THE MALTHUSIAN LEAGUE OF ENGLAND. The Origin and History of Birth Control in Great Britain. Reprinted from The Malthusian, April, 1880.
Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of large families is regarded in the same light as drunkenness, or any other physical excess.—John Stuart Mill, 1872.
In obedience to the request of the Nestor of political economists of Europe, the distinguished editor of the Journal des Economistes of Paris, M. Joseph Garnier, we give a short account of the reasons which led to the foundation of the Malthusian League, the latest product of the nineteenth century’s ideas in the direction of social progress. It gives us unfeigned pleasure to be the means of making the most thorough of all French writers on the doctrines of our English latter-day economists acquainted with the position which the great population question has recently assumed in this country. It is not, we believe, too much to allege that the most advanced thinkers of this country are at this moment well aware of the existence of the new-Malthusian remedy for the evils of society. How this has come to pass we proceed at once to show.
It was not long after the publication of Mr. Malthus’ work that some thoughtful men began to notice that in modern France the late marriage customs of most European states were replaced to a certain extent by prudence after marriage. Mr. Francis Place was one of the first to write a work on population, in which he recommended the physical checks so commonly made use of by the French parents for adoption in England. He is said to have remonstrated with Mr. Malthus about an expression in the first edition of his essay, in which he spoke of such checks under the head of Vice, and the tradition is that Malthus left out the expression in his subsequent edition: and, as he himself had two children, Mr. Porter (of Nottingham) believes that Mr. Malthus was, like Mr. Mill (the father of John Stuart Mill), himself a believer in the conjugal prudence practised by the better class of peasantry and townspeople. Mr. Place is also said to have converted Mr. Robert Owen, the socialist to his opinion, and it is believed that Mr. Owen owed the success of his colony of New Lanark to a knowledge of this point, which he communicated to his workmen. Mr. Robert Dale Owen, a son of Robert Owen, emigrated in his youth to the United States of America, and became before his death, in 1877, one of the foremost citizens of the western republic. That gentleman, having doubtless heard the question discussed by his father, Mr. Francis Place, and other friends in London, was induced in 1830 to publish a now well-known treatise on the population question, entitled Moral Physiology, a work written with the most philanthropic design and couched in the most careful language consistent with clearness and the attainment of its end, in which he gave a description of the above-mentioned physical checks. This work was, however, written subsequently to the publication of Mr. Richard Carlile’s tract, entitled Every Woman’s Book, which was a most outspoken work, written by one of those fearless thinkers who have done so much to complete the reformation in England and secure freedom of speech and of the press for this country. Had it not been for him and his co-workers, England might at this day have been in as backward a condition as modern Spain. Dr. Charles Knowlton, an able physician of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., was the next person who wrote upon this question in his now famous little pamphlet, the Fruits of Philosophy, wherein there was contained a good deal of popular information on physiology, and a careful account of the checks spoken of by Mr. Dale Owen and Mr. Carlile. This work was followed after a long interval by a small pamphlet by Mr. Austin Holyoake, entitled Large and Small Families, which, in company with the tracts by Carlile, Owen, and two other works were sold for many years by booksellers of the ultra-liberal party, latterly styled the Secularists.
In 1876 the Fruits of Philosophy, after circulating without notice for forty years, was suddenly attacked as an obscene publication under an Act of Parliament called “Lord Campbell’s Act,” and a bookseller in Bristol, of the name of Cook, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for selling it. The London publisher of the work, Mr. C. Watts, was also prosecuted for selling it, but, on submission, was let off with merely the payment of costs, or about two hundred pounds fine. The work would have been suppressed had not Mr. C. Bradlaugh, the head of the Secularist party and editor of the National Reformer, the most advanced liberal journal in England, in company with a young but already most distinguished lady, Mrs. Annie Besant, come forward and sold it openly. In order to try the case, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant entered into partnership in a publishing establishment in Stonecutter Street, Farringdon Street, London, and sold the Fruits of Philosophy quite openly, sending copies of it to the city authorities. Mr. Bradlaugh had for many years been an avowed Malthusian, and the lady also was quite convinced of the importance of the question. Both were determined that no bigoted society should put the work under the ban of the law without a fight for it. The case was first tried at Guildhall, and was sent on to the Court of Queen’s Bench, before the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. The trial began on the 18th of June, 1877, and lasted three days. The jury contained, among other persons of wealth and position, the name of Arthur Walter, Esq., the son of the proprietor of the Times journal. After a most powerful defence, in which Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh delivered speeches which told most powerfully upon the judge and all present in the Court, the jury delivered the following verdict: “We are unanimously of the opinion that the book in question (the Fruits of Philosophy) is calculated to deprave public morals; but at the same time we entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt motives in publishing it.” The judge—who had charged quite in favor of the defendants—would have let them off with a nominal fine, but, influenced by the information that they intended carrying on the sale of the work, strangely sentenced them to a heavy imprisonment and fine. Fortunately, the higher Court of Appeal decided that there had been an error in the indictment, and thus the defendants were set free. The prosecution has not been repeated since that date.
The excitement caused by the trial led to the formation of a society called The Malthusian League, which was set on foot as a means of opposing both active and passive resistance to the attempts made to stifle discussion on the population question. Mr. Bradlaugh had commenced such a league many years previously, but the time was not ripe for it. The first meeting of the League was held in the Minor Hall of the Hall of Science, Old Street, on July 17th, 1877, for the election of officers. That meeting elected Dr. C. R. Drysdale president, and Mrs. Annie Besant honorary secretary, in company with Mr. Hember and Mr. R. Shearer. The Council of the League consisted of Messrs. Bell, Brown, Dray, Page, Mr. and Mrs. Parris, Mr. and Mrs. Rennick, Messrs. Rivers, Seyler, G. Standing, Truelove, and Young. Mr. Swaagman was elected treasurer to the League.
Very soon after the formation of the League, another prosecution of Mr. Edward Truelove, bookseller, of High Holborn, took place in the Queen’s Bench on February 1st, 1878. The works he was prosecuted for were quite of the same character as Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy, and were entitled: More Physiology, a most philanthropic pamphlet by Mr. Robert Dale Owen, Senator of the United States, and another pamphlet entitled Individual, Family and National Poverty. Mr. Truelove was most effectually defended by Mr. William Hunter, and the case fell through, as one of the jury considered the book quite moral and philanthropic in its tendencies. The secretary for the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” Mr. Collette by name, followed up the prosecution, and Mr. Truelove was tried in the Central Criminal Court on May 9th, 1878, and condemned to a fine of fifty pounds and an imprisonment of four months duration, which he underwent. An immense meeting was held in St. James Hall, on the evening of June 6, 1878, to protest against this disgraceful treatment of an honest man like Mr. Truelove, at which the president of the League took the chair, and enthusiastic addresses were delivered by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh.
The trial of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh lasted several days, and aroused a greater interest in the subject than had been known since the days of Malthus. The English Press was full of the subject; scientific congresses gave it their attention; many noted political economists wrote about it; over a hundred petitions were presented to Parliament requesting the freedom of open discussion; meetings of thousands of persons were held in all the large cities; and as result, a strong Neo-Malthusian League was formed in London.
From the small beginning described in the above article the English work has spread over all the rest of the world. The following is a list of the leagues having membership in the Federation Universelle de la Regeneration Humaine, in which the English organization has always played a leading part: