MARRIAGES IN ENGLAND.
SPECULATION'S as to the increase of population are a little like speculations as to the decay of the sun's heat. If the world lasts long enough, and if nothing happens to give a new direction to the forces at work, the glacial period will return and the last of human kind will die of eternal cold in the midst of eternal night. If the population of the world goes on increasing at its present rate, a fature equally un- pleasing awaits us, even before the powers of the sun are ex- hausted. When human multiplication has done its work, not every rood, but every square foot of ground will possess, though not maintain, its man, and the fittest to survive will be he who has most gift for standing comfortably on his neighbour's shoulders. These two prospects have other points in common beside that of being exceedingly unpleasant. Both are distant, and neither are likely to be much affected by any conscious action of ours. The truest and most practical summary we know of the population question is contained in one of W. R. Greg's later essays. It will not be serious, he
says, except locally, for another hundred years or so, and the generation for which it becomes serious will certainly not accept any solution of it with which we may provide them. The judicious distribution of the existing population, the creation of additional demand for labour by the opening-up of new markets, and of additional food for labourers by the better cultivation of old Boils, and the gradual extension to the working classes of that forethought about matrimony which, with one exception to be presently noted, has already become common in the professional classes, promise for the present to give us sufficient protection against that " devastating torrent of children " of which Mr. Cotter Morison writes so gloomily in his new book.
It is something, however, to have a grain of more direct comfort thrown in our way, and the last report of the Registrar-General really does us this service. It has often been said that the marriage-rate varies inversely with the price of food, and in itself the statement seems probable enough. When food is cheap, the working classes are pre- sumably prosperous, and what more natural evidence of prosperity is there than marriage ? But the Registrar-General makes short work of this theory. It is altogether opposed to figures. If the marriage-rate varied inversely with the price of food, and more and more people rushed into wedlock as bread became cheaper, the last fifteen years would have witnessed a steady increase in the number of marriages. The decline in prices has been great and uniform, and as subsistence became eheaper, young people should more and more have acted on the common but deceptive doctrine that what will keep one will keep two. But nothing of the kind has taken place. In 1873, there were something more than 17 marriages to every 1,000 of the population ; in 1885, there were something more than 14 to every 1,000. This is a specially encouraging fact for another reason. These years of cheap food were also years of high wages. To whatever deductions Mr. Giffen's figures may be liable, there is no question that down to the end of 1885, the working classes had had a considerable bout of prosperity. Wages, if they had not been maintained at the highest level, had not fallen in proportion to the cheapness of almost every article which wages buy. When, therefore, we find the marriage-rate steadily declining throughout this period, and finally reaching in 1885 the lowest point recorded since civil registration began, there is no escape from the conclusion that prosperity has not the effect generally attributed to it. When the working man is well off, he does not invariably take to himself a wife. He apparently waits to do this until he wants some one to share and console his poverty. The immense gain of this discovery of the Registrar-General's is obvious. So long as greater prosperity meant more frequent marriages, every improvement in the condition of the working classes seemed to carry its own bane with it. The better-off they became, the more determined they were supposed to be to undo their prosperity in the future. The fact that a man bad enough to keep himself would in this way have been nothing but a signal to marry, and so probably call into being a certain number of creatures whom he would not have enough to keep. Nothing could be imagined more calculated to discourage hearty efforts to make the condition of the working classes better than it is. If higher wages, shorter hours, and cheaper food only meant more mouths to feed and more bodies to clothe, what advantage would they have over low wages, long hours, and dear food ? As it is, we may fairly congratulate ourselves that the better-off the working classes become, the more prudent they become. Whatever can be done to make them more prosperous, will be something towards the introduction of greater forethought as regards matrimony. The same conclusion is indicated by the various ages at which marriages are contracted. The professional class, who have very commonly some private means, and, at all events, have some prospect of making an income, do not marry till thirty. The miners, and those employed in textile factories, who have no private means, and, comparatively speaking, a precarious prospect of employment, marry at twenty-three. Where them is most to gain, marriage is delayed ; where there is least to lose, it is hurried on. Why should it be thought impossible that these latter classes should gradually attain some measure of the prudence at which the professional classes have already arrived ? Things have mended with them during the last fifteen years, and we see the result in slower marriage- rate. If one process can but be maintained, the other, no doubt, will be. The higher we advance the standard of living, the more we do to mitigate, indirectly but surely, the popula- tion difficulty. It is some consolation to know that in busying ourselves with the simpler problem, we are contributing some- thing towards the solution of the more difficult one.
There is another very encouraging fact in these returns. It is conceivable that this diminution in the marriage-rate may have had no effect whatever upon the birth-rate, that the only difference would have been to bring into the world fewer legitimate children and more illegitimate children. Nothing of the kind, however, has happened. There has been no increase in the number of illegitimate children. What were the motives which kept down the number of marriages, then, seem to have been not less effectual in keeping down the number of unlicensed unions. Here, again, the example of the professional elms may be quoted. It is not, indeed, this time a question of statistics. But in default of statistics, general observation and belief are not bad things to go by, and they certainly tell us that the sexual morality of the profes- sional class, where marriage is postponed for prudential reasons, is, to say the least, not below that of the very wealthy class, which is able to marry when it likes. On this question of deferring marriage, the professional class can preach to the working class with the great advantage of having practised what it preaches. Barristers and doctors and merchants do not as a rule marry until they have some- thing on which to keep a wife and family. Reckless marriages are discouraged by the public opinion of the professional class ; and in the consequent unwillingness of a father to give his daughter to a man without means or prospects, this public opinion finds its most effectual expression. One exception, however, must be made to this general statement, and, unfor- tunately, is one which the poor have constantly before their eyes. The common-sense view that a professional man who marries without some decent prospect of being able to support a family is committing an act of great selfishness as well as of great imprudence, has but a very limited application in the case of the clergy. They marry early, and they marry reck- lessly ; and the consequence is that the Church is discredited by their poverty, and by the appeals that are constantly being made to assist it by one means or another. Why should the clergy be worse in this respect than the Bar ? The answer, we believe, is that they have been led asbray by a false public opinion among the laity. The sense of the evils of a celibate clergy is so strong in this country, that the most hopelessly imprudent marriage is somehow thought to be justified if the offender is a clergyman. Men will give their daughters to curates who are never likely to have in the end the income which in a barrister is held to be insufficient to begin upon. Such expressions as that " a parson is not half a parson till he is married," and the like, point the same way ; and the result is that we see appointed public teachers setting the working class an example of a fault of which they are extremely likely to be guilty without such en- couragement. It was Dean Stanley, we think, who said that what was wanted in the Church of England was a close-time for curates ; and if public opinion steadily discouraged clerical marriage until a man had a living—unless, indeed, he had private means equivalent to a living—it would do a service to the working class as well as to the Church.
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