“_There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets._”
Every three months with unfailing regularity small paragraphs appear
in the daily papers headed “RECORD LOW BIRTH-RATE.” Some figures
follow, and then occurs the sentence--unhappily a stereotyped one in
our day--“_This is the lowest rate recorded in any quarter since civil
registration began._”
Now and again a blue-book upon the subject of the birth-rate is
dissected by a journalist and the result appears in his newspaper as a
series of startling figures. The story of England’s decadence is set
out in the plainest language for every one to read.
At rarer intervals still, some prominent clergyman or sociologist
writes or lectures in order to call attention to what is going on, and
thus to bring home the spiritual and economic dangers of our racial
suicide.
A few people read or listen and are convinced. A good many other
people are too utterly ignorant of either the Philosophy of
Christianity or the Science of Sociology to understand in the least
what the point of view of the protesters is. According to their
temperament, they smile quietly and dismiss the subject, or bellow
their disgust at such a subject being mentioned at all.
“He who far off beholds another dancing,
And all the time
Hears not the music that he dances to,
Thinks him a madman.”
A party which has the fools at its back is always in the majority, and
discussion is stifled, alarm is lulled by the anodyne of indifference
and the great number of honest folk who call themselves both Patriots
and Christians have no time to spare from fighting and squabbling for
money--in order that the dishonest men may not get it all.
Half-a-dozen problems of extreme national importance confront every
thinking English man and woman in 1907. The air is thick with their
stir and movement, and so great is the noise and reverberation of them
that true “royalty” of “_inward_ happiness” seems a thing impossible
and past by in these troubled times. Be that as it may, it is quite
certain that one of the most real and pressing of these problems is
that summed up in the stock phrase “Record Low Birth-rate.”
We hear a great deal about the doings of a class of people who are
referred to as “The Smart Set,” and it is actually said that its
influence is having a serious effect upon the national character. I do
not believe it for a moment. It seems a folly to suppose that a
handful of champagne corks floating on a cess-pool has any
far-reaching influence upon the English home. I mention that small
section of society constituted by the idle and luxurious rich,
because, whatever their vices are, they are being used as whipping-boy
for enormous numbers of people whose lives are equally guilty with
theirs in at least one regard--in the matter of which I am writing
now.
I propose in this essay to discuss the question of the decline in the
birth-rate from the Christian and Catholic standpoint. There is only
one perfect philosophy, and all other half-true philosophies in the
light of which we might consider such a momentous matter as this, lead
only to the conclusion that expediency is the highest good. Without
the incentive of the Christian Faith and without the light of the
Incarnation one may sit in a corner and think till “all’s blue in
cloud cuckoo land.” Christianity can alone be reconciled with
Economics, theory and practice celebrating always the marriage of the
King’s son, the wedding of Heaven and Earth, the spiritual and the
material. Plato knew that it was impossible to raise the Greek state
to the level of his philosophic principles, and Aristotle frankly
abandons the attempt to connect ethics and politics with the highest
conclusions of his creed. We are in the same position to-day if we
ignore the supreme truth which is our possession and which was not
vouchsafed to the great Greek thinkers.
* * * * *
There is one cause and one cause only of the decline in the birth-rate
and the beginning of the country’s spiritual and material suicide.
The way of Nature is for every species to increase nearly to its
possible maximum of numbers. This is a proved law, and nothing but the
limitation of families by artificial means, or infanticide, can check
its operation.
The truth is exactly as Dr. Barry put it nearly two years ago, “It
stands confessed that the great, proud, English race, famous as a
people for manly virtues, once the very Stoics of Christian Europe
decline more and more to be fathers and mothers, will not be worried
with children, and--cannot be spoken of in decent language.”
It is a truth of history that when a nation begins to refuse the
responsibility of providing for posterity it begins to decline.
The doctrines of Malthus in his great _Essay on the Principles of
Population_, are no longer believed in by the Christian philosopher.
Malthus was perfectly sound upon the ethical problem, and the
“Neo-Malthusians,” of whom I shall presently speak, have no right
whatever to use his name upon their banners. Malthus, so the modern
socialistic thinker, such as Mr. H. G. Wells avers, “demonstrated for
all time that a State whose population continues to increase in
obedience to unchecked instinct can progress only from bad to worse.
From the point of view of human comfort and happiness the increase of
population that occurs at each advance in human security is the
greatest evil of life.”
Malthus, however, never once suggested or advocated the limitation of
population by mechanical means. He believed that it was a patriotic
duty of men and women to _abstain from producing more children_ than
the State could bear, and it is as well to remove at once a popular
misconception which stains the name of a good man and a powerful
though mistaken thinker.
Otter says of him in a memoir, “His life was more than any other we
have ever witnessed, a perpetual flow of enlightened benevolence,
contentment and peace; it was the best and purest philosophy,
brightened by Christian views and softened by Christian charity.”
It is economically and from the sociological point of view that the
modern student condemns the theories of Malthus and those who follow
him.
Socialist thinkers disregard the entity of nations, and treat of the
world and its population as a whole. The Christian Patriot loves his
own country, believes in its destiny no less than he reveres its past,
and knows that if our English nation is going to live, it must go on
reproducing itself.
The “no room to live” theory is preposterous upon the face of it. In
1879, Lord Derby asked a somewhat obvious question. “Surely,” he said,
“it is better to have thirty-five millions of human beings leading
useful and intelligent lives, rather than forty millions struggling
painfully for a bare subsistence.”
This has been made into a watchword by those who advocate the
limitation of population.
It can be answered by a simple statement of fact--in our colonies
there are places for a hundred million wives.
While I have not lost sight of the main object of this paper--to
summarize the weight of Catholic Christian feeling upon the
_mechanical_ limitation of population, and to tell how this is being
accomplished--I find that there is yet some ground to be cleared
before coming to the main issue.
I have said that there is only one material cause of our decadence,
but there are many reasons.
More than a year ago in one or two newspapers, particularly the _Daily
Chronicle_, various sociologists gave the results of their thought
upon the matter. I print a few extracts here.