Of such sage policy the result can be seen in the wizened and undersized submerged of London; of nearer than London.

Man, by not taking thought, has taken a cubit from his stature.
Meantime we prate comfortable blasphemies, scientific or other; natural selection or the inscrutable decrees of God.

Whereas this was manifestly a Hobson's selection, most unnatural and forced, to choose want of all that makes life sweet and dear; to choose gaunt babes, with pinched and livid lips--unlovely, not unloved; and these iniquitous decrees are most scrutable, are surely of man's devising and not of God's.

Or we invent a fire-new science, known as Eugenics, to treat the disease by new naming of symptoms: and prattle of the well born, when we mean well fed; or the degenerate, when we might more truly say the disinherited.
It is even held by certain poltroons that families have been started gutterward, of late centuries, when a father has been gloriously slain in the wars of the useless great.

That such a circumstance, however glorious, may have been rather disadvantageous than otherwise to children thereby sent out into the world at six or sixteen years, lucky to become ditch-diggers or tip-takers.