Convents and Orphanages as Population Control

Convents and Orphanages as Population Control

Modern convents are bad institutions. These are popish institutions which should be condemned as:

• nurseries of superstition,
• burdensome to the public, and
• oppressive to their poor prisoners

Do they reduce a state’s population size?

Anciently, every great family was a kind of convent. If a convent’s lands were given to a nobleman, he would spend its revenue on dogs, horses, footmen, and house-maids. His family would have the same population as a convent.

A father thrusts his daughters into nunneries so that he may not be overburdened with a big family.

But the ancients would rather leave their babies to die. This practice was very common, but was not viewed as horrorible nor immoral.

Plutarch was humane and good-natured. The king of Pergamus named Attalus murdered all of his own children in order to leave his crown to the son of his brother, Eumenes. It was a sign of gratitude and affection to Eumenes. Plutarch saw this killing of babies as a merit.

Solon was the most celebrated sage of Greece. He allowed parents, by law, to kill their children.

Which is better population control: modern monastic vows or the ancient killing of babies?

The killing of babies might actually increase population size. By removing the terrors of big families, many people would get married. Only a few people might actually kill their babies. At present, only China does this practice, and every Chinese man is married before he is 20 years old.

Such early marriages only became general because people could so easily get rid of their children.

Plutarch says that the killing of babies was a general maxim of the poor. The rich were then averse to marriage because of the legacies expected from courtship.

Orphanages are favourable to the encrease of numbers. But they would be pernicious to the state if they were widely available to everyone, without distinction.

Less than 1% of the children of Paris have parents who are unable to raise them. But one out of nine children born at Paris is sent to the orphanage.

There is a great difference in health, industry, and morals between a family education and an orphanage education. It should prevent us from making the entry into orphanages too easy and engaging.

To kill one’s own child is shocking. But to turn over his care to others, is very tempting to the natural indolence of mankind.

The the situation of affairs in Greece, Italy, Spain, Gaul, Germany, Africa, and most of the Lesser Asia was:

• their governments always being very near the frontiers
• their great equality of fortune
• the smallness of their territories or petty commonwealths
• the encrease of the Roman power

Marriage is most favourable to the propagation of mankind. A wealthy man cannot eat more than another. He must share it with his servants whose servitude is precarious. This discourages them from marrying relative to thise who had a small fortune and were secure and independent.

Enormous cities:

• are destructive to society,
• beget vice and disorder,
• starve the remoter provinces and even starve themselves by inflation

It would be happier if:

• each man had his little house and field to himself, and
• each county had its capital, free and independent;

This would be favourable to industry, agriculture, marriage and propagation!

The prolific virtue of men would double the population size with every generation if it were to act in its full extent, without that restraint which poverty and necessity. This liberty can be given best by:

• small commonwealths
• an equality of fortune among the citizens

All small states naturally produce equality of fortune because they afford no opportunities of great expansion. Small commonwealths are even better by the separation of powers essential to produce that equality.

Xenophon, a general, returned after the famous expedition with Cyrus. He and 6,000 Greeks worked for Seuthes, a prince of Thrace.

• Each soldier would receive 1 daric a month
• Each captain two darics
• Each general, four.

This ratio is similar to our modern policy.

Æschines and eight others were sent ambassadors to Philip of Macedon. Their pay for over four months were 1,000 drachmas, which is less than a drachma a day for each ambassador.

Sometimes two drachma a day was the pay of a common foot-soldier.

A Roman Centurion had only double pay to a private man in Polybius’s time.

The gratuities after a triumph were regulated by that proportion.

But Mark Anthony and the triumvirate gave the centurions five times the reward of Polybius because the commonwealth increased so much that it also encreased the inequality among the citizens.

that the situation of affairs in modern times, with regard to civil liberty, as well as equality of fortune, is not near so favourable, either to the propagation or happiness of mankind.

The great European monarchies are divided into small territories commonly governed by absolute princes. They ruin their people by mimicking the greater monarchs in the splendor of their court and number of their forces.

Only Switzerland and Holland resemble the ancient republics. and though the former is far from possessing any advantage either of soil, climate, or commerce, yet the numbers of people, with which it abounds, notwithstanding their enlisting themselves into every service in Europe, prove sufficiently the advantages of their political institutions.

Ancient republics derived their chief security from their local population.

The population of the Trachinians was greatly reduced. The remainder, instead of enriching themselves by the inheritance of their fellow-citizens, applied to Sparta, their metropolis, for a new stock of inhabitants. The Spartans immediately collected 10,000 men, among whom the old citizens. They divided the lands left by the former proprietors.

Timoleon had banished Dionysius from Syracuse, and had settled the affairs of Sicily. He found that the cities of Syracuse and Sellinuntium became extremely depopulated by tyranny, war, and faction. He invited from Greece some new inhabitants to repopulate them. Immediately, 40,000 men offered themselves. He distributed so much land among them, to the great satisfaction of the ancient inhabitants.

This is proof that:

• the maxims of ancient policy affected populousness more than riches
• such maxims had good effects in the extreme populousness of tiny Greece which could immediately supply replacements.

The case was not much different with the Romans in early times.

M. Curius said:

Such ideas of equality naturally produced a large population.