more broadly, and
bring them into relation with other series of phenomena. It is almost
beyond dispute that a voluntary restriction of the number of offspring
by Neo-Malthusian practices is at least one of the chief methods by
which the birth-rate has been lowered. It may not indeed be--and
probably, as we shall see, is not--the only method. It has even been
denied that the prevalence of Neo-Malthusian practices counts at all.[115]
Thus while Coghlan, the Government Statistician of New South Wales,
concludes that the decline in the birth-rate in the Australian
Commonwealth was due to "the art of applying artificial checks to
conception," McLean, the Government Statistician of Victoria, concludes
that it was "due mainly to natural causes." [116] He points out that when
the birth-rate in Australia, half a century ago, was nearly 43 per 1000,
the population consisted chiefly of men and women at the reproductive
period of life, and that since then the proportion of persons at these
ages has declined, leading necessarily to a decline in the crude
birth-rate. If we compare the birth-rate of communities among women of
the same age-periods, McLean argues, we may obtain results quite
different from the crude birth-rate. Thus the crude birth-rate of
Buda-Pesth is much higher than that of New South Wales, but if we
ascertain the birth-rate of married women at different age-periods (15
to 20, 20 to 25, etc.) the New South Wales birth-rate is higher for
every age-period than that of Buda-Pesth. McLean considers that in young
communities with many vigorous immigrants the population is normally
more prolific than in older and more settled communities, and that
hardships and financial depression still more depress the birth-rate. He
further emphasizes the important relationship, which we must never lose
sight of in this connection, between a high birth-rate and a high
death-rate, especially a high infantile death-rate, and he believes,
indeed, that "the solution of the problem of the general decline in the
birth-rate throughout all civilized communities lies in the preservation
of human life." The mechanism of the connection would be, he maintains,
that prolonged suckling in the case of living children increases the
intervals between childbearing. As we have seen, there is a tendency,
though not a rigid and invariable necessity,[117] for a high birth-rate to
be associated with a high infantile death-rate, and a low birth-rate
with a low