Dr. Billings says, (Forum, June 1893) "So far as we have data with
regard to the use of intoxicating liquors, fertility seems greatest in
those countries and amongst those classes where they are most freely
used."

Neither is the criminal blessed with the important attributes of
prudence and self-control. They are conspicuous by their absence in him.

In all defectives, in epileptics, idiots, the physical deformed, the
insane, and the criminal, the prudence and self-restraint necessary to
the limitation of families is either partially or entirely absent.

To the poor in crowded localities, with limited room-space and
insanitary surroundings, effective self-restraint is more difficult than
in any other class of society.

In all defectives the sexual instinct is as strong, if not stronger,
than in the normal, and they have not that interest in life, and regard
for the future that suggest restraint, nor have they the power to
practise it though prudence were to guide them.

The higher checks to population, as they exist among the better classes
of people, do not obtain amongst the defectives taken as a class.

Vice and misery are more active checks amongst the very poor, and
abortion is practised to a very considerable extent, but the appalling
fact remains, that the birth-rate of the unfit goes on undisturbed,
while the introduction of higher checks amongst the normal classes has
led to a marked decline, more marked than at first sight appears. The