ILLEGITIMACY.—As far as statistics are concerned, the most valuable evidence is that relating to illegitimacy. The Registrar General’s Reports contain a useful amount of information upon this point, and give us the number of illegitimate births per thousand unmarried women within the fertile period, between the ages of 15 and 45. This illegitimacy rate for England and Wales is represented in Fig. 13, and it is noticeable that the fall since the year 1876 has been extremely rapid, much more so in fact than that of the fall in the general birth-rate or in the fertility rate of the married women. While the general birth-rate has fallen from 36.3 to 25.6 (or by 26.5 per cent.), the illegitimate birth-rate has fallen from 14.6 to 7.9 per thousand unmarried women (or by nearly 50 per cent.). This is most striking and satisfactory. An extreme instance is given in the county of Radnorshire, which in 1870–2 had a fertility rate of 308.6 births per 1,000 married women, which sank to 188.7 in 1909, or by 39 per cent. In the same interval the illegitimate birth-rate fell from 41.8 per 1,000 unmarried women to 7.2, or by no less than 83 per cent. In Holland a drop of the legitimate fertility from 347 to 315 per 1,000 coincided with a fall of the illegitimate fertility from 9.7 to 6.8 per 1,000, _i.e._, at a much greater rate. It is true that France, with its low and decreasing fertility rate (from 196 to 158 per 1,000 between 1881 and 1901), has had a comparatively high and increasing illegitimacy rate (from 17.6 to 19.1 per 1,000); and that Ireland, with a somewhat high and slightly increasing fertility (from 283 to 289 per 1,000), has the lowest and a falling illegitimacy rate (from 4.4 to 3.8 per 1,000). But this has been heavily outweighed by Austria with an equally high and steady fertility (from 281 to 284 per 1,000) with the highest illegitimacy rate known (43.4 to 40.1 per 1,000), while Germany comes second with an illegitimacy rate of 27.4 per 1,000 in 1901. Though it cannot be said, therefore, that the lowest birth-rate produces the lowest illegitimacy rate, it most certainly cannot be said that family limitation has had any evil effect in increasing legitimacy. The bulk of the evidence is quite decidedly the other way. In the case of the most notable exception—that of France—we have the authority of Dr. Bertillon for saying that the greatest decency and lowest illegitimacy are found where the birth-rate is lowest. We may also quote from our own Registrar General, who said in his Annual Report for 1909:— “Except in the cases of the German Empire, Sweden, France, Belgium, and the Australian Commonwealth, the falls shown in illegitimate fertility in Table LXXXIV are greater than the corresponding falls in legitimate fertility.”