......“After making all allowances for minor contributory
causes, the fact remains and may be proved by a little inquiry,
that married people have come to regard a large family as a
curse instead of a Divine blessing. The birth-rates in London
are instructive. Residential districts, with fewest poor, show
the lowest rates. Hampstead 16·6 and Fulham 32·3 may be taken
as typical districts at each end of the scale. Stepney with its
Jewish population has a rate of 37. If the Aliens Bill is to be
effective it will need a clause compelling Jews to limit their
families, just as their Christian (!) neighbours do. The misery
of it all is that we find the practice of child murder, for
such it is in plain English, defended by men of education;
lawyers, medical men, and even priests make no secret of their
approval of it, if no more. And as working men become aware of
what their ‘betters’ are saying and doing--and they are not
slow to follow a similar course--the evil spreads. Our proper
leaders, the Bishops, ought long ago to have dealt with this
subject resolutely and firmly. But apparently a grain of
incense is a more terrible thing to them than the murder of an
existing if unborn personality. We can only judge by their
public utterances, but we have yet to learn that as a body
their lordships have spent a thousandth part of the time over
this supreme question of national morality that they have
devoted to the suppression of things disapproved of by Lady
Wimborne and her league. The spectacle of disproportionate
interest and action is melancholy, and indicative of incapacity
to observe the real dangers to be faced.”