TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 739 



the rate of the excess of births over deaths, may also be the greater vitality of the 

 populations concerned, so that the composition of tlie population is altered by an 

 increase of the relative numbers of people not in the prime of life, so altering the 

 proportion of the people at the child-producing ages to the total. This would be 

 too complex a subject for me to treat in the course of a discursive address. Nor 

 would ic explain tlie whole facts, which include, for instance, an almost stationary 

 annual number of births in the United Kingdom for more than ten years past, not- 

 withstanding the largely increased population. But the case may be one where a 

 great many partial explanations contribute to elucidate the phenomena, so that this 

 particular explanation cannot be overlooked. 



4. There remains, however, the question which many people have rushed in to 

 discuss — viz., whether the reproductive power of the populations in question is 

 quite as great as it was fifty or sixty years ago. We have already heard in some 

 quarters, not merely that the reproductive energy has diminished, but suggestions 

 that the populations in question are following the example of the Frencli, where 

 the rate of increase of the population has almost come to an end. Apart, however, 

 from the suggestions above made as to the abnormality of the increase fifty or 

 sixty years ago, so that some decline now is rather to be expected than not, I 

 would point out that the subject is about as full of pitfalls as any statistical 

 problem can be, for the simple reason that it can only be approached indirectly, as 

 there have been no statistical records over a long series of years showing the pro- 

 portion of births to married women at the child-producing ages, distinguishing 

 the ages, and showing at the same time the proportion of the married women to 

 the total at those ages. Unless there are some such statistics, direct comparisons 

 are impossible, and a good many of the indirect methods of approaching the sub- 

 ject which I have studied a little appear, to say the least, to leave much to be 

 desired. We find, for instance, that a comparison has been made in Australasia 

 between the number of marriages in a given year or years and the number of 

 births in the five or six years following, which show, it is said, a remarkable 

 decline in the proportion of births to marriages in recent years as compared with 

 twenty or thirty years ago. It is forgotten, however, that at the earlier dates in 

 Australasia, when a large immigration was taking place, a good many of the 

 children born were the children of parents v/ho had been man-ied before they 

 entered the country, while there are hardly any children of such parents at a time 

 when immigration has almost ceased. The answer to such questions is in truth 

 not to he rushed, and the question with statisticians should rather be how the 

 statistics are to be improved in future, so that, although the past cannot be fully 

 explained, the regular statistics themselves will in future give a ready answer. 



5. One more remark may, perhaps, be allowed to me on account of the delicacy 

 and interest of the subject. To a certain extent the causes of a decline in repro- 

 ductive energy maj' be part and parcel of the improved condition of the popula- 

 tion, which leads in turn to an increase of the age at marriage, and an increase of 

 celihacy generally through the indisposition of individual members of the com- 

 munity to run any risk of sinking in the scale of living which they may run by . 

 premature marriage. These causes, however, may operate to a great extent upoii 

 the birth-rate itself without diminishing the growth, of population, because the 

 children, though born in smaller proportion, are better cared for, and the rate of 

 excess of births over deaths consequently remains considerable, although the 

 birth-rate itself is low. The serious fact would be a decline of the rate of the 

 excess of births over deaths through the death-rate remaining comparativelv high 

 while the birth-rate falls. It is in this conjunction that the gravity of the 

 stationariness of population in France appears to lie. While the birth-rate in 

 France is undoubtedly a low one, 21-9 per 1,000 in 1899, according to the latest 

 figures before me, still this would have been quite sufficient to ensure a consider- 

 able excess rate of births over deaths, and a considerable increase of population 

 every ten years if the death-rate had been as low as in the United Kingdom — viz., 

 18-3 per 1,000. A difference of 3'G per 1,000 upon a population of about 

 40 millions comes to about 150,000 per annum, or 1,500,000 and rather more 

 every ten years. In France, however, the death-rate was 2ri per 1,000, instead 



