Mr. Leslie puzzles us terribly. He recommends, in an essay on The Celibacy of the Nation, that the state of female celibacy should be greatly encouraged in all countries that desire to have happy marriages, but yet he is against the two children system of the French. Decidedly, Mr. Leslie has not thought out the question. He adds, on p. 424: “Whatever may be thought of the change which is taking place in France in respect of the numbers of the population, there is one change of which no other country has equal reason to be proud. Its agricultural population before the Revolution was in the last extremity of poverty and misery—their normal condition was half-starvation; they could scarcely be said to be clothed; their appearance in many places was hardly human. No other country in Europe, taken as a whole, can now show, upon the whole, so comfortable, happy, prosperous, and respectable a peasantry.”
In an article on “Holidays in Eastern France, Seine et Marne,” in Fraser’s Magazine, September, 1878, we find this passage:—“We are in the midst of one of the wealthiest and best cultivated regions of France, and when we penetrate below the surface we find that in manners and customs, as well as dress and outward appearance, the peasant, and agricultural population generally, differ no little from their remoter fellow-countrymen, the Bretons.... There is no superstition, hardly a trace of poverty, and little that is poetic. The people are rich, laborious, and progressive.... It is a significant fact that in this well-educated district, where newspapers are read by the poorest, and where well-being is the rule and poverty a rare exception, the church is empty on Sunday and the priest’s authority is nil.
“It is delightful to witness the widespread well-being of this highly-favoured region. ‘There is no poverty here,’ say my host and hostess, ‘and that is why life is so pleasant.’ True enough! Wherever you go you find well-dressed contented-looking people—no rags, no squalor, no pinched want.... The habitual look of content written upon the faces you meet is very striking. It seems as if in this land of Goshen life were no burden, but matter of satisfaction only. Class distinctions can hardly be said to exist. There are employers and employed, masters and servants, of course; but the line of demarcation is lightly drawn, and we find an easy familiarity existing between them, wholly free from impoliteness, much less vulgarity.... One is struck, too, by the good looks, intelligence, and trim appearance of the children, who, it is clear, are well cared for. The houses have vines and sweet peas on the walls, flowers in the windows, and altogether a look of comfort and ease found nowhere in Western France.... Here order and cleanliness prevail, with a diffusion of well-being hardly to be matched out of America....
“Dirt is rare, I might almost say as unknown, as rags.... Drunkenness is also comparatively, in some places we might say absolutely, absent. As we make further acquaintance with these favoured regions, we might suppose that here, at least, the dreams of the Utopians had come true, and that poverty, squalor and wretchedness were banished for ever.”
In the month of August, 1878, I had the great advantage of reading, in my capacity of Vice-President of the First Section of the International Congress of Hygiene at Paris, an essay on “The Too Rapid Increase of Population as a Cause of Disease and Death.” In the debate which followed, Dr. Bertillon, the distinguished Professor of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, who has done so much for social statistics, said that he considered that in many parts of France there was too great a disinclination on the part of the people to increase the population. In Brittany, the marriages were few but very prolific, and the people were very poor. The influence of the priests was paramount in that province, and the mortality, both adult and infantile, great. There were very few children to a family in Normandy, and the death-rate was low in that province. The French Government he said, appeared to be acting according to the plan advised by the reader of the essay, since they taxed persons with large families as much as those with small ones. He admitted that the size of a family should be regulated by parental forethought; but thought that at present French population was too stationary.
Dr. Lagneau said, that in France it was the rich who had the smallest families, whilst the very poor often had large ones. The rich employés of Government, above all, were noted for the small size of their families. In the case of the peasant vine-growers of the Marne, many would only have one child, or even none at all, since these peasants found it difficult to get people to come from the town and help them with their farms, and had to do all the work by themselves. Hence, female labour was much in demand.
These facts will, doubtless, afford to many thoughtful persons a clear enough picture of the remarkable position of modern France, the only country in Europe which, as yet, seems to have begun fairly to grapple with the giant question of population.
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE CHECKS TO POPULATION IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND.
Mr. Malthus, in the seventh chapter of his second book, speaks of the checks to population in England. He points out that a man of liberal education, with an income just sufficient to enable him to associate with educated people, must feel absolutely certain that, if he should marry and have a family, he will be obliged to mix in the society of uneducated persons. Such considerations make him pause. Sons of tradesmen and farmers are exhorted not to marry until settled in some business or farm, and the labourer who earns two shillings a day, and lives comfortably while single, will hesitate to divide that pittance among five! The servants of rich people have so many comforts that they naturally are averse to sink down to be the proprietors of some poor alehouse.
Hence, in Malthus’ day (1806), the annual marriages in England and Wales were as 1 in 123 of the population, a smaller proportion than obtained in any European country at that time, except Norway and Sweden. Dr. Short, writing in 1750, proposed that single people should be heavily taxed for the support of the married poor. Mr. Malthus replies to this proposal of the learned judge, that it is not wise to ask people to enter the married state, so long as such crowds of children die in infancy and so much poverty exists among married persons. Those, he adds, who live single or marry late do not diminish the actual population by so doing. They merely prevent the proportion of premature mortality which would otherwise be excessive. Sir F. M. Eden mentioned that in some English villages the mortality seemed to be very low, viz. 1 in 47, or 21 per 1,000. London, in the beginning of this century, was, it seems, by no means so healthy as it is at present. According to a great authority, Dr. Price, the mortality was actually 60 per 1,000 (1 in 20¾), whilst at present it is about 23 per 1,000. At the same epoch, the Manchester death-rate was 1 in 21, or 35 per 1,000; so that Manchester was in those days much healthier than London. Manufactures, alas! however useful, are almost always most unwholesome, because they crowd hosts of people together without comfort, education, or forethought.