that therefore our system of industrial capitalism was in harmony with the
Will of God. Most comforting dogma! Most excellent anodyne for conscience
against acceptance of those rights of man that, being ignored, found
terrible expression in the French Revolution! Without discussion,
without investigation, and without proof, our professors, politicians,
leader-writers, and even our well-meaning socialists, have accepted as
true the bare falsehood that there is always an insufficient supply of the
necessities of life; and to-day this heresy permeates all our practical
politics. In giving this forged law of nature to the rich, Malthus robbed
the poor of hope. Such was his crime against humanity. In the words of
Thorold Rogers, Malthusianism was part and parcel of "a conspiracy,
conceived by the law and carried out by parties interested in its success,
to cheat the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to
deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into immediate poverty." When
Malthusians enter a slum for the purpose of preaching birth control, it is
right that the people should be told what is written on the passports of
these strangers.

(b) _A Hindrance to Reform_

The teaching of birth control amongst the poor is in itself a crime,
because, apart from the evil practice, the people are asked to believe a
lie, namely, that a high birth-rate is the cause of poverty and that
by means of birth-control their circumstances will be improved. By
one advocate of birth control this weak reasoning and inconsequential
sentimentality have actually been crowded into the compass of a single
sentence: "We must no longer be content to remain indifferent and idle
witnesses of the senseless and unthinking procreating of countless wretched
children, whose parents are diseased and vicious." [22] It is true that
disease, vice, and wretched children are the saddest products of our