124 THE LAW OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS 



to quote a passage from a well-known writer showing 

 what the attitude of French women towards children 

 really is. Mr. W. L. George, who has an intimate know- 

 ledge of France, declares that " maternal love is a ferocious 

 thing, ready at a pinch to devour the mother herself ; 

 in France it is carried to sublime lengths of devotion, 

 to sublime lengths of folly. Owing, perhaps, to the fact 

 that families are small, that they so often number but 

 one child, the mother's love concentrates itself round 

 but few objects ; it gains in intensity that which it loses 

 in extent. The child is everything ; its well-being, its 

 training, its education, are the mother's perpetual care. 

 French households do not know the nursery where the 

 child is given over to hirelings ; it hardly knows the 

 kindergarten where it is estranged from its mother, the 

 boarding school at an early age where the gentle boy 

 is coarsened and brutalised. Not only does the French 

 mother usually nurse her own baby, but in later years 

 she will attend to its feeding and clothing herself ; she 

 will herself give it its first lessons, make it her playmate 

 as well as her toy. In these respects she does not differ 

 from the best British mothers, but the average type seems 

 superior to that known in these isles." 1 And yet on the 

 accepted theory we have to assume that in something like 

 20 per cent, of cases these women are taking the most 

 troublesome precautions from the very marriage eve 

 to avoid having a single child ! 



From the fact that before 1870 there were 4' 99 children 

 per marriage on the average among clerical families, and 

 after 1870 an average of 4*2, Dr. Whetham 2 infers that 

 there has been no decline of fertility due to natural causes. 

 Against this, however, may be set the fact that Dean Inge 



1 Quoted from Fecundity versus Civilisation, Adelyne More. 

 * The Family and the, Nation. 



