Page:Annie Besant, The Law of Population.djvu/50

situation in life, will not justify a pregnancy; but where the abstinence from love becomes as great an evil. It has been a sort of common, but ill-judged maxim, that the strength and wealth of a nation consist in the number, the greatest number, of its people. The error in the judgment of the maxim is, in not taking into consideration whether that number be well or ill employed, well or ill fed, clothed and housed. If the number be well employed, well fed, well clothed, well housed, then the greatness of the number is in reality the wealth and strength of the nation. But if, on the other hand, the greatness of the number lessens the means of good employment, good living, clothing and housing, then, as in England and Ireland, at this moment, under the present arrangements of government, aristocracy, religion, &c., the greatness of the number constitutes the weakness of the nation; and England and Ireland are both weak at this moment: weak, too evidently weak, from ill-employed or unemployed members of the people. It is objected to me, that there is a sufficiency of natural checks already in existence, to remedy the evils of which I complain. My answer is, that these natural checks are the evil of which I do complain, and which I seek to remove by the substitution of a moral check, that shall furnish no pain, no degradation, no discomfort, no evil of any kind. The existing natural or physical checks are disease or pestilence and famine. Surely it is to be desired that neither of these should exist. It is not wise, not parental, not kind, to breed children to such disasters. It is better that they should not be born, than be cut off prematurely by disease or famine, or struggle through a life of disease, poverty, and misery, a life of pain to themselves, and both a pain and burthen to their parents. The existing moral checks on numbers are war, and social arrangements, such as poverty, late marriages, celibacy, and the bad health which bad states of living produce; to which may be added, states of servitude, in which marriage is found inconvenient. These are all so many evils—all will say. It would be well to go on without war, and the time will come when wars will cease. In the question of trade, a government can do nothing more than remove impediments. It cannot increase the amount of trade beyond its natural demand. It cannot force trade to any permanent utility. Therefore I take it to be a clear point, that no change in government will do anything permanently for the relief of the present number of persons