Birth control, in the sense of the prevention of pregnancy by chemical,
mechanical, or other artificial means, is being widely advocated as a sure
method of lessening poverty and of increasing the physical and mental
health of the nation. It is, therefore, advisable to examine these claims
and the grounds on which they are based. The following investigation will
prove that the propaganda throughout Western Europe and America in favour
of artificial birth control is based on a mere assumption, bolstered up by
economic and statistical fallacies; that Malthusian teaching is contrary to
reason and to fact; that Neo-Malthusian practices are disastrous alike to
nations and to individuals; and that those practices are in themselves an
offence against the Law of Nature, whereby the Divine Will is expressed in
creation.

(a) _Malthus_

The Rev. Thomas Malthus, M.A., in 1798 published his _Essay on the
Principle of Population_. His pamphlet was an answer to Condorcet
and Godwin, who held that vice and poverty were the result of human
institutions and could be remedied by an even distribution of property.
Malthus, on the other hand, believed that population increased more rapidly
than the means of subsistence, and consequently that vice and poverty were
always due to overpopulation and not to any particular form of society or
of government. He stated that owing to the relatively slow rate at
which the food supply of countries was increased, a high birth-rate [1]
inevitably led to all the evils of poverty, war, and high death-rates.
In an infamous passage he wrote that there was no vacant place for the
superfluous child at Nature's mighty feast; that Nature told the child to
be gone; and that she quickly executed her own order. This passage was
modified in the second, and deleted from the third edition of the Essay. In