THE Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, 29th OCTOBER, 1900. THE DECLINE IN THE BIRTH RATE.

Southland Times, Issue 14783, 29 October 1900, Page 2

THE Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, 29th OCTOBER, 1900. THE DECLINE IN THE BIRTH RATE.

A conference of ministers of religion has been recently held in Wellington, at the instance of Mr J. Ashcroft, to discuss certain aspects of public morality and the decline in the birth rate. ' The conference was adjourned with a view to procure the association of some medical practitioners whose knowledge and experience might be of some value in relation to a matter of this kind. That the birth rate has diminished and is diminishing seems to be beyond dispute. The diminishing numbers on the school roll is in evidence, and the registration confirms it. This diminution is partly ascribed to the fact that young people do not marry at the rate they formerly did, but partly and chiefly is explained by the other fact, that those who are married have smaller families than has been formerly and usually the case. Here, at all events, it is a new phenomenon, and forces itself on our attention. The overflow from the British Isles has laid the foundation of large and prosperous communities in various pans of the world, and has been the means of building up the Empire to what we see it now. It was the steacy increase in her population that made possible and enforced the unexampled expansion of industry that ga/e her the supremacy among all the nations of the world. Now we are threatened with a new law and a voluntary change in our social and moral constitution, and of a kind somewhat intangible and apparently intractable, but of whose future consequences there can hardly be any mistake. If we are still to depend on the overflow from the Mother Country for the increase in our population, the Britain of the south will be a long time in arriving at maturity, if the innovation under notice is going to become an established principle, as it threatens to do. Some writer has said, we forget which, that a nation cannot increase in population where the average number of children to a family is not more than four, owing to the large number that die young and the many that never marry. This voluntary restriction may not, perhaps, have any relation to that state of society that led to the subsidence of the ancient empires, but it looks at the first blush at all events as if it were calculated to pave the way to it. It may possibly turn out otherwise, though it does not certainly commend itself to the more thoughful and better regulated minds. There is no reason whatever to suppose that there is any occult physical cause in operation. Even in France that is not assumed as a possible element in the limitation of her numbers. A sufficient explanation is found in the fact that she has no room for expansion ; no suitable colonies in which her surplus population may betake themselves, and no sufficient industry at home to give them employment. The same people in Canada have increased from 70,000 at the taking of Quebec to about two millions, and have generally large families, twelve and upwards not being uncommon, so that they may some day recover, in a peaceful way, and by force numbers, what they lost on the Heights of Abraham. One might conceive it possible that in France and the other overcrowded countries of Europe it was due to the pressure of population on the means of subsistence, but then it is not those that feel the pressure most — the poorer classes — that have the smaller families, and in the United States and in these colonies the explanation cannot at all apply, and least of all here in New Zealand, where we have but a handful of population, with a country large enough and rich enough to maintain in comfort and prosperity twenty times the number. In the States, rich in every source of wealth, the limitation is growing to be the rule. The American woman is accorded liberty all round. She is taught to be independent, she is well educated, and doubtless considers that she has a right to get out of her life all the satisfaction that she car*. ; that Nature allows her to use her judgment in other matters as well as in eating, drinking and dressing ; that Nature could never have meant that the whole of that portion of her life during which she is most capable of improvement and enjoyment, should be exclusively taken up with the unending drudgery and sacrifice attendant on the rearing of a large number of children, and that all children anyhow should be the progeny of people in their prime. No doubt when life begins to be impaired it would be better to be satisfied with the sacrifice already made than to mako further additions to it. But while some may possibly find justification for themselves in philosophical reasons of that kind, it is very much to be suspected that the greater part by far are simply animated by the selfish love of ease, the desire to luxuriate in all the freedom that society allows ; to partake in all its games, parties and balls, and be as far as possible relieved of

the monotony of everlasting devotion to domestic duties. In making this choice the gain is immediately present to the senses, and bulks large, while the higher pleasures round the hearth and the duties to which they are attached are appraised at something very much less than their true value. The exchange seems a poor one indeed, in all respects, and a curious circumstance is, that those who thus speculate still deem it incumbent upon them to keep on sending missionaries to China to tell the people there that they must not drown their female infants. Another circumstance, already mentioned, that affects population in this country, where it should not, is that a large proportion of young men refrain from getting married. There is no other place where it is easier for a healthy young couple to make a living. The tiling is unpardonable and foolish. Marriage is ignorantly regarded as a hindrance in life, and the rush and scramble to be rich must have no obstacles to intervene. The kernel is thrown away for the sake of the shell. But the evil does not end here. Nature breaks through to the detriment of the individual and of society, and the violation of its laws— not to speak of a higher law. Society, as well as the family, is the institution of heaven. It is the great educator, and without it it would be chaos. There should be no immunity for the breaking of its laws. Nor indeed is there, though the punishment falls very unequally. Women themselves are chiefly the executors of the law in their department, nor are they very particular in seasoning justice with mercy, more especially those of them that are not themselves entitled to throw the first stone. It is said that in Russia the fact of illegitimacy itself constitutes marriage. They have thereby taken one another for better or worse, and married they are declared to be emphatically. It seems a very good specific for the disorder, and worth trying. It would save the young people themselves some trouble, and the State expense. The world seems behind and out of gear in its moral progress as compared with its intellectual and scientific advance.