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17
[1907
our race, for "these powers ceased not so much from outside conquest as from
an international decline in their fertility, with a consequent lack of men, and
moral and physical deterioration of the race as a whole. Before it is too late
let nations of to-day take to heart these lessons from the past!"* Lord Bacon
knew and appreciated that the true greatness of a nation "consisteth essentially
in population and breed of men"; and he also recognised in his day that "out
of doubt, none of the past monarchies which in the memory of time have risen
in the habitable world had so fair seeds and beginning as hath this state and
this kingdom." We hear ever and again loud talk as to over-population, it
crops up regularly, so that at times it becomes a perfect bugbear. In 1842
Dr. Farr, the great statistician, in his annual letter to the Registrar General,
wrote: "the rate of progression (that is since the first census in 1801) has been
such that, if it continue, the numbers will have doubled in 1850; double the
number of families will exist, and must be supplied with subsistence in
England ; but there will also be double the number of men to create subsistence
and capital for her families, to man her fleets, to defend her inviolate hearths,
to work mines and manufactories, to extend the commerce, to open new regions
of colonization; and double the number of minds to discover new truths, to
confer the benefits, and to enjoy the felicity of which human nature is susceptible."!
And have not these words, written fifty-eight years ago, come
true? And so too will they be true in the future; for the telephones, the telegraphs,
fast inter-communication between countries, the inventions of scientific
men, the great advances in chemical knowledge and the marvellous spread of
civilization open out to-day a vista that could not be conceived, much less
realised, fifty years ago, and yet there is pessimism. The fear is, not that there
are too many men, but that there may be too few men, in view of the steady,
continuous fall of the birth-rate of this country, which as we have seen, has
been a great factor in determining the fate of ancient countries, which gave
themselves up to vice, and to idleness.
The Distribution of the Births in the Borough.—As may be
very well imagined, owing to the differences in the social scale, the fertility
of the people differed very considerably in the several sub-registration districts.
It is no surprise, therefore, to find that in Highbury the rate was as low as
18.9 per 1,000 of its population, while in Barnsbury it reached 31.7, a discrepancy
*Infant, Parent, and State." Heath, p. 48.
†4th Annual Report of the Registrar General, 1842, p. 141.
C