There are many parts of Europe even now in which custom exercising the force of law prevents more than one son in each family from marrying; he is generally the eldest, but in some places the youngest: if any other son marries he must leave the village.When great material prosperity and the absence of all extreme poverty are found in old-fashioned corners of the Old World, the explanation generally lies in some such custom as this with all its evils and hardships.(19*) It is true that the severity of this custom may be tempered by the power of migration; but in the Middle Ages the free movement of the people was hindered by stern regulations.The free towns indeed often encouraged immigration from the country: but the rules of the gilds were in some respects almost as cruel to people who tried to escape from their old homes as were those enforced by the feudal lords themselves.(20*)5.In this respect the position of the hired agricultural labourer has changed very much.The towns are now always open to him and his children; and if he betakes himself to the New World he is likely to succeed better than any other class of emigrants.
But on the other hand the gradual rise in the value of land and its growing scarcity is tending to check the increase of population in some districts in which the system of peasant properties prevails, in which there is not much enterprise for opening out new trades or for emigration, and parents feel that the social position of their children will depend on the amount of their land.They incline to limit artificially the size of their families and to treat marriage very much as a business contract, seeking always to marry their sons to heiresses.
Francis Galton pointed out that, though the families of English peers are generally large, the habits of marrying the eldest son to an heiress who is presumably not of fertile stock, and sometimes dissuading younger sons from marriage, have led to the extinction of many peerages.Similar habits among French peasants, combined with their preference for small families, keep their numbers almost stationary.
On the other hand there seem to be no conditions more favourable to the rapid growth of numbers than those of the agricultural districts of new countries.Land is to be had in abundance, railways and steamships carry away the produce of the land and bring back in exchange implements of advanced types, and many of the comforts and luxuries of life.The "farmer," as the peasant proprietor is called in America, finds therefore that a large family is not a burden, but an assistance to him.He and they live healthy out-of-door lives; there is nothing to check but everything to stimulate the growth of numbers.The natural increase is aided by immigration; and thus, in spite of the fact that some classes of the inhabitants of large cities in America are, it is said, reluctant to have many children, the population has increased sixteen-fold in the last hundred years.(21*)On the whole it seems proved that the birth-rate is generally lower among the well-to-do than among those who make little expensive provision for the future of themselves and their families, and who live an active life: and that fecundity is diminished by luxurious habits of living.Probably it is also diminished by severe mental strain; that is to say, given the natural strength of the parents, their expectation of a large family is diminished by a great increase of mental strain.Of course those who do high mental work, have as a class more than the average of constitutional and nervous strength; and Galton has shown that they are not as a class unprolific.But they commonly marry late.
6.The growth of population in England has a more clearly defined history than that in the United Kingdom, and we shall find some interest in noticing its chief movements.
The restraints on the increase of numbers during the Middle Ages were the same in England as elsewhere.In England as elsewhere the religious orders were a refuge to those for whom no establishment in marriage could be provided; and religious celibacy while undoubtedly acting in some measure as an independent check on the growth of population, is in the main to be regarded rather as a method in which the broad natural forces tending to restrain population expressed themselves, than as an addition to them.Infectious and contagious diseases, both endemic and epidemic, were caused by dirty habits of life which were even worse in England than in the South of Europe; and famines by the failures of good harvests and the difficulties of communication; though this evil was less in England than elsewhere.
Country life was, as elsewhere, rigid in its habits; young people found it difficult to establish themselves until some other married pair had passed from the scene and made a vacancy in their own parish; for migration to another parish was seldom thought of by an agricultural labourer under ordinary circumstances.Consequently whenever plague or war or famine thinned the population, there were always many waiting to be married, who filled the vacant places; and, being perhaps younger and stronger than the average of newly married couples, had larger families.(22*)There was however some movement even of agricultural labourers towards districts which had been struck more heavily than their neighbours by pestilence, by famine or the sword.
