[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—" Quantity in place
of quality." These words, in a letter to the Spectator of February 10th, lead me to point out what seems to me the great underlying fallacy of these arguments as to limiting population.
It seems to be thought that quality can really be procured in human beings by reducing their quantity. Is this true ? Are only children more unselfish, better citizens, harder working, more upright than those brought up with brothers and sisters to " lick them into shape " ? I would bring this important question from the realm of fancy to the plain prose of experience.
Is the first child born of most use to England, of better quality in this way ? I have no dictionary of biography by me—doubtless there are hundreds of instances—but Welling. ton, Kitchener, the late Lord Salisbury, were younger sons. Would England have been better off if their parents had had only one child ? Would she not have had a serious loss I Then, in inducing the most public-spirited, the most self. restrained, the most unselfish parents to have fewer children, are we not really handing over our country's future to the " quantity," the descendants of the more selfish and the less restrained ? From the point of view of the child's own character and happy home life—from England's—from the world's—let us pause before advocating a policy of partial race suicide. Was not the loss of only sons our most irreparable loss in the World War Y—I am, Sir, &c., LOVER OF ENGLAND.
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