Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/523

Rh well-being, and that it is exceptionally marked where there is foresight and thrift—all this points in one and the same direction.

We may add other evidence. Among the Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom any regulation of the marriage state is strongly forbidden, and has, during recent years, been made the subject of frequent, special animadversion, both privately and from the pulpit. It is significant that Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom in which the birth rate has not declined; that in Ireland itself it has declined a little in semi-Protestant Belfast, and not at all in Roman Catholic Dublin; and that in the towns of Great Britain the decline is least in Liverpool, Salford, Manchester and Glasgow—towns in which the proportion of Roman Catholics is considerable. Among the principal textile factory towns the decline is least at Preston, which is the one having the largest proportion of Roman Catholics. Among the different metropolitan boroughs—though we can not measure with accuracy the fall in the birth rate—the present rate is highest, and, therefore, in all probability, the fall has been least in those boroughs in which the Irish Roman Catholics (and the Jews who, in this respect, are in the same position) are most numerous. All this is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the decline is due to physical degeneracy, and consistent with that of its being due to deliberate volition. Common report that such deliberate regulation of the marriage state, either with the object of limitation of the family, or (which has the same result) with that of regulating the interval between births, has become widely prevalent during the past quarter of a century—exactly the period of the decline—reaches us from all sides—from doctors and chemists, from the officers of friendly societies and philanthropists working among the poor, and, most significant of all, from those who are engaged in the very extensive business of which this new social practise has given rise. What is needed to complete the demonstration is direct individual evidence.

In the preceding section I have shown, upon statistical evidence that appears to me irresistible in its cumulative force, that the decline in the birth rate which is depriving England and Wales of at least one fifth of every year's normal crop of babies is not accounted for by