SIR – George Osborne’s recent Budget announcement that from April 2017, new recipients of tax or housing benefits will receive child benefit only for the first two children, has provoked little concern, even from his critics (Home news, July 10). The public are generally supportive of this measure to promote “behavioural change” – unsurprisingly, given the popularity of reality TV shows about so-called “fat, thick, lazy welfare cheats”. Thomas Malthus’s proposals to reduce the population living on outdoor relief led to the destitute poor and mentally and physically disabled being tidied away into workhouses, the sexes strictly segregated to prevent “proliferation”; little boys were separated from their mothers and sisters, as my own father remembered only too well. It was in one of these grim deterrents that one of my aunts died, aged four years old. Malthus proposed to legally punish the poor by denying their children public assistance, but abortion was illegal; now it has become public policy, heavily disguised as “a woman’s right to choose” for the progressive Left, while the retrogressive Right can rest assured that it will “deal with” the consequences of that other economy measure, the closure of public institutions, by curbing births. The poor, meanwhile, will have no choice but to sacrifice their children. We may yet face the prospect of euthanasia for the aged, and doubtless Rob Marris, the Labour MP behind the assisted dying Bill, will unite Left and Right. The radical William Cobbett railed against Malthus; where are the Cobbetts of today? Yours faithfully, Ann Farmer (Mrs) Woodford Green, Essex