SECTION CCLV.. Means of Promoting Population.

MEANS OF PROMOTING POPULATION.

The following are the principal means which have been used to artificially promote the increase of population:

A. Making marriage and the procreation of children obligatory by direct command. Among almost all medieval nations so strong is the family feeling, that it seems to men to be a sacred duty to keep their family from becoming extinct. Where a person is not in a condition physically to fulfill this duty, the law supplies a means of accomplishing it by juridical substitution[255-1] at least. Most national religions[255-2] operate in the same direction, as well as the influence of political law-givers, who fully share in the contempt for willful old bachelors and sterile women, which runs through the national feeling of all medieval times.[255-3] In addition to this, there are the positive rewards offered for large families of children.[255-4] Even Colbert, in 1666, decreed that whoever married before his 20th year should be exempt from taxation until his 25th; that anyone who had 10 legitimate children living, not priests, should be exempt from taxation for all time;[255-5] that a nobleman having 10 children living should receive a pension of 1,000 livres, and one having 12, 2,000 livres. Persons not belonging to the nobility were to receive one-half of this, and to be released from all municipal burthens.[255-6] Such premiums are, indeed, entirely superfluous. No nobleman would desire 12 children simply to obtain a pension of 2,000 livres! Colbert himself abandoned this system of premiums shortly before his death.[255-7] [255-8]

In the case of morally degenerated nations, in which an aversion to the married state had gained ground, efforts have sometimes been made to work against it by means of new premiums. Thus, especially in Rome, since the times of Cæsar and Augustus, although with poor success. It little becomes one who is himself a great adulterer to preach the sixth commandment.[255-9]