debtors to the State, would help to reconcile popular ideas of the
'liberty of the subject' with the enforcement as well as the passing of
such laws. But the notions of drastically enforcing parental duties,
and of discouraging and even prohibiting the marriages of those unable
to show their ability to perform these duties, has long prevailed. See
Nicholl's _History of the Poor Law_ (1898, New Edition), i. 229,
and ii. 140, 278, where you will find chargeable bastardy has been
punishable in the first offence by one year's imprisonment, and in the
second, by imprisonment until sureties are given, which thus might
amount to imprisonment for life. See also, J. S. Mill, _Political
Economy_, Bk. II., ch. ii., for extreme legislation on the Continent
against the marriage of people unable to support a family. In Denmark
there seem to be very severe laws impeding the marriage of those who
have been paupers. The English law was sufficiently effective to
produce infanticide, so that a law was passed making concealment of
birth almost infanticide."]

So much for the worst fringe of this question, the maltreated children,
the children of the slum, the children of drunkards and criminals, and
the illegitimate. But the bulk of the children of deficient growth, the
bulk of the excessive mortality, lies above the level of such
intervention, and the method of attack of the New Republican must be
less direct. Happily there already exists a complicated mass of
legislation that without any essential change of principle could be
applied to this object.

The first of the expedients which would lead to a permanent improvement
in these matters is the establishment of a minimum of soundness and
sanitary convenience in houses, below which standard it shall be
illegal to inhabit a house at all. There should be a certain relation