'I Believe' and other essays Part 3

While I have not lost sight of the main object of this paper--to summarize the weight of Catholic Christian feeling upon the _mechanical_ limitation of population, and to tell how this is being accomplished--I find that there is yet some ground to be cleared before coming to the main issue.

I have said that there is only one material cause of our decadence, but there are many reasons.

More than a year ago in one or two newspapers, particularly the _Daily Chronicle_, various sociologists gave the results of their thought upon the matter. I print a few extracts here.

The outspoken Dr. Barry wrote:--

......"'As for religion, Christian or any other, when its dogmas are no longer believed, its ethics pa.s.s away,' and he draws a picture of the rotten state of society in our Western world, which he attributes directly to the growth of agnosticism. The fact that the birth-rate in England has been declining for twenty-five years, and was lowest in 1904, seems to Dr. Barry to be due to several causes--'poverty and luxury, pleasure-seeking and disbelief in the Bible,' and he adds, 'The spirit of anarchic individualism that cries, "No G.o.d, no Master!" is needed to tell us why Englishmen and their wives, once dedicated to a blameless and lasting union, have fallen into the pit which Malthus or his followers digged for them.'

England alone is not at fault. 'Wherever unbelief has taken hold, or doubt saps the ancient creeds, there Malthus reigns instead of Christ.'"

A "well-known public man" wrote:--

......"It is within my knowledge that certain flats in Mayfair and elsewhere for the married servant and artisan cla.s.s are let on the express or implied condition that not only no children shall be brought into the tenements, but that none shall be born there. The direct consequence of this embargo on natural increase is terribly disastrous. Many footmen and coachmen in Mayfair could tell a tragical story of the results of compulsory sterility.

"A j.a.panese friend was telling me the other day that after an absence from England of a dozen years he is startled at the visible deterioration of the race and the great increase of penniless British weaklings, who add strength to no nation.

'You English are losing both patriotism and religion, and consequently you are not only decadent but doomed, unless you mend your ways in the treatment of women and children.'"

I take the following from a leading article in the _Church Times_:--

......"After making all allowances for minor contributory causes, the fact remains and may be proved by a little inquiry, that married people have come to regard a large family as a curse instead of a Divine blessing. The birth-rates in London are instructive. Residential districts, with fewest poor, show the lowest rates. Hampstead 166 and Fulham 323 may be taken as typical districts at each end of the scale. Stepney with its Jewish population has a rate of 37. If the Aliens Bill is to be effective it will need a clause compelling Jews to limit their families, just as their Christian (!) neighbours do. The misery of it all is that we find the practice of child murder, for such it is in plain English, defended by men of education; lawyers, medical men, and even priests make no secret of their approval of it, if no more. And as working men become aware of what their 'betters' are saying and doing--and they are not slow to follow a similar course--the evil spreads. Our proper leaders, the Bishops, ought long ago to have dealt with this subject resolutely and firmly. But apparently a grain of incense is a more terrible thing to them than the murder of an existing if unborn personality. We can only judge by their public utterances, but we have yet to learn that as a body their lordships have spent a thousandth part of the time over this supreme question of national morality that they have devoted to the suppression of things disapproved of by Lady Wimborne and her league. The spectacle of disproportionate interest and action is melancholy, and indicative of incapacity to observe the real dangers to be faced."

Again--

"The personal causes of this mischief are fear of pain (_i. e._ failure to see in pain the discipline of G.o.d which elevates human nature), hatred of duty, shirking of responsibility, love of pleasure, the subst.i.tution of hedonism for the religion of Jesus Christ the Lord, and ignorance of the Holy Spirit as Lord of _all_ life. How far religious teachers are accountable for this we leave to their own consciences to say. The same causes are at work in the high mortality of infants. The honour of doing her best for her child is cast aside by many a mother because it involves a certain amount of self-restraint and some seclusion from the gaieties of the hour; and recourse is had to all sorts of patent nostrums and infants' 'food' (often the cause of rickets) until the hospitals are over full of young children, whose sufferings are the result (G.o.d grant that they may be the atonement also) of their mothers' negligences and ignorances. Where there is not deliberate and wilful avoidance of maternal duty, there is neglect through awful ignorance."

In the _Daily Mail_ Mr. H. G. Wells writes:--

......."On the other hand think of the discouragements. While the mother toils in a restricted anxious home amid her children, she sees through her imperfectly cleaned window (one can't do everything) the childless wives having a glorious time, going a-bicycling with their husbands, dressed gaudily with all his superfluous income, talking about their 'Rights.'

As her children grow up to an age when they might help drudge with her or drudge for her, the State, without a word of thanks to her, takes them away to teach them and make good citizens of them. If the husband presently becomes bored by his restricted prolific household and its incessant demands, and absconds, or if he is simply unlucky and gets out of work, the State deals with her in a spirit of austere ingrat.i.tude. She is subjected to 'charity' and every conceivable indignity; she undergoes profounder humiliations than fall to the lot of the most dissolute women. If a husband 'goes wrong' and a woman has kept childless, she can get employment, she can shift for herself and be well quit of him, but a family disaster for a mother is catastrophe.

"I submit the situation is preposterous. I do not believe that with increasing intelligence and refinement women will go on marrying and bearing children under such conditions. I gather that the statistics of marriage-rates and birth-rates bear me out in this."

And in the _Daily Chronicle_ the Rev. Cartmel-Robinson:--

......"This phenomenon of the falling birth-rate is of course not confined to England; it is to be met with, you might say generally, in all Christian countries. It would be far more marked but for the tremendous decline in the death-rate, especially among infants. We ourselves should be vitally bankrupt but for this factor, and in France, as you know, the population is slowly dropping. That is an old story, but it is startling to learn, as President Roosevelt tells us, that the native-born American population is actually declining.

"One of the main causes, no doubt, is the determined pursuit of pleasure by all cla.s.ses. The man will not take the burden of providing for a family, or, at any rate, a large family, upon himself, because that would mean a curtailment of his luxuries, perhaps even his necessities, while the woman refuses to spend all the prime of her life in child-bearing and child-rearing.

She also wants to enjoy herself, and the pure, simple joys of maternity, which we used to think ought to be sufficient for a woman, have in many cases become irksome.

"For my part I do not think that you will ever rouse England to this question of home and children by an appeal to patriotism.

The Englishman has become too cosmopolitan for that, and I am afraid the feeling is growing.

"The reason for the decline in America is said to be that women are becoming neurotic, and will not face the dangers and responsibilities of motherhood. No doubt that is true to a certain extent here also, and it is quite certain that among intellectual and highly-educated women, such as are trained at our universities in increasing numbers, the maternal instinct, the capacity for love, if you like to put it in that way, is apt to be destroyed.

"Then, among the middle cla.s.ses thousands of young women, who not many years ago would have looked to marriage as their natural career, are earning their own livings, and are less eager to rush into matrimony."

I have taken these extracts from the words of a few people crying in the wilderness. All of the dicta are at least eighteen months old. I am writing now, in November 1906, and three days ago the apparently inevitable paragraph again made its appearance:--

"RECORD LOW BIRTH-RATE.

"The births registered in England and Wales during the three months ended September 30--234,624, or 269 per 1,000 of the population--was the lowest rate recorded in any third quarter since civil registration was established.

"The average in the same quarters of the past ten years was 288."

These opinions as to the reasons for the terrible decadence of England are doubtless all true. They are all contributory causes, and I do not think we can put a single one of them aside. Nothing could be more dismal or more hopeless reading. As one goes on, one experiences a sense as of a chill, deepening shadow.

Few people who read will be able to adopt the average man's att.i.tude towards unpleasant and disturbing matters--to sidle by with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders.

Where then do we stand?

So far I have endeavoured to show (_a_) the entire indifference of the ordinary man and woman to the fall in the birth-rate; (_b_) the only light, in which, as I understand it, one can see the problem as a whole--in the light of the Incarnation; (_c_) the fact that the Christian Sociologist to-day is inclined to condemn the theory that the limitation of population is necessary at all, even by legitimate methods of abstinence and control; (_d_) the varied reasons which, in the opinion of those who have studied the question deeply, contribute to the one central and shocking fact--

_That incredible numbers of English men and women many of them professing themselves Christians, are constantly using methods to prevent the birth of children._

Every parish clergyman in England is perfectly aware of what is going on. Every Nonconformist minister, and indeed every one whose work brings him in touch with large ma.s.ses of people in the capacities of leader, adviser, or friend, knows it also. Just as the figures of the Registrar General form a gauge by which to measure the generality of the malignant influence, so the personal experience of any man of the world will supply particular evidence of the state of things within his immediate purview and surroundings.

Always remembering that the evil is progressive, is hourly increasing, the observer of social phenomena at once asks himself if there is not some definite and organized control and direction of it. The desire to obtain the gratifications of pa.s.sion while evading its responsibilities is, perhaps, the strongest feeling implanted in the fallen nature of mankind. This is sufficient to create a demand for knowledge of how to obtain the desired end, and the demand has in its turn created the supply.

There is a definite literature upon the subject, there is a large body of highly-trained and cultured men and women ready and anxious to disseminate the necessary information to produce these results.

I propose to deal briefly, in the first instance, with the literature which urges and explains practices which the laws of G.o.d, the laws of Nature, and the teachings of the Church utterly and emphatically condemn.

The people who call themselves "Malthusians" (and to avoid an injustice to the memory of Malthus I shall here style them Neo-Malthusians) have an organ of their own in the shape of a periodical which is the official voice of a league into which they have formed themselves. The periodical has, I believe, an extensive circulation, and it is published at the lowest possible price.

Moreover, in each number of it which I have seen the following notice appears:--

"The Secretary of the Malthusian League will be glad to send copies of back numbers of this journal to friends willing to distribute them for propagandist purposes."

We see that an ordered press campaign is in progress. This periodical is most ably written and edited. Signed articles appear in it by men and women of standing and position. I find it impossible to doubt for a moment that these economists and scientists are not absolutely sincere, and actuated by a high and laudable desire to benefit the world in which they live.

It is unnecessary to give the t.i.tle of the periodical, but immediately beneath it the following sentence is printed in large letters--

"A CRUSADE AGAINST POVERTY."

Here is the _raison d'etre_ of the journal plainly stated, and so far it is no more than indicating the precise aim of Malthus--to find an economic remedy for the sufferings of poverty.

I proceed to give some examples of the teaching inculcated in the journal, and in the first place quote from a review of _L'Instinct d'Amour_, by Dr. Joanny Roux, a very distinguished French physician:--

"Must all who refuse to procreate refrain from love? How easy it is to clothe one's self in the robes of social purity when replying to this question! The social purists tell the world that chast.i.ty is obligatory if procreation be not intended. It is impossible to carry out this view. The philosopher contents himself with studying sterile love and its consequences. He rejoices to think that thousands of infants are left out of the world who would have been doomed to suffer. The inconveniences resulting from some selfish people who refrain from parentage are as nothing in the balance when weighed against the horrors of indigence.

"Should we not, by acting thus, lead to a progressive diminution of the population? Certainly; but that would be a good thing. As if, forsooth, human progress depended on quant.i.ty, and not on quality! Take China as an example of quant.i.ty without quality. Some writers seem to wish that the earth should be filled up with miserable and suffering people.

Malthus, that gentle clergyman, in 1798, was the first to protest against such a view. Over-reproduction, he showed, was the cause of poverty. He, however, thought the only remedy for this was chast.i.ty, and was quite opposed to _sterile love_.

"To accept sterile love, some say, is to run counter to Nature and natural morality. 'No,' says Dr. Roux, 'it is the preserving of these laws. In all cases where we construct houses or warm ourselves, we get one law of Nature to defend us against the other which injures us. We must not forget that our instincts are fixed customs of very ancient date; and there can be no doubt that man has the right to intervene in questions of that s.e.xual instinct if morality (_i. e._ happiness) requires it of him.'"

When one reads these pa.s.sages a flood of light as to the real influence and direction of such teachings comes to us at once. The writer, no doubt sincerely enough, a.s.sumes as an axiom of his whole position, that there is no law but "Nature," no morality but what he calls "Natural Morality." We are, in fact, under no obligations to anything but the promptings of animal instinct which are part of our human nature.

We see immediately the inherent negation of Christianity implied in this att.i.tude, and apart from the definite teaching of the Faith upon the question, which I shall enter into later, it is most important that we should realize that the holders and preachers of Neo-Malthusianism must always be opposed to Christianity. Even those people who do not profess their hatred for, or disbelief in our Lord in so many words, logically imply them. Christians who may not have troubled themselves about this menace to the State and its morals must be told in no uncertain voice that the movement is purely heathen in its position and built upon a basis of heathenism. Let us call things by their right names, and realize that the Neo-Malthusian worshipping Nature and the Chinese Coolie worshipping his Joss are only two manifestations of exactly the same thing.

Nor are the people who are attempting to turn marriage into a polite and recognized form of prost.i.tution always so reticent as to their att.i.tude towards the Christian Faith. In an article which professes to sum up the work of the Malthusian League I read:--