480 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION GI. 



and ill-educated ones, and will they and their parents be healthier 

 and happier ? Medical men and the clergy, however, tell us that 

 the " laxity in morals " which leads people to restrict the number 

 of their families must inevitably have a baneful influence on the 

 future of the race. It is, of course, more or less generally believed 

 that there are a certain number of people who deliberately restrict 

 the number of their children, or who refuse to have children, either 

 from sheer hedonism or through hatred of " brats," but there is no 

 very definite information as to the number of such people. Besides, 

 evidence can be adduced to show that the doctors and the clergy- 

 to some extent, at all events, advocate a vicarious morality in regard 

 to the size of the family. In vol. 39 of the Journal of the Institute 

 of Actuaries wiU be found an article which throws a sinister side- 

 light on the question. During his investigation into a certain 

 Clergy Widows' and Orphans' Fund in England, the consulting 

 actuary found that from 1881 to 1905 the average number of 

 children per family of the contributing clergy had fallen from 2.67 

 to 1.63. After careful examination of all possible reasons for this 

 decline, the actuaiy gave it as his conviction that it was due to 

 deliberate limitation. He stated also that the result was the more 

 surprising in that poverty could not be pleaded as an excuse, since 

 the average salaries had risen in the meantime. The actuary 

 certainly disregarded the increased cost of living during the period, 

 but the increased salaries form a legitimate set-off against this, and 

 probably the clergy of that particular denomination are no worse 

 off now than they ever were. 



In 1901 a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the 

 decline in the birth rate in New South Wales. This Commission 

 gave it as its opinion that the decline was largely due to deliberate 

 restriction, and amongst other things advocated the enforcement of 

 the provision of the Customs Act of 1901 with reference to the pro- 

 hibition of the importation of certain appliances. It is very 

 debatable whether any practical value accrued from the long 

 deliberation of this Commission, and many people argued that it 

 had a positively harmful effect in that it dragged into prominence 

 several things that were best left alone. It has, moreover, been 

 openly stated that one of the baneful results achieved by it was the 

 concentrating of an unpleasant amount of public attention on the 

 various methods of limitation. It is also stated that the prohibi- 

 tion of importation of various drugs and appliances gave a distinct 

 fillip to the local manufacture of such articles, and that these 

 articles are more easily obtainable and have a larger sale than the 

 imported goods. This, of course, is purely on dit evidence, and is 

 not, and in the nature of the case, could not, be supported by 

 statistics. At all events the birth rate in New South Wales has 

 persistently declined since the Royal Commission sat, nor is there as 

 yet any evidence of improvement. Speaking of the work of the 

 Commission one of the members remarked that it " made the man 

 in the street stare." He omitted to mention that it also made him 

 jeer. For the " man in the street " knew well enough that any 



