[251-12] It is an unfortunate fact that many modern nations approximate more closely to this abomination of the ancients than is generally supposed. The infrequency of illegitimate children in Romanic southern nations is offset by the enormous number of exposures almost after the manner of the Chinese. See the tables in v. Oettingen, Anhang, 95. In Milan, between 1780 and 1789, there were, in the aggregate, 9,954 children abandoned; between 1840 and 1849, 39,436. (v. Oettingen, 587.) On abortion in North America, and the numberless bold advertisements of doctors there that they are ready to remove all impediments to menstruation "from whatever cause," see v. Oettingen, 523, and Allg. Zeitung, 1867, No. 309. It would be a very mournful sign of the times if the work: Principles of Social Science, or physical, sexual and natural Religion; an Exposition of the real Cause and Cure of the three great Evils of Society, Pauperism, Prostitution and Celibacy, by a Doctor of Medicine (Berlin, 1871), were really a translation of an alleged English original. It is throughout atheistic, materialistic and immoral, concerned only with one fundamental idea: to instruct women how to prevent conception!
POSITIVE DECREASE OF POPULATION.
The way of vice is steep. Where the aversion to the sacrifices and to the limitations of liberty imposed by marriage, has permeated the great body of the people; where, indeed, the immoral tendencies counter to population described in § 249 ff. have been largely developed, they very readily cease to be mere checks, and population may positively decline. While in the case of fresh and vigorous nations, the mere loss of men caused by wars, pestilence, etc., is very easily made up;[252-1] that reproductive power may here be too much enfeebled to fill up the gap again. It has happened more than once that the decline of a period has been frightfully promoted by great plagues, which have swept away in whole masses the remnants of a former and better generation.[252-2] The return of the relatively small population of its childhood to a nation in its senility cannot be ascribed exclusively to a decrease in its means of subsistence and to a less advantageous distribution of them.[252-3] [252-4] The depopulation, however, of Greece and Rome in their decline might be hard to understand were it not for the slavery of the lower class.[252-5]
[252-1] It is said that the plague which, in 1709 and 1710, decimated Prussia and Lithuanian,[TN 102] carried away one-third of the inhabitants, and even one-half of those at Dantzig. While previously the number of marriages annually was, on an average, 6,082, it rose in 1711 to 12,028. In 1712 it was 6,267, and sank some years afterwards on account of the decrease in population, to 5,000. (Süssmilch, Göttl. Ordnung, I, Tab. 21.) Similar effects of the plague at Marseilles, 1720. (Messance, Recherches sur la Population, 766.) In Russia, too, it was observed after the devastation produced by the black death in 1347 and the succeeding years, that the population again increased at an extraordinarily rapid rate; and that an unusual number of twins and triplets were born (?). (Karamsin, Russ. Gesch., IV, 230.) Compare Dalin Schwed. Gesch., 11,384; Montfaucon, Monuments de la Monarchie Française, I, 282.
[252-2] I would mention the Athenian pestilence during the last years or Pericles; the Roman in the orbis terrarum, between 250 and 265 B.C., which is said to have destroyed one-half of the population of Alexandria. (Gibbon, Hist. of the Roman Empire, ch. 10.) It also made frightful ravages, intellectually, on the nationality of the Romans. (Niebuhr.) Thus, in England, the black death contributed very largely to cause the disappearance of the medieval spirit. (Rogers.) Of great political importance was the pestilence of Bagdad, which, in 1831, carried off 2/3 of the inhabitants. All national bonds seemed dissolved, robbers ruled the country; the army of the powerful Doud Pascha was carried off entirely, and his whole political system, constructed after the model of that of Mehemet-Ali, fell into ruin. Compare Anth. Groves, Missionary Journal of a Residence at Bagdad, 1832.
[252-3] Among the Maoris, the number of sterile women is 9 times as great as the average in Europe. Compare Reise der Novara, III, 129.
[252-4] The decreasing number of English Quakers, among whom, in 1680-89, there occurred 2,598 marriages, and in 1840-49 only 659, finds expression in the unfrequency of marriage, a comparatively small number of women and a small number of children, all in conjunction with a small mortality. (Statist. Journ., 1859, 208 ff.) There is no reason to have recourse here to vice as a cause, and scarcely to physiological reasons for an explanation, because these phenomena are accounted for in great part by the fact that adult males so frequently leave the sect.
[252-5] In this respect, however, there is a great difference between bondage and slavery. As early a writer as Polybius speaks of the depopulation of Greece. (Polyb., II, 55; XXXVII, 4.) He looks for the cause in this, that in every family, for luxury's sake, either no children whatever were wanted, or at most from one to two, that the latter might be left rich. (Exc. Vat., 448.) Very remarkable, Seneca, Cons. ad. Marc, 19. Further, Cicero, ad. Div., II, 5. Strabo, VII, 501; VIII, 595; IX, 617, 629. Pausan., VII, 18; VIII, 7; X, 4; Dio Chr., VII, 34, 121; XXXIII, 25. Plutarch claimed that Hellas could, in his time, number scarcely 3,000 hoplites, while in the time of Themistocles, Megalis alone had put as many in the field. (De Defectu Orac., S.) Antium and Tarentum similarly declined under Nero. (Tacit., Ann., XIV, 27.) The depopulation even of the capital, which began under Tiberius, is apparent from Tacit., Ann., IV, 4, 27. National beauty also declined with the nation's populousness. Æschines saw a great many beautiful youths in Athens (adv. Timarch., 31); Cotta, only very few (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, I, 28); Dio Chrysostomus, almost none at all (Orat., XXI). On the necessary lowering of the military standard of measure, see Theod., Cod., VII, 13, 3, Verget, de Re milit., I, 5. The depopulation of the later orbis terrarum is confirmed by the easiness of the new division of land with the German conquerors. Compare Gaupp, Die Germanischen Niederlassungen und Landtheilungen (1845), passim.