“It is evident,” he continues, “that the constant tendency of the births in every country to supply the vacancies made by death, cannot, in a moral point of view, afford the slightest shadow of excuse for the wanton sacrifice of men. The positive evil that is committed in this case, the pain, misery, and wide-spreading desolation and sorrow, that are occasioned to the existing inhabitants, can by no means be counterbalanced by the consideration that the numerical breach in the population will be rapidly repaired. We can have no other right, moral or political, except that of the most urgent necessity, to exchange the life of beings in the full vigour of their enjoyments for an equal number of helpless infants.”
The next passage shows how immensely ameliorated is the condition of modern France, as compared with that before the Revolution. “At all times,” says our author, “the number of males of a military age in France was small in proportion to the population, on account of the tendency to marriage (1 to 113 of the population, according to Necker), and the great number of children. Necker takes particular notice of this circumstance. He observes that the effect of the very great misery of the peasantry is to produce a dreadful mortality of infants under three or four years of age; and the consequence is that the number of young children will always be in too great a proportion to the number of grown-up people. A million of individuals, he justly observes, will, in this case, neither present the same military force, nor the same capacity of labour, as an equal number of individuals in a country where the people are less miserable. Switzerland, before the Revolution, could have brought into the field, or have employed in labour appropriate to grown-up persons, one-third more in proportion to her population, than France at the same period.”
How strikingly all this has been altered by the prudent habits with regard to families, induced by the peasant holdings in France, is clearly seen by the following statistics:—Between the ages of 20 and 60 the human frame is most capable of production, and, according to Kolb, there are in 10,000 persons in the several States in Europe the following numbers of persons of the productive ages: In France, 5,373; in Holland, 4,964; in Sweden, 4,954; in Great Britain, 4,732; and in the United States, 4,396. France has, of all nations in Europe, the highest average of ages of the living. Thus it is there 31·06 years: in Holland, 27·76; in Sweden, 27·66; in Great Britain, 26·56; and in the United States, 23·10. And in France there are a greater number of persons who attain to old age than in any other country, for, out of 100 deaths there are, in France, over the age of sixty, 36; in Switzerland, 34; in England, 30; in Belgium, 28; in Wurtemburg, 21; in Prussia, 19; and in Austria, 17.
But the most notable of all the facts of modern Europe is that marriages are more prevalent in proportion to population in France than elsewhere, and, curiously, there is the smallest number of illegitimate births. Thus, the illegitimate births in France were, from 1825–67, only 7·27 per cent. of all births, whilst in Prussia they were 8·24 per cent. in 1867; in Sweden they were 10 per cent.; in Austria, 11; and in Bavaria, in 1868, even 22 per cent. of all births. Paris is an exception to this, for the illegitimate births there are about one-fourth of all births.
France had, in 1867, a mortality of only 1 in 44·24 persons; whilst in Prussia the death-rate was 1 in 33·88, in Austria 1 in 29·72, in Holland 1 in 36·25, and in Bavaria 1 in 34·65 inhabitants. And here again is a striking contrast of modern France with the country of the days of Necker. France has now the lowest birth-rate of Europe. There is but one birth annually there in 39 inhabitants, whilst in Prussia there is one birth in 25·47; in Holland 1 in 29; in Austria 1 in 26: in England 1 in 28 inhabitants. According to an article by M. Bertillon on Marriage, in 1877, the average family to a marriage in France is at present only 3: against 4·68 in Germany, 3·96 in Russia, 4·35 in Spain, and 4·25 in England. This is what has been recently styled in Europe the “two (or rather three) Children System of the French.” When we hear of the absurdly high birth-rate of 4·68 of Germany, need we wonder that the death-rate in many German towns sometimes amounts to one-half of all born in the first year of life?
France had, in 1872, a population of 36,102,921, and the number of births with this population (966,001) did not come up to what it was in the days of Necker, when the population was only 26¼ millions. And whilst the population of the United Kingdom, according to our Registrar-General, is increasing at the rate of 1,173 a day, of which about 700 are left to swell the home population, the surplus of births over deaths in France is generally not much more than some 60,000 persons annually added to her population, so that it would take some 300 years for that country to double at its present rate.
As a consequence of our great birth-rate, 36 per 1,000, there is naturally a great emigration, amounting, as the Registrar-General tells us, to some 468 persons daily from these shores on an average, an emigration which, as it has been mainly masculine, has left us a surplus of nearly one million of women in these islands. In France there is no great need for emigration; and hence but little takes place; whilst, so contented are the peasant proprietors with their homes, that, in 1872, it was found that of the 36 millions of France 30½ millions were born within the registration districts. This fact accounts for the continuance of a Republic in France. Poverty is the cause of the ruin of Republics.
We add a few passages from a recent author to show how great a step has been taken by the inhabitants of many parts of France towards the removal of that terrible indigence which is found in most European countries, and even in less favoured districts in France.
In an article on Auvergne, written in 1874 and contained in his work entitled Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy, which appeared last year, Mr. Cliffe Leslie makes the following remarks: “The minute sub-division of land during the last 25 years in the Limagne, whatever may be its tendencies for good or evil in manners and other respects, assuredly cannot be ascribed to over-population, once regarded in England as the inevitable consequence of the French law of succession.... The Report of the Enquête Agricole on the department states: ‘All the witnesses have declared that one of the principal causes of the diminution of the population is the diminution of children in families. Each family usually wishes for only one child; and when there are two, it is the result of a mistake (une erreur), or that having had a daughter first, they desire to have a son.’ A poor woman near Royat, to whom I put some questions respecting wages and prices, asked whether my wife and children were there, or at one of the other watering places, and seemed greatly surprised that I had neither. She thought an English tourist must be rich enough to have several children; but when asked how many she had herself, she answered, with a significant smile, ‘One lad; that’s quite enough.’ Our conversation at this point was as follows:—‘Votre dame et vos enfants, sont ils à Royat?’ ‘Non.’ ‘Ou donc? A Mont Dore?’ ‘Moi, je n’ai ni enfants ni femme.’ ‘Quoi! Pas encore?!’ ‘Et vous, combien d’enfants avez-vous?’ ‘Un gars: c’est bien assez. Nous sommes pauvres, mais vous êtes riche. Cela fait une petite difference.’ The translation of which is: ‘Are your wife and children at Royat?’ ‘No.’ ‘Where then? At Mont Dore?’ ‘I have neither wife nor children.’ ‘What! Not yet?!’ ‘And you, how many children have you?’ ‘One boy: that is quite enough. We are poor, but you are rich. That makes a little difference.’”
Mr. Leslie continues, p. 424: “If over-population gives rise to tremendous problems in India, the decline in the number of children in France seems almost equally serious. If two children are born to each married couple, a population must decline, because a considerable number will not reach maturity. If only one child be born to each pair, a nation must rapidly become extinct. The French law of succession is producing exactly the opposite effect to what was predicted in this country. Had parents in France complete testamentary power, there would not be the same reason for limiting the number of children. M. Leon Iscot, accordingly, in his evidence on this subject before the Enquête Agricole on the Puy-de-Dome, said—‘The number of births in families has diminished one-half. We must come to liberty of testation. In countries like England, where testamentary liberty exists, families have more children.’”