Fig. 2.—ENGLAND AND WALES.
Fig. 3.—IRELAND.
Turning at once, however, to the accompaniments of these changes in the birth-rate, we find that the death-rate has also shown very decided changes, although the temporary fluctuations prevent our locating them with the same precision. For between fifteen and twenty years after 1853 the general deathrate was approximately stationary, or perhaps slightly rising; but since then there has been a rapid and steady fall from about 22 per thousand to a little over 13. The infantile mortality, after various minor fluctuations, has fallen very rapidly since 1900. The net result of these changes is that the rate of natural increase of population (excess of birth-rate over death-rate) during the last five years has averaged 11 per thousand, which is nearly the same as in the first five years 1853–57, when it was 11.7 per thousand, although it temporarily increased to 14.3 per thousand in the quinquennium 1874–78. The cry of “depopulation” or of “race suicide” has little more justification to-day when our birth-rate is only 24 and the average family probably between three and four children than it had in 1855 with a birth-rate of 34 and an average of 5 births per marriage. In an article in the Daily Telegraph of January 17 last, a writer pointed out that mortality was very high among the large families of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and asked: “If to lose half, or more than half, their children was common among well-to-do people, how did poor folks fare?”
The actual rise of the population, after allowing for migration, is, of course, given by the census returns. Fig. [1] shows the variation of the total population of the United Kingdom and of England and Wales, from 1850 onwards.
Many of you will have heard alarmist statements from various quarters to the effect that our population is rapidly becoming stationary owing to the combined results of a declining birth-rate and an accelerated emigration. In the Fortnightly Review for February last an article on “The Danger of Unrestricted Emigration,” by Mr. Archibald Hurd, contained a characteristic statement of this kind:—“The population of Ireland and Scotland is rapidly declining, and that of England and Wales is now practically stagnant, the natural increase only slightly exceeding the outflow due to emigration.”
We will deal with Ireland in a moment; but as regards both England and Wales and Scotland the statement appears entirely unwarranted. The actual increase of population in England and Wales between the censuses of 1901 and 1911 was 10.9 per cent., which is only a little below the “natural” increase (in Wales it reached the unprecedentedly high increase of 18.1 per cent.); while in Scotland the actual increase of population was 6.4 per cent. over the decade. Probably these alarms were due to consideration of emigration apart from immigration or from return of our own emigrants.[[7]] The actual increase of population for the whole of the United Kingdom was 9.1 per cent.; and this has only been exceeded twice in the past six decades.
[7]. Further investigation appears to indicate that the official statistics concerning emigration and immigration are very unreliable. The Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom for 1912 gives the total emigration in the ten years 1901–10 as 4,724,233, and the total immigration 2,409,490, leaving an outward balance of 2,314,723. In the same period there were 11,628,493 births and 6,780,266 deaths, giving a natural increase of 4,848,227; and since the actual increase by the census returns was 3,757,944, the net loss by emigration could only have been 1,091,283 or less than half of the officially recorded number. Thus it appears that little over one-fifth of our natural increase is lost by emigration. (Since writing this, I find the Registrar-General admits the returns prior to 1908 were defective.)
We need not consider Scotland further, as its variations resemble those of England and Wales.
