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.
The outspoken Dr. Barry wrote:—
......”‘As for religion, Christian or any other, when its dogmas are no longer believed, its ethics pass away,’ and he draws a picture of the rotten state of society in our Western world, which he attributes directly to the growth of agnosticism. The fact that the birth-rate in England has been declining for twenty-five years, and was lowest in 1904, seems to Dr. Barry to be due to several causes—’poverty and luxury, pleasure-seeking and disbelief in the Bible,’ and he adds, ‘The spirit of anarchic individualism that cries, “No God, no Master!” is needed to tell us why Englishmen and their wives, once dedicated to a blameless and lasting union, have fallen into the pit which Malthus or his followers digged for them.’ England alone is not at fault. ‘Wherever unbelief has taken hold, or doubt saps the ancient creeds, there Malthus reigns instead of Christ.’”
A “well-known public man” wrote:—
......“It is within my knowledge that certain flats in Mayfair and elsewhere for the married servant and artisan class are let on the express or implied condition that not only no children shall be brought into the tenements, but that none shall be born there. The direct consequence of this embargo on natural increase is terribly disastrous. Many footmen and coachmen in Mayfair could tell a tragical story of the results of compulsory sterility.
“A Japanese friend was telling me the other day that after an absence from England of a dozen years he is startled at the visible deterioration of the race and the great increase of penniless British weaklings, who add strength to no nation. ‘You English are losing both patriotism and religion, and consequently you are not only decadent but doomed, unless you mend your ways in the treatment of women and children.’”