The artificial check system has to bear the credit of producing
that ignominious specimen of impism. It cannot be denied
that as far as regards child-life, its practice must be to the last
degree injurious. If ill-instructed persons of low intellectual
type are led — which under the system of Neo-Malthusianism
they would undoubtedly be— to consider children to be mere
nuisances and burdens, hindrances to personal enjoyment, we
can readily understand what a fate there is in store for English
child-life. In some cases this is already bad enough now, but
what would it likely be if it should be still further despised
and repudiated? It would gradually cease to be the holy
thing which it is still fortunately considered to be, and more
selfish, brutal considerations would inevitably arise in connec-
tion with it. Any practice calculated to bring child-life or love
for children into contempt would undoubtedly tend to increase
infanticide, child massacre, and ill-treatment of all kinds. " I
didn't want, and I don't want the brat," would be heard far
more frequently than even it is now.
Those who are acquainted with French manners and
customs know how very high the death-rate is amongst the
children of wet nurses, who are so much sought after in
France. Their children are left in the nominal care of relatives
whose greatest interest is that they should not live, and they
do not.
