preserved to produce in time a still less powerful progeny.

Do I say that we ought not to save these people if we can? God
forbid. The weakly, the diseased whether infant or adult, is here
on earth; a British citizen; no more responsible for his own
weakness than for his own existence. Society, that is, in plain
English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for both; and we
must fulfil the duty, and keep him in life; and, if we can, heal,
strengthen, develop him to the utmost; and make the best of that
which "fate and our own deservings" have given us to deal with. I
do not speak of higher motives still; motives which, to every
minister of religion, must be paramount and awful. I speak merely
of physical and social motives, such as appeal to the conscience
of every man--the instinct which bids every human-hearted man or
woman to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His sun to
shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain to fall on the
just and on the unjust.

But it is palpable that in doing so we must, year by year,
preserve a large percentage of weakly persons who, marrying freely
in their own class, must produce weaklier children, and they
weaklier children still. Must, did I say? There are those who
are of opinion--and I, after watching and comparing the histories
of many families, indeed of every one with whom I have come in
contact for now five-and-thirty years, in town and country, can
only fear that their opinion is but too well founded on fact--that
in the great majority of cases, in all classes whatsoever, the
children are not equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their
grand-parents of the beginning of the century; and that this
degrading process goes on most surely and most rapidly in our