Note 62 — JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (continued 2)

Dr. W. Ogle, on the 18th March, 1890, read a paper before the Statistical Society upon "Marriage Rates and Ages." The conclusion he arrived at, with regard to the rapidly-advancing over-population of England, was that, in order to equalise the death-rate with the birth-rate (or in other words, to maintain the population at its present level), we must look forward either to (1) an increase of emigration which would involve social revolution, or (2) to the advance of the average age at which women marry to the point of thirty years, or (3) to an exclusion of 45 per cent. of those who now marry from matrimony at any period of life. In the face of these calculations, after admitting their possible exaggeration, it seems illogical to punish with severe legal penalties those members of the male sex who do not want to marry, and who can satisfy their natural desires in ways which involve no detriment to the State and no violation of the rights of individuals.