One of the most ominous and discreditable symptoms of the want of candour in present-day sociology is the deliberate neglect of the population question. It is, or should be, transparently clear that, if the state is resolved, on humanitarian grounds, to inhibit the operation of natural selection, some rational regulation of population, both as regards quality and quantity, is imperatively necessary. There is no self-acting adjustment, apart from starvation, of numbers to the means of subsistence. If all natural checks are removed, a population in advance of the optimum number will be produced and maintained at the cost of a reduction in the standard of living. When this pressure begins to be felt, that section of the population which is capable of reflection and which has a standard of living which may be lost will voluntarily restrict its numbers, even to the point of failing to replace death by an equivalent number of new births; while the underworld, which always exists in every civilized society — the failure and misfits and derelicts, moral and physical — will exercise no restraint and will be a constantly increasing drain upon the national resources. The population will thus be recruited in a very undue proportion by those strata of society which do not possess the qualities of useful citizens.
The importance of the problem would seem to be sufficiently obvious. But politicians know that the subject is unpopular. The urban have no votes. Employers are like a surplus of labour, which can be drawn upon when trade is good. Militarists want as much food for powder as they can get. Revolutionists instinctively oppose any real remedy for social evils; they know that every unwanted child is a potential insurgent. All three can appeal to a Quasi-Religious prejudice, resting apparently on the ancient theory of natural rights which were supposed to include the right of unlimited procreation. This objection is now chiefly urged by celibate or childless priests; but it is held with such fanatical vehemence that the fear of losing the votes which they control is a welcome excuse for the baser sort of politicians to shelve the subject as inopportune. The socialist calculation is probably erroneous; for experience has shown that it is aspiration, not desperation, that makes revolutions.
