The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1899. THE CRADLES OF NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 37, 14 September 1899, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1899. THE CRADLES OF NEW ZEALAND.

The outlook disclosed by Mr. Coghlan is far from roseate. There has been during the past twenty years a marked decline in the birth-rate in all the seven colonies of the Australasian group. But in New Zealand the decrease has been phenomenal. It presents several features which, taken together, look, in all reason, sufficiently startling. Thus (1) in 1882, New Zealand stood at the head of the Australasian list with a birth-rate of 37*32 per thousand of her population, In 1897 she stands at the very bottom, with her figures reduced to a poor 2596 per thousand of the population, as against 26*44 for South Australia, 26*63 for Victoria, (26*82 for West Australia, 27*72 for Tasmania, ZB-48 for New South Wales, and 29*92 for Queensland. Again (2) : the decrease in the New Zealand birth-rate has been absolute as well as relative. It fell from 19,846 in 1884 to 18,737 in 1897. (3) In 1886 there were in New Zealand 18,355 children under one year of age. The population then numbered 578,482 persons. In 1896 the population of the Colony had risen to 703,360 ; but the number of children under one year of age had dropped to 17,070. In the meantime there had been a substantial increase (4) in the number of marriages, and (5), according to Mullhall's Dictionary of Statistics for the present year,

the ratio of married adults in New Zealand is greater to population than in any of the sister colonies except South Australia and Tasmania. Moreover (6) the ratio of births per marriage has fallen off alarmingly. In 1880 it was 5*72 ; at the close of 1897 the proportion had fallen to 3"8 6. This is a perilously close approach to the figures of the two European countries where the population is almost at a standstill — Denmark with its 3*55 and France with its 2*98 births per marriage.

Thus it appears that, in the full flush of its youth and vigour, with a fine climate, a fertile soil, a wealth of mineral and forest resources, and the struggle for existence reduced to a minimum, this promising new land isjevidently treading the fatal path that is leading fast to the extinction of the decadent descendants of the sturdy Puritan settlers of the New England States of America. Three years ago the Providence Journal wrote of them :—: —

The first generations of New England were thrifty both in an agricultural and domestic sense. From the records of six genera* tions of New England towns it was found that the families com* posing the first generation had on an average between eight and ten children ; the next three generations averaged about seven to each family ; the fifth generation less than three, and the generation now on the stage is averaging still less. In Massachussetts, the average family now numbers less than three.

A fearsome picture of the depravity and decay of Puritan New England was given in the New York Medical Journal of August 17, 1895, by Dr. Lindley, professor of gynsecology in the University of Southern California, and formerly President, of the State Medical Society. The Puritan strain of New England is withering up. Their towns, their farms and farmsteads are fast falling into the hands of the sturdy Irish and German Catholic immigrants that have been making up for the empty cradles of the old stock. New Zealand has no such resource to fall back upon. The whole trend of our legislation is rather to discourage immigration. Its proportions are insignificant — the excess of arrivals over departures in 1897 being represented by a paltry 2753. In all the circumstances those who are interested in the welfare of the Colony must view with grave uneasiness the steady and continued decline in its birthrate. For if the present marked tendency continues — and on statistical theories its continuance is practically certain — we shall become a decadent people and New Zealand in its early youth a decrepid State.

In his report on the Michigan statistics of 11894 the Hon. Washington Gardner gives the following as the probable reasons for the diminution of the birth-rate in the United States :—: —

(1) The great diffusion of physiological information ; (2) lessening of restraint from religions and social opinion ; and (3) the greater cost of family life, which leads to the desire to have fewer children in order that they may each be better provided for.

It will be obvious to any reflecting person that the lessening of religious restraints lies at the root of all the other reasons set foith by the American statistician. It permeates and affects them so that they are in reality not, so to speak, originating but subsidiary causes of a lessening birth-rate. Religion is the chief cohesive force that holds people together in communities under forms of law and- authority. The only real, permanent and final deterrent from evil-doing is a well -rooted belief in personal responsibility to a Creator Who sees and judges, rewards and punishes. Destroy religious influence among the masses, remove the restraints which faith in God and practice of virtue from supernatural motives place upon the lower passions and evil tendencies of* human nature, and animal feeling and selfish personal interest become the sole or chief guides of conduct. Now, unfortunately, the forces which tend to destroy or reduce the beneficent sway of religion have long been and are still in active operation in this and the neighbouring colonies — some of them under the icgis of the State. They are chiefly (1) the godless schoo s ; (2) the loose teachings of the non-Catholic denominations regarding the nature and obligations of the marriage tie ; (3) divorce legislation ; and (4) the operations of the sets of social parasites who minister to and aggravate the low ideals which the other three causes combined have served to make rampant in our midst.

It is manifestly impossible, in the course of a brief newspaper.article, to point out the full action, re-action, and

inter-relations of these four sets of social forces that arc in operation' on the community. (1) We content ourselves, therefore, with merely indicating in a summary way the evil results of a system of public instruction which compels the child to pass a considerable portion of the most impressionable period of its life, cut off, so to speak, from all thought of, or reference to, the Creator or from immediate contact with any firm or final code of moral restraint. (a) A vast part of the present evil is undoubtedly and directly traceable to the low teachings of the Protestant Churches on the subject of marriage. All over Europe the Beftlrmation began by denying the unity, sacramental character, and indissolubility of marriage. The Reformation "began in England with, and owed its spread in Gertnany to, the formal sanction of bigamy by the founders of the 'new ■ religion. The father of the English Reformation' i gave'HEN IRYl RY VIII. two living wives. Luther, Bucer, MAIkNOTHON and five other German Reformers, jointly issued a warrant — dated December 7, 1539 — to Philip of Hesse- to have two wives simultaneously. _In the following year the 1 English Protestant clergy sanctioned the divorce of Henry VIII. from Anne of Cleves — meraly because she did not happen to be to his liking. A still more liberal dispensation from the ordinary rule of morality was accorded by the Calvinwtic clergy of Prussia in the last century to the reigning king, Frederick William 11. He was allowed t6 have three wives. If these teachings did not immediately produce their full measure of results, it is due to the fact that the Catholic sentiment regarding marriage long survived the denial of the Catholic doctrine thereon. Like Moore's altar vase :—: — Yon may break, you may shatter, the vase as you will, But the scent of the roses will cling rouDd it still. In the foreign mission field polygamy is openly sanctioned. Now, let us bear in mind that New Zealand is, practically, a Protestant country. In so far as public opinion reflects, or is guided by, principles of theology, that theology is Protestant. But to this hour not one Protestant denomination has dared to preach either the sacramental character or the unity or the indissolubility of the marriage bond. Not one of them has dared to legislate agaiust the re-marriage of divorced persons — as, for instance, by cutting them off from communion or membership. On the contrary, divorcees can re-marry at any time with the sanction, approval, and blessing of their various Churches.

Here — in the loose teaching regarding thu marriage-tic — we touch one of the tap-roots of the national disorder. It is this teaching which has given the cve — a quasiecclesiastical sanction — to the popular idea that marriage is simply a contract to be lightly entered upon, and terminable at any time at the wish, whim, caprice, crime, or folly of either party td it. Now this teaching has had two important results : (1) It has led to, or at least greatly facilitated, the passing of the successive Divorce A cts which have done so much to destroy the permanency of domestic life among us ; (2) it has consequently contributed to make marriage in a large number of casea that signal failure which has deterred many young people from entering upon an alliance which may at any moment lead to the scandal of the divorce court ; and (8) it has produced those warped or radically wrong ideaS regarding the true divine purpose of marriage which have made so many women in our time unwilling to bear the sacred duties and burdens of maternity, and raised that boafttifnlcrop of low panderers and criminal purveyors to the popular weakness, who minister to the demand for systematic sterility, and^who are worse enemies to society than' the thieves and cut - throats whom we place under lock and key in gaol. .To their eternal discredit must it be recorded that a large section of the Press of these colonies have made themselves, for money, the mouthpieces of those blatant criminals whose advertisements are so many allurements to some of the degrading forms of vice which are contributing causes to the diminishing birth -rate that bodes so ill to the future well - being of this Colony. Pressmen talk fatuous nonsence when they fancy that such a mighty evil is to be remedied by taxing bachelors. We dealt with the folly of the proposal" a few weeks ago. Not that way lies the remedy. TCe must retrace our steps to the old Catholic principles. The radical cure lies in saturating the minds of the people with the conviction of their personal responsibiliey to an all-

seeing God, aud in bringing home to them right teaching as to the nature and purpose of marriage. The first part of this at leasf; must begin at the home It must be continued in the school. Tt must ring out like a clarion-note from the pulpit. Facilities — and therefore temptations — to divorce a vlnrulo — must be removed. The Press must mend its ways, and the purveyors referred to be placed under lock and key. Where wrong ideas and springs of action haye taken so strong a grip upon the public mind, the undoing of a bad tendency will reg uire a crusade working through two generations.