Note 102 — Chapter VII · THE EFFECT OF RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION ON POPULATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE.

We are not obliged here to enter into details of administration. Perhaps it would be no more than just to give parents their choice between living with their children, which is often so painful, and an annual sum, proportional to the salary and resources of the children. This sum might be taxed by the state or the commune, and paid by it to the father. Every head of a family would at once reflect that if he some day becomes poor and has but one child he will have but one source of income, whereas, if he has ten children, he will have ten sources of income, and ten chances that one of them may be considerable; as it would be if any of one’s children should have become wealthy. A numerous family would thus constitute a guarantee of independence for the father; on the other hand, the more he expended in educating them, the greater chance he would have of later obtaining an equivalent return for it. In labouring for the augmentation of the social capital he would thus be securing an insurance for his old age. Even supposing that the execution of a law of this kind should be difficult, the right of parents to some really active gratitude on the part of their children should be recognized and consecrated formally by the letter of the law, which should prescribe a line of conduct for children and even fix a certain appropriate ratio between their income and the amount of their remittances to their parents. The law should even do what in it lies to efface from the language, in especial in their applicability to those who have generously fulfilled their duties of paternity, the shameful words: être à la charge de ses enfants—dependent on his children for support; the public should be made accustomed to consider this sort of dependence not as an accident to the children, and as a misfortune, and almost a disgrace, to the parents, but as a natural consequence of the relation of parent and child.