Letters to the Editor
LESSONS OF THE CENSUS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIIL—Y011 are surely wrong in suggesting, in your article under the above heading, that there was anything admirable in the declining birth-rate and the small family of France in the nineteenth century. Fortunately the French themselves now realize their mistake and have made birth-control pro- paganda a criminal offence. From the national point of view its effect has been that France had, comparatively, greater losses in the late War than any other belligerent. On the industrial side, when population decreased in the south of France last century, demand for agricultural produce neces- sarily decreased also : the inhabitants of Provence could not sell their wine and maize, much land went out of cultivation and so remains to this day, as any traveller to the Riviera can see. In the towns there were not enough Frenchmen to do the work and foreigners entered : to-day Marseilles and Nice arc practically Italian cities.
There is plenty of room for all in our own Empire. If agri- culture were more encouraged in Great Britain it could absorb 1,000,000 people ; others could colonize a few acres of our 12,000,000 square mile Empire, which is so thinly populated.
The recent report on National Debt and Taxation shows that our National Debt is, comparatively, no heavier than in 1820, after the Napoleonic Wars. Yet, during the intervening century, we wiped that debt out merely by increased produc- tion, combined with increased population. Let us treat our present debt in the same way : if we allow the population to decrease we increase the amount of taxation which each indi- vidual must bear. Our true remedy is to work hard and to have children.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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