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The S. porch is of unusual size and contains a monument which must be a standing reproach to a declining birthrate. Under a large Elizabethan canopy is an effigy of Sir J. Newton , attended by twenty children. At the other end of the village are two mansions, Harptree Court and Eastwood. Harptree, West, about 1 m. N. of East Harptree. The church has a Norman tower with an ugly slated spire.

The decline in the birthrate had become so startling at the close of the republic that the first emperor, Augustus, had decided that it was necessary on the one side to penalise persons who remained either unmarried or childless, and on the other to grant fixed concessions to all who were the parents of three.

The efforts of many radicals to enact legislation regulating the birthrate, the struggle to disseminate knowledge of how to prevent conception, may be well meant as these things are consistent with prevailing conditions. But they are not the final answer to the problem. Love is the only answer.

From time to time many energetic persons have noisily demanded that a stop should be put to the decline of the birthrate, for, they argue, it means "race suicide." It is now beginning to be realized, however, that this outcry was a foolish and mischievous mistake.

It is well known that the steady decline in the English birthrate begun in 1877, the year following the trial. There could be no more brilliant illustration of the fact, that what used to be called "the instruments of Providence" are indeed unconscious instruments in bringing about great ends which they themselves were far from either intending or desiring. In 1877, Dr.

It is evident that even among the poor class there is a process of leveling up to the higher classes in this matter. I have developed these points more in detail in two articles in the Independent Review, November, 1903, and April, 1904. See also, Bushee, "The Declining Birthrate and Its Causes," Popular Science Monthly, Aug., 1903.

In the very able paper already quoted, in which Sidney Webb shows that "the decline in the birthrate appears to be much greater in those sections of the population which give proofs of thrift and foresight," that this decline is "principally, if not entirely, the result of deliberate volition," and that "a volitional regulation of the marriage state is now ubiquitous throughout England and Wales, among, apparently, a large majority of the population," the results are brought forward of a detailed inquiry carried out by the Fabian Society.

The average human being is little more than a phonographic record of the dominant race-thought, and race-thought ideas are contagious. Let us honor and provide for all mothers and all children and we will find that the birthrate will increase among the "rich and respectable," where now we note a determined desire to shirk the responsibilities of parenthood.

Things happen and men know it and the information spreads invisible, intangible, inaudible, but positive and, in nine cases out of ten, correct in detail. A government can no more censor it, or divert it, or stop it on the way, than it can stay the birthrate or tamper with the Great Monsoon.

Huntington rightly deplores this "rapid fall of the birthrate, especially among intelligent, far sighted, industrious, progressive people whose ideals of family life are high."