The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston.

  • Herbert Thurston
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The declining birth-rate / Herbert Thurston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    remarks, ‘‘ has not saved France,” though she has the honesty to add the query, “but are the French really as devout as the Irish ?” Of course the whole point lies there. Catholicism which is merely Catholicism in name, and which amounts to no more in the supposed believer than a vague purpose of sending for a priest when he is dying, is not likely to have any restraining effect upon the decline of the birth-rate. Further, it is precisely because a really practical Catholicism lays such restrictions upon freedom in this and other matters, that members of the educated and com- fortable classes, the men. especially, are prone to emancipate themselves from all religious control with an anti-clerical rancour hardly known in Protestant lands. Had it not been for these defec- tions from her teaching, the Catholic Church, in most countries of mixed religion, would soon become predominant by the mere force of natural fertility. Even as it is, we believe that a country like France owes such small measure of natural increase as she still retains almost entirely to the religious principle of the faithful few. Where the Catholic Church preserves her sway over the hearts of men the maintenance of a vigorous stock is assured. Even in the general retrogression observable in England to-day, it is probable that Catholicism counts for a good deal, as Miss Elderton admits in the case in Liverpool, Leigh, and one or two other centres. The highest town birth-rate in England at present is St. Helens, where in 1912 it stood at 32°3 per
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