# Bradlaugh's restraint concerned births, not necessarily sexual intercourse

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH06.P014](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH06.P014/#char=1753,1821): "Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little"

The compressed joke depends on treating sexual restraint and restraint of reproduction as equivalent. Bradlaugh and Annie Besant's publishers' preface to Charles Knowlton's *Fruits of Philosophy* instead advocates preventing conception to avoid poverty, infant mortality and injury to mothers. Their proposal allowed a distinction between limiting births and renouncing intercourse; it was not simply a demand for more Christian chastity. The inspected witness is Project Gutenberg's 2011 electronic text, updated in 2013, which reproduces the preface signed by both publishers. Knowlton's work first appeared in 1832; the relevant British republication campaign belongs to 1877, not that original publication. [Publishers' preface](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38185/pg38185-images.html#link2H_4_0001).

This qualifies the apparent contradiction. An opponent could consistently object both to restrictions on sexual activity and to opposition to contraceptive family limitation. Chesterton makes both objections fall under the single word sexuality. The preface establishes the campaign's actual distinction, but does not identify a particular sentence in Bradlaugh as Chesterton's target or prove that Chesterton read this edition. A separately catalogued Wellcome copy is a second new edition with notes, dated only provisionally [1877?]; it should not be silently equated with Gutenberg's unidentified print exemplar. [Wellcome catalogue](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/btk9sbsx).

## Sources

- [Darwin Correspondence Project: To Charles Bradlaugh, 6 June 1877](https://darwin-editorial.darwinproject.ac.uk/view/letters/DCP-LETT-10988), Editorial historical context and bibliography identifying Knowlton 1832 and the 1877 Bradlaugh-Besant republication; chronology only
- [Charles Knowlton, Fruits of Philosophy, edited by Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38185/pg38185-images.html#link2H_4_0001), Publishers' Preface, especially paragraphs beginning 'We believe, with the Rev. Mr. Malthus' through 'The poor preacher'; Gutenberg ebook 38185 (2011; updated 2013), print exemplar unspecified
- [Wellcome Collection catalogue: Fruits of philosophy](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/btk9sbsx), Publication/Creation; Edition; Notes: London, Freethought Publishing Company, [1877?], Second new edition, with notes

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