Their atrocity is equalled only by their absurdity.
The ancients made a practice of abandoning their children.

The wholesale and retail slaughter of slaves, civil and foreign wars, also lent their aid.

In Rome (where property held full sway), these three means were employed so effectively, and for so long a time, that finally the empire found itself without inhabitants.

When the barbarians arrived, nobody was to be found; the fields were no longer cultivated; grass grew in the streets of the Italian cities.
In China, from time immemorial, upon famine alone has devolved the task of sweeping away the poor.

The people living almost exclusively upon rice, if an accident causes the crop to fail, in a few days hunger kills the inhabitants by myriads; and the Chinese historian records in the annals of the empire, that in such a year of such an emperor twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred thousand inhabitants died of starvation.
Then they bury the dead, and recommence the production of children until another famine leads to the same result.