CIVILIZED NATIONS. 135 



they produce many more children. The children, moreover, that 

 are born by mothers during the prime of life are heavier and 

 larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born 

 at other periods. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious 

 members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the 

 provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts 

 the case: "The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies 

 "like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious 

 "Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and 

 "disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle 

 "and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given 

 "a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand 

 "Celts — and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population 

 "would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of 

 "the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that re- 

 "mained. In the eternal 'struggle for existence,' it would be the 

 "inferior and less favored race that had prevailed— and prevailed 

 "by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults." 



There are, however, some checks to this downward tendency. 

 We have seen that the intemperate suffer from a high rate of 

 mortality, and the extremely profligate leave few offspring. The 

 poorest classes crowd into towns, and it has been proved by Dr. 

 Stark from the statistics of ten years in Scotland,^' that at all 

 ages the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, 

 "and during the first five years of life the town death-rate is 

 "almost exactly double that of the rural districts." As these re- 

 turns include both the rich and the poor, no doubt more than 

 twice the number of births would be requisite to keep up the 

 number of the very poor inhabitants in the towns, relatively to 

 those in the country. With women, marriage at too early an 

 age is highly injurious; for it has been found in France that, 

 "twice as many wives under twenty die in the year, as died out 

 "of the same number of the unmarried." The mortality, also, 

 of husbands under twenty is "excessively high,"''^ but what the 

 cause of this may be, seems doubtful. Lastly, if the men who 

 prudently delay marrying until they can bring up their families 

 in comfort, were to select, as they often do, women in the prime 

 of life, the rate of increase in the better class would be only 

 slightly lessened. 



It was established from an enormous body of statistics, taken 

 during 1853, that the unmarried men throughout France, between 



21 'Tenth Annual Report of Births, Deaths, &c., in Scotland,' 1867, p. 

 xxix, 



22 These CLUotations are talcen from our highest authority on such 

 questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his paper 'On the Influence of Mar- 

 riage on the Mortality of the French People," read before the Nat. 

 Assoc, for the Promotion of Social Science 1858. 



