Universally we may say of modern Europeans, that the poorer classes are less prudent in the size of their families; and, indeed, it has been said by M. de Haussonville (“La vie et les salaires à Paris”) that the number of children to a family in the poor quarters of Paris is three times as great as it is in the rich quarters. The same story holds nearly true in modern London since 1877—i.e., since the date of the trial of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant; for the birth-rate in Kensington is at present 20 per 1000, against 40 per 1000 in Bethnal Green, a result which is yearly becoming due rather to small families in the West End than to late marriages or celibacy, the old-fashioned causes of lower birth-rates. The celebrated cases of “Regina v. Bradlaugh and Besant,” “Regina v. Edward Truelove,” and, at this moment, of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh against the esteemed and learned physician, Dr. H. A. Allbutt, of Leeds, who is threatened by that body with expulsion from the list of its members, because he has published, in a popular work of a practical character, what has been said so many times, that large families lead to early death, prostitution, and every horror to which mortality is subject, have disclosed the fact that there is an idea strongly implanted in the minds of the majority of mankind, that, if people in general knew, especially at an early age, what any medical student knows as soon as he commences to study anatomy and physiology, vice and profligacy would immediately abound. This is, indeed, a strange idea. Civilisation differs from savage life mainly in that civilised men know more of nature than savages; but, just on that very account, civilised people are more moral than savages. “It is impossible for us to understand,” says M. Joseph Garnier, “how the counsels of marital prudence can lead to the abolition of marriage and the debauchery of the young. Has not prudence the effect of rendering the state of marriage more happy and more attractive? Youth is encouraged to marriage more easily by the example of prosperous and wisely managed households than by the example of households crushed under the tortures of misery.” And M. Villermé, one of the greatest writers on Health that this century has produced, mentions that the workmen of La Croix Rouge, Lyons, had, in his day, an average of only 3¼ children to a family; and that “these workmen were the foremost in France for behavior and dignity of character.” “The question is,” says a distinguished Vice-President of the Malthusian League, Mr. Van Houten, Deputy at the Hague, “whether morality can demand that a married couple shall have offspring immediately after their marriage; that constantly, as soon as the mother, after giving birth to one, is able, a second one should at once succeed the first. The question is, whether those less blessed with worldly goods must restrain their desires and remain celibates, because they are unable, while following the traditional morality, to provide for a family? Or whether those whose inclination for one another, or whose trust in the future was too great when their expectations proved deceptive, must be condemned, in the name of morality, to procreate children who will be insufficiently fed, tended and educated, and can never become energetic citizens, or who, if sickly, are born only to descend speedily to the grave, to be succeeded by others equally unfortunate.” Mr. Van Houten truly says: “An end must be put to our ignorance of physiology. Everyone ought to know; and it must be left to his own requirements and to his own judgment what use he will make of his knowledge.”
How dangerous such superstitions as those referred to by Mr. Van Houten are to the happiness of mankind is best seen in the old civilisations of Hindostan and China. Owing to certain strange doctrines in those countries as to the importance of children as a religious duty, the unfortunate Hindoo people are so terribly over-peopled that a man will work hard for wages equivalent to six shillings a month. The most learned of Italian medical writers on health, Senator Paulo Mantegazza, mentions that his work was placed on the Index by the Pope of Rome in 1863, because he had ventured to recommend to persons afflicted with hereditary disease, such as insanity or epilepsy, or to excessively poor people, to marry but to have as few children as possible. When two human beings (says that author) love each other, and yet from the bad health of one or both of them there is every likelihood that diseased children will result, is it a greater fault to engender epileptic, insane, or scrofulous children, or to prevent such births? Or when, from the excessive increase of the family itself, human beings are brought into the world almost inexorably condemned to hunger, to degradation, to disease, is it a greater sin to limit the number of children or to increase the sufferings of the human family? What reply ought we to give? Whilst the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh is displaying to the denizens of the end of the 19th century, an amount of ignorance and conventional bigotry which will be incredible to the next generation, it is remarkable that what is usually considered the most benighted Church in Christendom, the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church, has latterly shown evident signs of admitting that Neo-Malthusian practices, which are so habitually made use of in France, must at least be acknowledged to be morally innocent. Thus, in 1870, the Vatican Council was implored by a French priest, Dr. Friedrich, to reconsider its judgment on conjugal prudence: “and not to cause the damnation of so many millions of souls by letting the directors (confessors) lay upon their consciences, commands or prohibitions impossible to observe. It will be our duty (he exclaims) to search in the holy books alone for condemnation of the act in question; if it be found to be forbidden neither by the decalogue nor by the other laws of God contained in Holy Writ, nor by the apostles, nor by the commands of the Church assembled in Council General, nor by the Pope speaking ex cathedrâ, we shall say it (conjugal prudence) cannot be condemned by anyone.” Dr. Friedrich continues: “A learned and holy devotee of a very austere Order says: ‘I have studied this case with all the powers of my intelligence and of my conscience, and I have come to this formal conviction, that we are on the wrong track. To my mind, this act is enormously below the smallest mortal sin, and it is enormously lessened by all the motives that provoke it, real motives of health, even of interest, of family, &c.’” Lastly, he informs us that Rome has enjoined on confessors to question very little and to dwell as little as possible upon this subject. Surely, after this, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh might hesitate! What Rome has done, other churches might surely do; and I am pleased to say that many excellent members of the English Establishment are inclined to side with the Malthusian League in its earnest recommendation to all classes of the community to replace the heartrending positive checks to population—war, pestilence, and famine—and the torturing agonies of prolonged celibacy, which Dr. Bertillon’s statistics show to be so inimical even to longevity, by the far more humane and rational plan of early marriage conjoined with very much smaller families than are at the present time the fashion among all classes. Some check to population we must submit to; and there is not the slightest doubt in my own mind that the morality of the near future will look upon the production of large families in European states as the most anti-social of all the actions of a citizen. Then, and not till then, will indigence disappear from the face of all civilised society.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Table of [Contents] added by transcriber.
- P. [101], “the clear [?]in of duty laid down by the greatest of his followers” was assumed to be “the clear line of duty laid down by the greatest of his followers”.
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.