[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The article " The Population Question," which appears in your paper dated February ,16th, is calculated to arouse public interest in a subject which is hardly receiving, in one aspect at all events, the attention it deserves. If the question of family limitation is considered at all, surely the ground should first be cleared in respect to the unfettered mentally defective unmarried mother,who can add to the population as many mentally defective children by as many men—many also tainted—as she likes, without interference. Your article concludes, "Civilized mankind has resolved to bring this important function of nature under the control of reason."
If this is so, to give effect to the wishes of the community legislation will be required, framed as information from Government Departments and administered by them after any Act is passed. It is common knowledge that while there is reluctance to interfere with the liberty of the subject generally and in such matters particularly, there is little reluctance to increase the burdens and responsibilities of the sound and fit citizen by taking as lenient a view as possible of the lapses of the unsound and unfit ; and by omitting to insist on an equal standard from the latter, to commit the former to added burdens in consequence. Still, long before the stage is reached when the State must intervene in respect to limitation of families, the moment arrives, and has in this country arrived, when the reproduction of defectives should be prevented as creating a burden to the rest of the community as a whole. The Home Office, Ministries of Health, Education, Poor Law, &c., are amply informed and the cost of asylums, prisons, workhouses, infirmaries and special schools, clerical staffs, &c., &c., are eloquent testimony of the urgency of the case. Still nothing is done. Where action is imper- atively called for is for the State control of the easy virtue of the mentally defective unmarried mother and her men. If the learned and very reverend author of your article con- siders his text, " Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them," unsuited to modern family conditions—I under- stand a quiver is reputed to hold five—perhaps he will also deal with the prayer of the elderly permanent officials who rule this country :—
" Not in our time, 0 Lord,"
and something may be achieved to stir the lethargy and ineptitude of the department concerned in respect to popu- lation problems, and incidentally there may be some added room for the sounder stock and some added money for the good citizen to spend on his own healthy family, without State interference or resort to the dole.—I am, Sir, &c., • PREVENTION IS BETrEn THAN Cum.
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