PHYSICAL DEGENERACY OR RACE SUICIDE? 519 



well-being, and that it is exceptionally marked where there is foresight 

 and thrift — all this points in one and the same direction. 8 



We may add other evidence. Among the Roman Catholics in the 

 United Kingdom any regulation of the marriage state is strongly for- 

 bidden, and has, during recent years, been made the subject of frequent, 

 special animadversion, both privately and from the pulpit. It is sig- 

 nificant that Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom in which 

 the birth rate has not declined; that in Ireland itself it has declined a 

 little in semi-Protestant Belfast, and not at all in Eoman Catholic 

 Dublin; and that in the towns of Great Britain the decline is least in 

 Liverpool, Salford, Manchester and Glasgow — towns in which the pro- 

 portion of Eoman Catholics is considerable. Among the principal tex- 

 tile factory towns the decline is least at Preston, which is the one 

 having the largest proportion of Roman Catholics. Among the dif- 

 ferent metropolitan boroughs — though we can not measure with accu- 

 racy the fall in the birth rate — the present rate is highest, and, there- 

 fore, in all probability, the fall has been least in those boroughs in 

 which the Irish Roman Catholics (and the Jews who, in this respect, 

 are in the same position) are most numerous. All this is inconsistent 

 with the hypothesis that the decline is due to physical degeneracy, and 

 consistent with that of its being due to deliberate volition. Common 

 report that such deliberate regulation of the marriage state, either with 

 the object of limitation of the family, or (which has the same result) 

 with that of regulating the interval between births, has become widely 

 prevalent during the past quarter of a century — exactly the period of 

 the decline — reaches us from all sides — from doctors and chemists, 

 from the officers of friendly societies and philanthropists working 

 among the poor, and, most significant of all, from those who are en- 

 gaged in the very extensive business of which this new social practise 

 has given rise. What is needed to complete the demonstration is direct 

 individual evidence. 



II. 



In the preceding section I have shown, upon statistical evidence 

 that appears to me irresistible in its cumulative force, that the decline 

 in the birth rate which is depriving England and Wales of at least 

 one fifth of every year's normal crop of babies is not accounted for by 



* It is at any rate consistent with the hypothesis of volitional interference, 

 in view of the fact that illegitimate children are, on an average, certainly less 

 desired than legitimate, that, as already stated, the corrected illegitimate birth 

 rate should have fallen off in England and Wales more than twice as much 

 as the legitimate, and twice as much between 1881 and 1901 as between 1861 and 

 1881. The figures for Scotland correspond to these. (' Natality and Fecundity,' 

 by Ci J. and J. N. Lewis, 1906, p. 54.) 



