Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/255

Rh lightly upon a people who have all but repudiated religion. The adversaries of religion, however, place the responsibility for the low birth rate at the door of Catholicism which has not only withdrawn from married life a large portion of the population both male and female, but does not encourage marriage among the laity. The latter charge the catholics emphatically deny, and as evidence that Catholicism is not responsible they point to Brittany, Finistère and other strongly catholic provinces where the birth-rate is the highest in France. If the birthrate for all France, says M. Leroy-Beaulieu had been since 1871 equal to that of Finistère, France would have to-day 53,000,000 inhabitants instead of only 39,000,000. Moreover, the catholics point out that in Quebec, a strongly French catholic province, the birth-rate is more than twice as high as that of France, and that Belgium with its comparatively high birth-rate is a country where Catholicism is strongly intrenched. It is sometimes complained that one cause of the evil is to be found in the paucity of marriages, but the statistics show that there has been a steady increase in the number for many years (e. g., from 269,332 in 1890 to 307,788 in 1911, and this notwithstanding the fact that there was little increase of population during this period), yet the birth-rate has declined. It seems clear that it is not more marriages that France needs, but more productive marriages; it is infecundity that is responsible for the diminishing population and not lack of marital unions.

Some students of the question, like M. Henri Joly, see in the granting of divorces, the number of which steadily increases every year, one of the secondary causes; but this may be doubted. On the contrary, it might be argued that divorce conduces to the increase of the birth-rate by permitting the dissolution of sterile unions and the contracting of others. Moreover, there was no divorce law in France before 1884, yet the population had long since ceased to increase except in trifling proportions. Finally, divorce is practised in other countries where the birth-rate is high; if it contributes to the diminution of the population in France, why does it not have the same effect elsewhere? The prohibition of the judicial determination of paternity in the case of illegimateillegitimate [sic] children has long been regarded as a secondary cause of the low birth-rate, since it encourages illicit cohabitation in the place of lawful marriages. This legal incentive to "free unions" has been removed, however, during the past year by the enactment of a law empowering the courts to ascertain and determine the father of an illegitimate child which he refuses to recognize. The enactment of this law, says the Temps, was a great victory in the interests of morals and humanity and one which required fifty years to achieve.

The spirit of luxury and ease and the high state of wealth are also held responsible for the disinclination among the French to rear children. The census statistics show that in the richest regions of France,