Page:Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922).djvu/167

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THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE
161

that holds in this matter. There has been a great rise in the birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a great increase in the population of the grave-yards. Equally instructive is it to compare various cities in this same Province, living under the same laws, and fairly similar social conditions. In the report of the Registrar-General of Ontario for 1916 I find that highest in birth-rate of cities in the Province stands Ottawa with a very considerable French population. But first also stands the same city for infant mortality, which is three times greater than in some other cities in the Province with a low birth-rate. Sault Ste. Marie, again with an enormous birth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. Canada shows us that, even if we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population as reasonable—and that is a considerable assumption—a high birth-rate is an uncertain prop to rest on.

Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing that the difference between the English-speaking and French-speaking populations—the greater care of the former in procreation and the more recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same ends—are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods of birth-control. What the result of a general use of such methods is we know from the example already mentioned