LARGE FAMILIES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 11, 14 July 1928, Page 20

LARGE FAMILIES

SOME HISTOBIC INSTANCES. Mr. Anthony M. Ludovici, in his book, "The Case Against Birth Control," has an interesting chapter in which ho Shows that many famous men and' women would not have been 'born if, families in their day had been confined to two or three children, that almost universal custom of tho educated, classes to-day. Mr. Dulovici writes: "It is of tho utmost importance from the standpoint of tho' welfare of any Taco of nation, that heredity should be giver as many chances as are reeasonably possible to achieve the best and happiest combination. In a small family the chances are few, and the likelihood of the best possible child of which the parental and stock quuililics aro capable of being produced is therefore necessarily more lcmoto than ;n n large family. And tho consequence is that small families, by staking everything ;on the earliest three or 'four children—not to mention .those of .only one or two children —must be the causo ovory year of a very heavy loss in tho boat possible product of which each couple is capable. The following pcoplo who came late in their families were not only moro distinguished than any of the same family who -preceded them1; but would also novcr li'ave scon the light ; of the birth-controller's:lfulo of four children to each couple, had been adopted by their parents:—Edward: Lear, the youngest of twenty-one children; Charles Wesley (eighteenth;, Sir Thomas Lawrence (sixteenth), John; Weslpy; (fifteenth),' Albert ,:Moore. the. painfer; (fourteenth), Sir Richard Ark,wxight (inventorV'-.of cottoil^spinning machine), Josiab-Wedgwood,'atfd Pierre Priid'ho'n, famo)as>.l?rench'' artist (thirteenth); Sir Joh.n:■ JPranklin,. t-lie Arctic explorer, (twelfth');;: Thomas' :Cainpbell (poet), Charles Eeade (novelist) wpre eleventh children; Benjamin -Franklin (United States author and statesman), John; Hunter (physiologist jaiid surgeon),;and Coleridge *v ere .tenth children; Sir Walter Scott, Archbishop Richard Whately, Gainsborough, Archbishop A. C. Tait, Lord., Cromer, Henry Moore (painter), and .Granville Sharpe were ninth sons; Johann Sebastian Bach was an eighth child, and seventh children included Herrick; Mungo Park, Van Dyck, Huxley, Jane Austen, ■ Grace, Darling, and Sir .uloshua Reynolds; Emily Bronte, Darwin, Do Quiucey, Felicia Dorothea, Henians, Pepys, Voltaire, Oliver Goldsmith, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Walter Bosnut, Rembrandt, Cecil Rhodes, and Horace Wiilpolc, werefifth children.