Now we have no certain knowledge yet of the facts which he quotes. So states Parent Duchâtelet in his work on “Prostitution.”
From all the information which I have been able to gather, I find that all the remedies for pauperism and fecundity—sanctioned by universal practice, philosophy, political economy, and the latest reformers—may be summed up in the following list: masturbation, onanism,[1] sodomy, tribadie, polyandry,[2] prostitution, castration, continence, abortion, and infanticide.[3]
All these methods being proved inadequate, there remains proscription.
Unfortunately, proscription, while decreasing the number of the poor, increases their proportion. If the interest charged by the proprietor upon the product is equal only to one-twentieth of the product (by law it is equal to one-twentieth of the capital), it follows that twenty laborers produce for nineteen only; because there is one among them, called proprietor, who eats the share of two. Suppose that the twentieth laborer—the poor one—is killed: the production of the following year will be diminished one-twentieth; consequently the nineteenth will have to yield his portion, and
- ↑ Hoc inter se differunt onanismus et manuspratio, nempe quod hæc a solitario exercetur, ille autem a duobus reciprocatur, masculo scilicet et fæmina. Porro fœdam hanc onanismi venerem ludentes uxoria mariti habent nunc omnium suavissimam.
- ↑ Polyandry, — plurality of husbands.
- ↑ Infanticide has just been publicly advocated in England, in a pamphlet written by a disciple of Malthus. He proposes an annual massacre of the innocents in all families containing more children than the law allows; and he asks that a magnificent cemetery, adorned with statues, groves, fountains, and flowers, be set apart as a special burying-place for the superfluous children. Mothers would resort to this delightful spot to dream of the happiness of these little angels, and would return, quite comforted, to give birth to others, to be buried in their turn.
