The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-20 00:00:00

THE DEPOPULATION (01? FRANCE.

(From the Examiner.)
The massacres of the first revo'ution,. and the
wars of Napoleon, may sufficiently account for
the diminution of the French population up to a
recent date, but a new cause is now in operation,
tending powerfully to the same result. The old
frugality of the French has been banished by the
present regime, and luxury and extravagance ate
now the prevailing habits. Saving and hoarding
are at an end, and people live up to 'their means,
if not beyond their means. In Paris the immense
increase of handsome equipages must strike every
eye, and the other signs of enlarged expenditure
are abundant. Women, who play so prominent
and important a part in the affairs of
France, have of course taken the lead in this
new fashion of extravagance, and many of them do
not think it unreasonable to devote a third of their
husbands' income to their own toilettes. And this
. is not confined to Paris, it runs through the whole
country, and every provincial town is a Paris in
miniature in the features of a new luxury and ex-
travagance. And the freer indulgence in every sort
of enjoyment is concurrent with an universal aug-
mented cost of living. A French authority, who has
written on the subjec t of the high house-rents of Paris,
attributes that enhancement not to the demolition
of old buildings, but to th 3 new habits of expense
which have sprung up within the last few years.
And if this be the fact in Paris, it will also account
f a. the advance of prices throughout the provinces.
The subdivision of property, whatever may be its
merits in other respects, lends its aid to the gene-
ral propensity for extravagance. A young man,
a younger brother, gets his little share of pro-
perty, and launches at once into the pleasure it
may place within lus reach. He goes up to Paris
with a few hundred or 'thousand francs, and
spends his capital, as if it were an income, He
is asked after by some one who has met him in
better days, and the stereotyped answer is—He
has disappeared. There are oubliettes in society
for these prodigals. • Some find th,ir way to
Africa, where they carry muskets ; some to the
jail ; some to the bottom of the Seine. None
recover by industry the footing. lost by
Families do not generally run the road
extra-
vagance.to ruin so fast. They follow the fashion of ex-
pense by living fully up to their incomes, and
the husband endeavours to extend the means of
enjoyment by a litsl6 gambling, under the com-
mercial name of speculation. One prudence only
is observable, and that is in avoiding the charges
incidental to a number of children. The saying
so common in England, " where Heaven sends
mouths it sends meat," is unknown in France,
and the number of mouths to be fed is adjusted
strictly to the means of feeding them. A hus-
band and wife have one or two children, or none
at all, as the Times observes, according to their
ideas of what they can afford. Of course, then,
in proportion to the enlarged expenditure for
objects of luxury and show is the circumscribed
space for the nursery. The stables cut into it,
the coach-house cuts into it, above all, Ma-
dame's toilette. Where you would see with
English habits half-a-dozen healthy boys and
girls walking with their parents, you see instead,
in the Bois de Boulogne, a fine lady in a hand-
some open carriage. The horses, the coachman,
the footman, are in lieu of the children. Every-
thing cannot be afforded. A choice must be made,
and we see what it is. The preferred issue of the
French couple are :their own favourite pleasures,
dress, equipages, good living, gambling. Children
would narrow the means for these enjoyments, or
leave for them no means whatever ; therefore chil-
dren are not born to curtail their parents' pleasures.
And the want of them is not felt where all is given
to the gratification of vanity and the senses. The
drawing-roam, the dining-room, the promenade,
and the theatre fill every moment and satisfy every
wish ; or it is only when these things stale and pall
that a desire arises for the new plaything of a boy
or a gill. Of course there are exceptions to these
habits, and here and there will be found families
with domestic enjoyments, but the number of them
has been much diminished by the order or disorder
of extravagance so countenanced and encouraged
by the present dynasty. The evil is not confined
to the wealthy classes ; it descends through all
classes with the modification of circumstances. The
shopkeeper and his wife, the aitisau and his wife,
are all for the vanities and enjoyments within their
reach, as muchas the millionnaire and his wife. The
occupation for the thoughts which politics once pro-
vided being gone, the general pursuit now is plea-
sure, and the means of obtaining it, by hook or by
crook, generally on the miry field of the bourse.
In such a state of things there must be a tendency
to every sort of degeneracy, moral and physical,