For many years after the publication of Mr. Malthus’s great essay, the principle which he had formulated did not pass beyond the region of more or less academic controversy. The “theory of population” was denounced from countless pulpits and assailed by the pens of ready writers; but, being based upon a patient and accurate observation of the facts of nature, it remained unshaken when the preachers and critics were forgotten.

It would be absurd to doubt that so important a contribution to social science influenced the minds and helped to shape the conduct of thoughtful men; but it is beyond question that no organised attempt to popularise and propagate the teachings of Malthus, and to make known the nature of preventive checks amongst the people of this country, was undertaken until the year 1877. In the first quarter of the century, Richard Carlile published a small pamphlet on the subject; but there is no reason to suppose that its effect was appreciable. Mr. Francis Place and Mr. Robert Dale Owen in later years wrote essays embodying practically the modern Malthusian view.

In 1833, Dr. Charles Knowlton, of Boston (U.S.A.), issued a small work on the subject of population, entitled The Fruits of Philosophy. For over forty years the book was sold in England, but its sale was so small that very few people were even acquainted with its title, and it remained in its native obscurity until it was dragged into the light of day by the fortunate folly of persons who imagined that it was possible to check the spread of moral enlightenment by means of legal “repression.”

In 1876 a police prosecution was instituted against a man in Bristol for selling The Fruits of Philosophy, and a conviction was obtained. In the following year the publisher of the pamphlet was also indicted and committed for trial; but he was liberated on promising that he would no longer issue the work. Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant thereupon undertook the task of defending the right of publication. They reprinted and published the pamphlet, formally inviting the authorities to prosecute them. “It was for the sake of free discussion that we published the assailed pamphlet when its former seller yielded to the pressure put upon him by the police; it was not so much in defence of this pamphlet, as to make the way possible for others dealing with the same topic that we risked the penalty which has fallen upon us.”1

The police authorities accepted the challenge, and a prosecution was immediately commenced. The trial, which lasted four days, took place in the Court of Queen’s Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and a special jury. Sir Hardinge Gifford (then Solicitor-General), Mr. Douglas Straight and Mr. Mead appeared for the prosecution; Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant appeared in person.

The indictment charged the defendants with having published and sold an obscene book, with intent to contaminate and corrupt public morals. The author of The Fruits of Philosophy advocated early marriage with limitation of families, and referred in the course of his work to such preventive checks as were known at that time. The Solicitor-General, in opening the case, sought to persuade the jury that Dr. Knowlton speciously used that line of argument as a disguise and pretext for suggesting illicit intercourse without risk of pregnancy ensuing. An indignant rebuke from Sir Alexander Cockburn caused the Solicitor-General to abandon that line of false suggestion, and to fall back upon the contention that it was illegal to issue a work containing “a chapter on restriction, not written in any learned language, but in plain English, in a facile form, and sold … at sixpence.” He therefore asked the jury to declare that the book was an “obscene publication.”

The speech of the Solicitor-General and his general conduct of the case are matters of trivial importance; the notable features of the trial were the addresses of the two defendants and the summing-up by the Lord Chief Justice. Mrs. Besant’s speech to the jury was a remarkable and memorable effort. She examined and discussed the population question in every aspect, contending that, in view of the evils arising from excessive increase, the advocacy of prudential methods was a sacred duty to humanity. In the opening passages of her speech she pointed out, in the most impressive manner, that she pleaded for the welfare of others:

It is not as defendant that I plead to you to-day—not simply as defending myself do I stand here—but I speak as counsel for hundreds of the poor, and it is they for whom I defend this case. My clients are scattered up and down through the length and breadth of the land; I find them amongst the poor, amongst whom I have been so much; I find my clients amongst the fathers, who see their wage ever reducing, and prices ever rising; I find my clients amongst the mothers worn out with over-frequent child-bearing, and with two or three little ones around too young to guard themselves, while they have no time to guard them. It is enough for a woman at home to have the care, the clothing, the training of a large family of young children to look to; but it is a harder task when oftentimes the mother, who should be at home with her little ones, has to go out and work in the fields for wage to feed them when her presence is needed in the house. I find my clients among the little children. Gentlemen, do you know the fate of so many of these children?—the little ones half-starved because there is food enough for two but not enough for twelve; half-clothed because the mother, no matter what her skill and care, cannot clothe them with the money brought home by the breadwinner of the family; brought up in ignorance, and ignorance means pauperism and crime—gentlemen, your happier circumstances have raised you above this suffering, but on you also this question presses; for these over-large families mean also increased poor-rates, which are growing heavier year by year. These poor are my clients, and if I weary you by length of speech, as I fear I may, I do so because I must think of them more even than I think of your time or trouble.

With righteous indignation Mrs. Besant repelled the accusation that The Fruits of Philosophy was an “obscene” publication. She showed by a quotation from Lord Campbell’s Act (upon which the prosecution was based) that the statutory definition of obscenity could not possibly be applied to a book containing “dry physiological details put forward in dry, technical language.” She next proceeded to urge that the right of free discussion upon matters of public welfare was really attacked by the prosecution:

Do you, gentlemen, think for one moment that myself and my co-defendant are fighting the simple question of the sale or publication of this sixpenny volume of Dr. Knowlton’s? Do you think that we would have placed ourselves in the position in which we are at the present moment for the mere profit to be derived from a sixpenny pamphlet of forty-seven pages? No, it is nothing of the sort; we have a much larger interest at stake, and one of vital interest to the public, one which we shall spend our whole lives in trying to uphold. The question really is one of the right to public discussion by means of publication, and that question is bound up in the right to sell this sixpenny pamphlet which the Solicitor-General despises on account of its price.

It would, however, be impossible to give, by extracts of reasonable length, an adequate idea of the striking and eloquent speech which Mrs. Besant addressed to the jury in her defence. The whole question of over-population and its consequences was examined with the greatest care and completeness. Profoundly convinced of the justice of her cause, Mrs. Besant pleaded that the teachings of New-Malthusianism, by making early marriage possible, promoted happiness and morality. She said:

I think, therefore, I may fairly put it that every young man naturally desires to make a home and enter upon married life when first he comes out into the world. I do not believe that any young man sets out with the intention of rushing into fast life and dissipation, but men are frequently drawn into habits of that kind because they fear the results that follow from early marriage. Since I am told that our object is to increase immorality, and that we only use the word “marriage” to conceal the foulest designs upon the purity of society, I may say freely that I hold early marriages to be the very salvation of young men, and especially of young men in our large cities. I hold the belief with a depth of conviction which I cannot put to you in words, that for one man and one woman to help, comfort, and support one another, which they are by nature adapted to do, is a state which is to be reached, which is to be perpetuated, by marriage and in no other way. It is only by companionship, and the union between a man and a woman, that this is possible. Shut a man out from the loving influence of home, the golden institutions of the fireside, his wife’s society, and the happiness of becoming a father, and you induce a life of profligacy. Gentlemen, do not be deceived. There is no talk in this book of preventing men and women from becoming parents; all that is sought here is to limit the number of their family. And we do not aim at that because we do not love children, but, on the contrary, because we do love them, and because we wish to prevent them from coming into the world in greater numbers than there is the means of properly providing for. Children, I believe, have an influence upon parents purifying in the highest degree, because they teach the parents self-restraint, self-denial, thoughtfulness, and tenderness to an extent that cannot possibly be over-estimated; and it is because I wish to have it made possible for young men and for young women to have these influences brought to bear upon them in their youth, that I advocate the circulation of a book that will put within their reach the knowledge of how to limit the extent of their families within their capabilities of providing for them; for no man can look with pride and happiness upon his home if he has more children than he can clothe and educate. It is because I wish them to marry in the springtime of their youth that I ask you by your verdict in this action to make discussion on these subjects possible, and that men should not be driven to find a substitute for true and pure womanhood and wifehood in other directions. If you render this possible you will make your streets purer and your families happier than they are at present.

Having in the course of a prolonged speech explained and vindicated the New-Malthusian doctrine from misrepresentations inspired by ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry, Mrs. Besant concluded her memorable address in the following words:

I fairly put it that unless you honestly believe that my whole speech to you has been one mass of falsehoods; unless you believe my intent to be a bad intent; unless you believe I have been deliberately deceiving you throughout, and stand here before you in the very worst character a woman could take upon herself, namely, that of striving to corrupt the morals of the young under the false pretence of purity here put forward, and unless you think that, for the after-part of my life, I deserve to pass through it with the brand upon me that twelve gentlemen, after all patience, thought not only that the book was a mistake, the opinions wrong, and the arguments unconvincing, but, in the terrible language of the indictment, that I am guilty of “wickedly devising and contriving as much as in me lay to vitiate and corrupt the morals of youth” as well as of others,—unless, I say, you believe that that has been my object and purpose, on this indictment, I shall call upon you, gentlemen, to return a verdict of “Not Guilty,” and to send me home free, believing from my heart and conscience that I have been guilty only of doing that which I ought to do in grappling honestly with a matter I consider myself justified in grappling with—that terrible poverty and misery which is around us on every hand. Unless you are prepared, gentlemen, to brand me with malicious meaning, I ask you, as an English woman, for that justice which it is not impossible to expect at the hands of Englishmen—I ask you to give me a verdict of “Not Guilty,” and to send me home unstained.

Mr. Bradlaugh, in his speech, dealt more fully than his co-defendant had been able to do with the legal and physiological aspects of the case. In the clearest fashion he maintained the lawfulness of disseminating the knowledge of innocent prudential checks:

I submit to you, gentlemen of the jury, that it is moral to teach poor people to marry early, and that this teaching avoids and will diminish illicit intercourse. I will not weary you with reading the whole of the report on the “Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture,” from which my co-defendant quoted that terrible extract from the report of Bishop Fraser. You will there find that the illicit intercourse which we are charged with trying to produce is an illicit intercourse which is going on and bringing with it the birth of the child, and bringing with it the murder of the child by the mother, because there is the pang of starvation and misery and shame to contend with. I say that it is amongst the poor married people that the evils of over-population are chiefly felt, and that it cannot tend to deprave their morals to teach them how to intelligently check this over-population.… I submit that the advocacy of all checks is lawful except such as advocate the destruction of the foetus after conception or of the child after birth. I say that the advocacy of every birth-restricting check is lawful which is not the advocacy of the destruction of human life in any form after that life has been created.

Assuming the legality of such advocacy, it is useless unless conveyed in plain and simple language:

I say that the advocacy of any check amongst the masses to be useful must of necessity be put in the plainest language and in the cheapest form, and be widely spread; and I press that upon you because I understand that the learned Solicitor-General in his argument put it that one of the faults of this pamphlet was that it was not obscured in learned language. If we possessed the facility of expressing ourselves in French, or Italian, or Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or Arabic, what earthly use would that be to the poor unfortunate wretches whose misery we want to address?

After traversing with his accustomed skill and acumen the charges formulated by the prosecution, Mr. Bradlaugh concluded his address with a peroration full of passionate eloquence:

We want (he said) to make the poor more comfortable; and you tell us we are immoral. We want to prevent them bringing into the world little children to suck death, instead of life, at the breasts of their mother; and you tell us we are immoral. I should not say that, perhaps, for you, gentlemen, may judge things differently from myself; but I know the poor. I belong to them. I was born amongst them. Among them are the early associations of my life. Such little ability as I possess to-day has come to me in the hard struggle of life. I have had no University to polish my tongue; no Alma Mater to give to me any eloquence by which to move you. I plead here simply for the class to which I belong, and for the right to tell them what may redeem their poverty and alleviate their misery. And I ask you to believe in your heart of hearts, even if you deliver a verdict against us here—I ask you, at least, to try and believe both for myself and the lady who sits besides me (I hope it for myself, and I earnestly wish it for her), that all through we have meant to do right, even if you think that we have done wrong.… My co-defendant referred, in earnest language, to the letters which she had received from women, and clergymen, and others throughout the country. I, too, have received many warm words of sympathy from those who think that I am right. It is true many of them may be ignorant people, and therefore may be wrong; but they have written to encourage me with their kindly sympathy in my pleading before you. If we are branded with the offence of circulating an obscene book, many of these poor people will still think “No.” They think such knowledge would prevent misery in their families, would check hunger in their families, and would hinder disease in their families. Do you know what poverty means in a poor man’s house? It means that when you are reproaching a poor and ignorant man with brutality, you forget that he is merely struggling against that hardship of life which drives all chivalry and courtesy out of his existence. Do not blame poor men too much that they are rough and brutal. Think mercifully of a man such as a brick-maker, who, going home after his day’s toil, finds six or seven little ones crying for bread, and clinging around his wife for the food which they cannot get. Think you such a scene as that is not sufficient to make both himself and her hungry and angry too? Gentlemen, it is for you, in your deliverance of guilty or not guilty, to say how we are to go from this court—whether, when we leave this place, if you mark us guilty, his lordship may feel it to be his duty to sentence us, and put upon us the brand of a doom such as your verdict may warrant; or whether, by your verdict of not guilty—which I hope for myself and desire for my co-defendant—we may go out of this court absolved from that shame which this indictment has sought to put upon us.

We must pass over the evidence given by Dr. Alice Vickery, Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Mr. Bohn and others for the defence; and refer briefly to the summing-up of the Lord Chief Justice (Sir Alexander Cockburn). His lordship dwelt upon “the mischievous character and effect” of the prosecution, and declared that “a more ill-advised and more injudicious proceeding” had probably never been brought into a court of justice. He adverted in terms of severity to the secrecy that had been maintained as to the real originators of the prosecution. In discussing the questions involved, his lordship referred to the theory of Malthus as “a theory which astonished the world, though it is now accepted as an irrefragable truth, and has since been adopted by economist after economist. That the evils arising from over-population,” he continued, “are evils which, if they could be prevented, it would be the first business of human charity to prevent, there cannot be any doubt. That the evils of population are real, and not imaginary, no one acquainted with the state of society in the present day can possibly deny.” Upon the question whether or not the advocacy of prudential checks tended to corrupt public morals, his lordship said to the jury: “You must decide that with a due regard and reference to the law, and with an honest and determined desire to maintain the morals of mankind. But, on the other hand, you must carefully consider what is due to public discussion, and with an anxious desire not, from any prejudiced view of this subject, to stifle what may be a subject of legitimate enquiry.” The concluding passages of the charge to the jury are so significant that they are here reproduced entire:

If you are of opinion that this work of Knowlton’s, although well intended, and although the publication of it by the defendants may be intended for the benefit of mankind, if you think they have taken an erroneous view as to the effect of the work, and that its entire scope is subversive of the morals of society, if that is your opinion, it is then your bounden duty to find the defendants liable. But whilst that is the case, it is for the prosecution to make out the charge they have undertaken to establish. If you think they have failed—if you think these are matters which may fairly be discussed—that the proper answer to them is by refuting them by argument and not by prosecution, the defendants are entitled to your verdict. Or if you have any doubt as to the effect of this work you are bound to bring them in not guilty. I would only say in conclusion, that whatever outrages decency, whatever tends to corrupt the morals of society, and especially the morals and purity of women—whatever tends to have that result is, when published, an offence against the law. But that offence like every other must be made out. If you think it is made out, if there is a conviction in your minds that though they have acted from a desire to do good, yet in your opinion they have done wrong, they have then brought themselves within the definition of the statute.

Despite the powerful speeches of the defendants and the obviously sympathetic charge of the judge, the jury were not equal to their opportunity to make a clear stand for freedom of discussion. They returned a halting “special” verdict, declaring that the book was “calculated to deprave public morals,” but at the same time they entirely exonerated the defendants from any corrupt motives in publishing it. Upon this the judge reluctantly directed the jury to return a verdict of guilty.

The remainder of the story is most concisely told in Mrs. Besant’s own words: “Obviously annoyed at the verdict, the Lord Chief Justice refused to give judgment, and let us go on our own recognisances. When we came up later for judgment, he urged us to surrender the pamphlet as the jury had condemned it; said our whole course with regard to it had been right, but that we ought to yield to the judgment of the jury. We were obstinate, and I shall never forget the pathetic way in which the great judge urged us to submit, and how at last when we persisted that we would continue to sell it till the right to sell it was gained, he said that he would have let us go free if we would have yielded to the court, but our persistence compelled him to sentence us. We gave notice of appeal, promising not to sell till the appeal was decided, and he let us go on our own recognisances. On appeal we quashed the verdict, and went free; we recovered all the pamphlets seized, and publicly sold them; we continued the sale till we received an intimation that no further prosecution would be attempted against us, and then we dropped the sale of the pamphlet and never took it up again.”2

Having given an account of this memorable trial, we proceed to trace some of its far-reaching effects. In the first place, Dr. Knowlton’s pamphlet gained immediately an enormous circulation. Before the prosecution the annual sales were very small; within three months from the time when proceedings were instituted against the publishers, 125,000 copies were sold. But this result, startling as it appears, was by no means the most important phase of the impetus given to the public mind upon the question of population by the cause cÉlÈbre of “The Queen versus Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant.” During the trial the newspapers of this country contained lengthy reports of the proceedings, and the remarkable speeches of the defendants were thus carried far and wide. Their popular statements of the Malthusian position, their description of the evils arising from over-population and the remedies that they proposed were sent forth into many thousands of homes into which no hint of the truth would otherwise have penetrated. The press, with its myriad voices, became, for the time, a mighty organ of New-Malthusian propaganda, repeating, in tones that echoed round the world, the eloquent words of two social reformers to whom the miseries of the poor were known, and who had faced the danger of imprisonment and of social obloquy in order to proclaim that which they felt to be the only efficient remedy for poverty.

Amidst the public excitement caused by this famous trial, The Malthusian League was called into existence, and has since carried forward the work of propaganda in an organised and systematic fashion. It was founded to promote the following objects:

I. To agitate for the abolition of all penalties on the public discussion of the Population Question, and to obtain such a statutory definition as shall render it impossible, in the future, to bring such discussions within the scope of the common law as a misdemeanor.

II. To spread among the people, by all practicable means, a knowledge of the law of population, of its consequences, and of its bearing upon human conduct and morals.

Dr. Charles R. Drysdale, M.D., F.R.C.S., Eng., has from the first been the President of the League, and has devoted himself to the work of explaining and advocating the New-Malthusian principle. The list of Vice-Presidents has included the names of the late M. Yves Guyot, a distinguished French deputÉ and Minister of State, and of Mr. J. Bryson, President of the Northumberland Miners’ Association. A reference to its present composition will show the reader that the efforts of the League to spread enlightened views on the population question have the approval and sympathy of influential persons in this and in other countries.3

The work of the League is chiefly carried on by public lectures and meetings, the dissemination of literature, and letters addressed to the editors of newspapers. By these means the public mind is constantly being influenced in the direction of rational views upon the population question.

The annual meetings of members and friends of the League have afforded valuable opportunities of obtaining expressions of opinion upon the subject of Malthusianism from many influential persons. Letters expressing hearty approval of the movement have been received from Mrs. Mona Caird, Lord Derby, Lord Pembroke, the late Lord Bramwell, Mr. Leonard Courtney, M.P., Mr. W. B. Maclaren, M.P., Professor Bain, Mr. Arnold White, Mr. G. H. Darwin and others.

Four years after the formation of the League, a “Medical Branch” was established for the following purposes:

I. To aid the Malthusian League in its crusade against poverty and the accompanying evils by obtaining the co-operation of qualified medical practitioners, both British and foreign.

II. To obtain a body of scientific opinion on points of sexual physiology and pathology involved in the “Population Question,” and which can only be discussed by those possessed of scientific knowledge.

III. To agitate for a free and open discussion of the Population Question in all its aspects in the medical press, and thus to obtain a recognition of the scientific oasis and the absolute necessity of Neo-Malthusianism.

It will be seen that the work of this section is of a special and scientific character. The names of the officers and members (given in the appendix) will show that the advocacy of prudential checks to population is sanctioned by a body of physicians of unquestioned eminence.

Having given an outline of the permanent organisation of Malthusian propaganda which grew out of the events of 1877, we proceed to trace briefly the history of the movement from that period. It is in the main a story of petty persecutions on the one side, and, upon the other, of steady persistence in the work of informing the public mind. The principal obstacle to the progress of the movement, and one which it is slowly but surely surmounting, is the prejudice born of ignorance and bigotry. Journalists, statesmen and other leaders of opinion do not hesitate to avow their adhesion to the principle formulated by Malthus; but they are, almost without exception, dominated by the fear of Mrs. Grundy, and shrink from incurring the odium which, they imagine, would result from a frank recognition of the only logical outcome of that principle. They join loudly in the chorus on the evils of over-population; but, as a rule, they will lend no public countenance to the distinct advocacy of prudential checks. Hence the task of the pioneers of the movement is rendered excessively difficult; but from the very inception of the Malthusian League, the work of propaganda has been carried forward with unfailing devotion and singleness of purpose.

In its earliest days, the League was called upon to support one of its most respected members under stress of persecution. In February, 1878, Mr. Edward Truelove was prosecuted and tried before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn for publishing the Hon. Robert Dale Owen’s pamphlet entitled Moral Physiology, and an essay on Individual, Family, and National Poverty, by an anonymous author. Mr. W. A. Hunter, in defending the case, made a most powerful speech in support of the Malthusian position. The jury were unable to agree upon a verdict, and the proceedings came to an abortive termination. Three months later, however, Mr. Truelove was a second time placed upon his trial, the venue meanwhile being changed from the Court of Queen’s Bench to the Old Bailey. A common jury found no difficulty in returning a verdict of guilty, and Mr. Truelove (then in his sixty-eighth year) was sentenced to pay a fine of £50 and to be imprisoned for four months. A great public meeting was held at St. James’s Hall on June 6th, when Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant, Dr. Drysdale and other friends of the movement protested against the action of the authorities in thus interfering with the right of free discussion, and expressed their admiration of Mr. Truelove’s courage and consistency.

Mr. Truelove endured the privations of imprisonment with fortitude and dignity, sustained by the knowledge that his cause was righteous. He was taken to Coldbath Fields in a prison-van, handcuffed like a dangerous criminal; compelled to lie on the “plank-bed,” and subjected to all the rigors of gaol discipline. During the first three months he was allowed no meat; after that time he was permitted to have six ounces of Australian tinned meat per week. Happily the confinement and hardships did not prejudicially affect his health.

On September 12th he was welcomed back to liberty by a large and enthusiastic gathering of friends at the Hall of Science, London. The leading members of the Malthusian League were present, and Mr. Moncure D. Conway, and the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam attended to do honor to one who had suffered for conscience sake. A purse containing £200 was presented to Mr. Truelove, together with the following testimonial:

To Edward Truelove, on his release from four months’ imprisonment in Coldbath Fields Prison—suffered in defence of the Liberty of the Press.

The undersigned, on behalf of the National Secular Society and of the Malthusian League, desire to welcome you on your return to liberty, and to offer you their heartiest thanks for the courage and endurance you have displayed, in defending the right of free publication of opinion.

The battle for the liberty of the press has been steadily waged ever since the invention of printing, and a long muster-roll of names might be given of those who, first at the stake, and since in prison, have in turn paid their share of the penalty-purchase for the victories already achieved. You have worthily entitled yourself to an honorable place in this muster-roll, the more so that you have stood firm in a day when too many temporise and flinch. From almost every part of England, and from remote districts, as well as from the great centres of Scotland, many thousands of your fellow countrymen and countrywomen have pleaded for your release, and from all parts of the civilised world expressions have been received, of sympathy with you, and of indignation against your persecutors.

As some slight mark of our gratitude and affectionate esteem, and in recognition of the honor with which you have crowned a long life of unwavering courage, we present you this address, and the accompanying purse of gold, begging you to accept with them our sincerest wishes for your future welfare. Signed on behalf of

The National Secular Society.

Chas. Bradlaugh, President.
Robert Forder, Secretary.

The Malthusian League.

C. Drysdale, M.D., President.
Annie Besant, Hon. Sec.

Hall of Science, 12th September, 1878.

The case of Mr. Truelove was the last prosecution of importance in this country for the publication of works dealing with the population question. The proceedings against Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, after being quashed in the Court of Appeal upon a writ of error, were never renewed. Dr. Knowlton’s pamphlet, The Fruits of Philosophy, was withdrawn from circulation, and Mrs. Besant wrote a small book, The Law of Population: its consequences and its bearing upon human conduct and morals, to take its place. Of this work nearly 200,000 copies were circulated in Great Britain; many pirated editions were published in America and Australia; and it was translated into several European languages. It formed the basis of a remarkable judgment by Mr. Justice Windeyer (delivered in the Supreme Court of New South Wales), to which further reference will presently be made.

In June, 1887, Dr. H. A. Allbutt, of Leeds, published a sixpenny pamphlet entitled The Wife’s Handbook. The following paragraph, taken from the introduction to the book, will explain its object: “To save the lives and preserve the health of thousands of women, to rescue from death and disease children who may be born, to teach the young wife how to order her health during the most important period of her life, to remove from her mind the popular ignorance in which she may have been reared, and to enable her to learn truths concerning her duties as wife and mother, I have thought fit to write this little work.” Shortly after its appearance, the spirit of persecution was again manifested, this time in an obscure and technical aspect. As a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Dr. Allbutt was professionally amenable to the Council of that body; and he was summoned to appear and show cause why he should not be removed from the rolls for the offence of writing and publishing The Wife’s Handbook. The matter was warmly taken up by the Malthusian League, and protests were addressed to the College from all parts of Great Britain and from France, Germany, Holland, Italy, India and Jamaica. Nothing more was heard of the affair until November, when Dr. Allbutt received a notice to appear before the General Medical Council, in London, to show cause why his name should not be struck off the register.

On November 23rd the complaint against Dr. Allbutt was considered by the General Medical Council, a body composed of twenty-seven physicians. Dr. Allbutt was represented by Mr. Wallace (barrister), and the “prosecution” was conducted by Mr. Muir Mackenzie, the legal adviser of the Council. The following were the points which the Council proceeded to consider: “(1) Was The Wife’s Handbook a fair medical treatise, or was it an indecent advertisement? (2) Was it practically an injury to the public and an insult to the profession?” Mr. Wallace, in a very able speech, traversed the suggestions made by the Council’s solicitor, and challenged the right of an irresponsible body to determine whether any line of advocacy was “subversive of public morality.” If Dr. Allbutt had violated the law, he was amenable to legal proceedings, and it was not for the Medical Council to sit in judgment upon him. Mr. Wallace justified the course that Dr. Allbutt had taken in publishing his work at a low price in order that it might be placed within the reach of the poorest classes. He called the attention of the members to a list of the petitions which had been presented to the Council on the subject from all parts of Europe. They amounted to over seventy; many of them came from medical, scientific, and political societies. He assured the Council that the members of the medical profession were by no means unanimous in condemning Mr. Allbutt, and it would run against the feelings of a very considerable minority if they decided adversely to his client. The book was written with the express object of saving poor people from the misery, poverty, and starvation which resulted from the over-production of children; and he asked the Council, in conclusion, to arrive at a decision which would relieve his client from the imputation which had been cast upon him, and which would restore him to his proper position.

The Council having deliberated in private, the President delivered the following judgment:

“In the opinion of the Council, Mr. Allbutt has committed the offence charged against him, that is to say, of having published and publicly caused to be sold a work entitled The Wife’s Handbook, in London and elsewhere, at so low a price as to bring the work within the reach of the youth of both sexes, to the detriment of public morals. Secondly, the offence is, in the opinion of the Council, ‘infamous conduct in a professional respect.’ Thirdly, the Registrar is hereby ordered to erase the name of Mr. H. A. Allbutt from the Medical Register.”

Thus ended the futile attempt of the General Medical Council to put a stop to the publication of Malthusian works “at so low a price.” Nobody was a penny the worse for the ponderous proceedings of this archaic tribunal. Dr. Allbutt has never ceased to practise legally as a physician; twenty editions of The Wife’s Handbook have been issued and 180,000 copies sold.

This case aroused much attention in the press. The Pall Mall Gazette declared that “the decision of the General Medical Council to erase from its rolls the name of a physician who published ‘at a low price’ information as to the best means for preventing the excessive multiplication of children beyond their parents’ means of subsistence or the possibility of education and control, will before long become familiar as one of the most glaring illustrations of professional prejudice and human folly. When such a cool-headed respectable as Lord Derby feels bound to call attention to the increase of 400,000 per annum in our population as one of the most pressing problems of our day, it is really too fatuous for the General Medical Council to brand as ‘infamous’ a practitioner who, in a work to which no objection is taken on the score of impropriety or immorality, supplies to the poor information already possessed by the rich.”

We have to record but one later attempt to interfere with the free discussion of the population question in this country. In October, 1891, Mr. H. S. Young, M.A., was summoned to appear at Bow Street Police Court on a charge of sending through the post a leaflet entitled Some Reasons for Advocating the Prudential Limitation of Families. The proceedings were taken under the Post Office Protection Act. Mr. Besley, in conducting the prosecution, made the remarkable statement that the only check against immorality in this country was the fear of pregnancy! Speaking in his own defence, Mr. Young contended that there was no “obscenity” involved in pointing out to the poor how they might limit their families. The magistrate (Mr. Lushington) admitted that the leaflet was written in very careful language, and not intended to be at all offensive; but still he held that it was “obscene,” convicted Mr. Young, and ordered him to pay a fine of £20 and costs. The defendant applied to the magistrate to state a case, as he intended to appeal; but Mr. Lushington refused to do so.

This prosecution led to the formation of a Free Discussion Committee, and public meetings were held in various parts of the metropolis, protesting against the infringement of public freedom by legal proceedings. Repeated attempts were made by Mr. Young and his advisers to bring the case before a court of law, but technical difficulties rendered this practically impossible, and the matter was allowed to drop.

Meantime the propaganda of New-Malthusian views is steadily continued. The pages of The Malthusian, the monthly organ of the League, bear constant witness to activity which hastes not and rests not. Whether its energies are to be again stimulated by persecution, time alone can show.

A brief statement concerning the position of the Malthusian movement in foreign countries may be usefully added to this chapter.

Holland.—Several years ago a Dutch Malthusian League was established by Mr. S. Van Houten (Doctor of Laws, and DeputÉ), Mr. C. V. Gerritsen, Dr. C. de Rooy, Dr. Lobry de Bruyn and others. In 1887 the League numbered amongst its members, in Amsterdam alone, six Doctors of Medicine, eleven Doctors of Law, and three Professors of the University. At Amsterdam a dispensary has long been open, where a lady (Dr. Aletta H. Jacobs) and other medical members attend and give advice to those seeking practical information upon prudential checks. Large numbers of poor married women apply at the dispensary for instruction as to the best methods by which they can restrict the size of their families. Several pamphlets upon the population question have been issued by the Dutch Malthusian League. In 1887, thirty thousand copies of one of its publications had been circulated in a country with a smaller population than that of London. The most recent pamphlet on Malthusianism, from the pen of Mr. J. A. Van der Haven, is entitled The Dark Netherlands, and the way out of it. The author draws a sad picture of life in some of the poor quarters of Holland, where, he says, “laughter is seldom heard, and hunger and early death are constant visitors.” There is, however, hope for a brighter future. Mr. Gerritsen states that in Holland “directors of large industrial establishments and railway societies make their workmen acquainted with the means of preventing themselves from drifting into poverty.”

Germany.—The Malthusian question has frequently been the subject of discussion in Germany. Dr. Stille, of Hanover, Dr. Hans Ferdy, Dr. Mensinga, Dr. Zacharias, and other physicians have again and again called public attention to the importance of the subject; but, until lately, no combined effort to influence public opinion has been possible. Mr. Max Hausmeister, of Stuttgart, has at length set on foot an organisation for the propaganda of New-Malthusian views. On February 12th, 1892, a private meeting was held at Stuttgart “to consider the advisability of forming a Malthusian Society.” This led to the establishment of the Sozial-Harmonische Verein (Social Harmony Union), and a monthly journal, Die Sozial Harmonie, was founded “to enlighten the people of Germany upon social, political and economic questions and the relation of these to sexual matters.” (Subscription: 2·50 marks per annum.) Germany, with its teeming population of impoverished workers, affords an enormous field for Malthusian propaganda.

In Holland and Germany alone, amongst continental countries, has the Malthusian view found organised expression. France, whilst extremely prudent in practice, is strongly anti-Malthusian in theory, at least so far as the governing class is concerned. Drs. Lutaud, Le Blond, and RebantÉ, of Paris, are prominent amongst the adherents of the New-Malthusian movement in France.

In India, public attention has lately been called to the population question by a prosecution instituted by the police authorities against Messrs. Taraporewalla & Sons, of Bombay, for selling copies of a pamphlet entitled True Morality; or, the Theory and Practice of New-Malthusianism, by Mr. J. R. Holmes. The Chief Presidency Magistrate convicted the defendants and imposed a fine of 201 rupees (about £12. 10s.). The conviction was not permitted to pass without public protest. The editor of a Bombay journal wrote: “The battle has been fought and won in the West, and the subject is more or less directly treated in the leading reviews, and books and pamphlets are openly sold in England. Our duty here is clear enough. Are the Freethinkers in India, whether New-Malthusians or not, to quietly stand by and see the free discussion of this question denied the public? We are perfectly aware that although there are many who will aid in this work, there are few—alas! how few!—who will openly bear the brunt of the fray. However, there is at least one who will do it. But will the others stand round and give whatever help they can, even if silently?” The standard of comfort amongst the teeming native population of India is deplorably low, the average income per head in the north-west provinces not exceeding 22½ rupees (say £1. 8s. 6d.) per year. And yet, forsooth, those who seek to lift the poor ryots from their abysmal poverty and misery are confronted with the smug conventionalities of Western Europe, and punished as distributors of “obscene” literature!

America has no Malthusian organisation, but there are many sympathisers with the movement in various parts of the country. Dr. E. B. Foote, jr., of New York, is a most active and earnest advocate of Malthusian views, and has written several popular works on the subject. The customs and postal prohibitions are very stringent as to the admission and transmission of Malthusian literature and appliances. Some years ago the late Mr. D. M. Bennett underwent a term of imprisonment at Auburn for sending through the post a pamphlet by Mr. Heywood on the marriage question. Just after his arrest Mr. Bennett stated: “My only object in selling this pamphlet is to vindicate the liberty of thought, of the press, and of the mails. I have always announced that I did not approve of it; but as long as Mr. Heywood does, I declare that he has a right to mail it as part of his right to publish it, and as a necessary part of the freedom of the press. If this means that I am to go to prison, to prison let it be.”

From this necessarily slight and incomplete sketch of the position of the movement abroad it will be seen that the theory of Malthus is gradually leavening the thought and helping to shape the destinies of the civilised world.