We can see very clearly in the pages of contemporary history the disastrous effects which may follow diminished fertility. Owing to custom, and subsequently to legislation, property in France is divided equally among the children of a family; and in consequence of this, were there many children to a marriage, this property would be split up into smaller and smaller portions, insufficient at last to furnish the necessities of life. Among the rural population, a farmer by thrift can live and marry on his small farm, but half the farm would be a piece of property upon which no one could live an independent existence.
It is necessary, therefore, that this property should be passed on intact, and this can be done when on an average a farmer brings to maturity two children. Of these, on an average, one will be a boy and the other a girl, so that by adjustment farmer A can marry his daughter to farmer B, and marry the daughter of farmer C to his own son. In this case the son of farmer A gains by his wife’s dowry what his family lost by his sister’s marriage. As a result of this artificial limitation of the family, the population of France remains stationary, there is no pressure of numbers, and by thrift and care the people are prosperous and happy. While, however, this may suit the convenience of individual French men and women, it is fatal for the future of the French race, who are becoming insignificant in numbers and influence as compared with those nations whose citizens have more fully accepted the duties of parenthood. It is interesting in this relationship to contrast the births, deaths and marriages, together with the estimated population of France, with those of the United Kingdom, which may be done by reference to the following table taken from Tables 40 and 54 of the Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the Registrar General’s Returns.
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| Year. | United Kingdom. | France. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population. | Proportion per 1000 Persons. | Population. | Proportion per 1000 Persons. | |||||
| Mar. | Bths. | Dths. | Mar. | Bths. | Dths. | |||
| 1867 | 30,409,132 | 15·2 | 33·8 | 20·8 | 38,188,749 | 15·7 | 26·4 | 22·7 |
| 1871 | 31,555,694 | 15·4 | 33·7 | 21·5 | 36,544,067 | 14·4 | 22·6 | 24·81 |
| 1875 | 32,838,758 | 15·3 | 33·9 | 22·1 | 36,638,163 | 16·4 | 26·0 | 23·0 |
| 1879 | 34,302,557 | 13·8 | 33·3 | 20·5 | 37,365,544 | 15·1 | 25·0 | 22·5 |
| 1883 | 35,449,411 | 14·4 | 32·0 | 19·6 | 37,866,000 | 15·0 | 24·8 | 22·2 |
| 1887 | 36,598,235 | 13·5 | 30·7 | 19·0 | 38,320,000 | 14·5 | 23·5 | 22·0 |
| 1891 | 37,795,475 | 14·6 | 30·4 | 20·0 | 38,343,000 | 15·0 | 22·6 | 22·6 |
We see that from 1867 till 1891 the population of the United Kingdom has increased twenty-five per cent., but that of France has remained stationary. While the marriage-rate—the number of persons married per 1000 of the population—is about the same in both countries, the births are over fifty per cent. in excess of the deaths in the United Kingdom; while in France they are but very slightly in excess. It cannot be doubted that, in very large measure, it is due to this relative sterility that France has failed as a colonising power. The French have ever been full of enterprise, and have long desired to establish colonies, but they have in the main been ousted by the British. Colonisation to them has been an ambition, an idea, but not a necessity; to us the alternative has been overcrowding and misery on the one hand, and extensive emigration on the other. Can we wonder that British necessity has overmatched French vanity? One cannot read the accounts of the struggle between the British and French in North America, antecedent to the War of Independence, without feeling that from the first the issue was certain. The French, who took the palm in enterprise and exploration, were nevertheless rapidly outnumbered by the British settlers, who crowded out of their own congested country into the new land, and increased there with enormous rapidity, the population doubling during the period of fifteen years in many districts.
It is in their relative fertility by the side of the French that the English-speaking race, at first a smaller people, have now far outnumbered their Gaelic neighbours, and have peopled the choicest portions of the inhabitable world, and formed dominions by the side of which France is already becoming a small and unimportant province.
[Possible Swamping of the Capables by the Incapables.]
We have here, then, a demonstration of the effects of diminishing the fertility of a group of persons, and, returning once more to a consideration of the relative infertility of the upper classes in our own country, we cannot doubt that, if the present tendencies continue, we shall here also find that the ranks of those who possess the qualities suited to worldly success will increasingly be outnumbered by those more deficient in these qualities. If we tend to the production of aristocracy of innate worth, there is a danger that these aristocracies will die out, or, at any rate, that the number of capables of whom they are comprised will constitute an ever-diminishing number of the whole community.