendency to degeneration as it now concerns us.

CHAPTER II.

THE POPULATION QUESTION.

_The Teaching of Aristotle and Plato.--The teaching of Malthus.--His
assailants.--Their illogical position.--Bonar on Malthus and his
work.--The increase of food supplies held by Nitti to refute
Malthus.--The increase of food and the decrease of births.--Mr.
Spencer's biological theory.--Maximum birth-rate determined by female
capacity to bear children.--The pessimism of Spencer's law.--Wider
definition of moral restraint.--Where Malthus failed to anticipate the
future.--Economic law operative only through Biological law._

Births, deaths, and migration are the factors which make up the
population question.

The problem has burned in the minds of all great students of human life
and its conditions.

Aristotle says (Politics ii. 7-5) "The legislator who fixes the amount
of property should also fix the number of children, for if they are too
many for the property, the law must be broken." And he proceeds to
advise (ib. vii. 16-15) "As to the exposure and rearing of children, let
there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but where there are
too many (for in our State population has a limit) when couples have
children in excess and the state of feeling is adverse to the exposure
of offspring, let abortion be procured."

The difficulty of over-population was conspicuous in the minds of
Aristotle and Plato, and these philosophers both held that the State had
a right and a duty to control it.

But some States were almost annihilated because they were not
sufficiently populous, and Aristotle attributes the defeat of Sparta on
one celebrated occasion to this fact. He says:--"The legislators wanting
to have as many Spartans as they could, encouraged the citizens to hav