ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS.

Evening Star, Issue 12164, 7 April 1904, Page 8

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your issue of Monday I dealt with the disputants in your columns who recently took the statistical rettfts of illegitimate births in various countries as " tf-sts of Protestantism versus Romanism " to determine which nas the "purer" faith I now come to the causes that affect the rate of illegitimacy They are many ; they differ in energy; they sometimes neutralise each other; and they vary greatly in different countries, and even in lifferent districts of the same country. They may be divided, for the purposes of this discussion, into two classes:—(a) Those that tend—in themselves and apart from the action of neutralising agencies—to increase incontinence and the rate of illegitimacy; and (b) thofe that tend to reduce the rate of illegitimacy without diminishing the total immorality of a country. To the first-named class belong, generally speaking, all causes which tend to direci ly or indirectly undermine the influence of religion, and all causes which—without, necessarily impairing religious faith —increase the temptations to unchastity. Here are the principal:— , 1. Ciuses contributed by religious organisations themselves or their clergy, such as loose living, hick of zeal, laxity or indeterminateness of doctrine, etc. 2. The spread of coarse materialism, or infidelity, or of debasing principles of moral conduct; war upon religious faith and practice, such as a long succession of antiCatholic Governments have been carrying cut in France (cf. Lecky, 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. ii., p. 64). Suggestive, unclean, or demoralising literature ; all amu'ements and occupations that tend to blunt or impair the moral sense (cf. Lccky, ' European Morals,' 12th ed., vo! i., p. 146). 4. Overcrowding, as in the flams of larce c?.Ut«. (Yet in' Catholic Mayo, Ireland, poor one-roomed and two-roomed houses shelter three-fourth? of the population of a county that contains the purest peasantiy on earth.) 5. The presence of large bodies of military (cf. Lecky, ' European Morals.' 12ih ed., vol i., p. 146). The wholesale conscription that prevails in the great military nations of Europe is aggravated, in the case of France and Italy, by Freethought Administrations removing the citizen soldiers as much as possible trom religious influences (as to France, see Lecky, ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. ii., p. 86). 6. " Any restraint on early marriage, whether imposed by Jaw or custom, or arising from s-evere industrial depression" (Leffingwell, 'lllegitimacy,' p. 86). We .•hall ace that legal restraints exist in Aus-

trii, Baviria, ani Italy. 7. Leffingwell (pp. 50-59) and others give a position of some importance to the hypothesir of a special hereditary influence' towards lubricity, which they suppose to exist in some races .->f mmkind more than in others. A warm cFmata (as in Southern Europe), out-of-door life, and the legal right of inquiry into paternity are also alleged as factors that tend to increased rates of illegitimacy (Lecky, 'European Morals,' 12th ed., vol. i., p. 145; Lofhngweli, p. 49). 8. All grwt national convulsion*?—such as warn and revolutions—which wriously affect the equilibrium of people's minds, disturb the eftaljlishrd soci.il order, or dislocate or impair the_machinery of the Church. England, for instance, "suffered terribly in its social and domes tin morals for over 100 ycirs after its two comparatively little revolutions of the seventeenth century.. Italy, Spain, Austria and France have been' through th° agony of much more serious upheaval* at comparatively recent dates. Some of the evil principles of the Revolution of 1759-1759 r.re still at work upon the social nnd domestic life of consid-cril.-b part 3of IY-mee. And the situation is aggravated by the snvp.g* campaign which ha.; been carried on for thirty years by j well-organised minority having the reins of po-ver (Locky, ' Democracy rind Liberty," i., V- °?-) to cripvle and enslave the Church and to banhh the whole cede of Christian morality and the. very idea of religion from ths hearts of the people. On the other hand. " wo cannot alwavs " says L».fHngwell (p. 87), "infer the existence of a bitrher ton? of moral? from a low rate of illegitimacy fl) in countries where ante-r:n.tel _ destruction of life largely prevail';; (2) in countries wher? youi;g Women Rre specially eiunh-d before nnrriage, yet wherein marital fidelity may be leys' observed ; (7>) in oountr.es wheknn polvandrr is alleged to exist a?; an acknowledged custom ; (4) in great cities, where other vi"es coiintonu:; the tendency to this, and where opportunities for concealment are far greater than in eountrv districts."

' In Great Britain," .-,17s Mulhall, " the death-rate of iiifar.ts is 50 per cent, higher , ,i 5 Ivslm ' ] ('l-'iclionary of Statistics,' (A. 18D9, p. 685). Tliis may be in great part accounted for by the fearful prevalence of pre-natal mnrder ami infanticide, for which I refor the reader to Lecky (' Europear. Morals,' 12th ed., vol ii., p. 285f. and (not to mention a score of others) to the ne.irt-breakir.g books and articles of the Rev. Benjamin Waugh. "It is possible," says Leffingwell (p. 69} "that the great majority of girl-mothers of the middle ranlcs m Great Britain completely "hide their fall. Elsewhere (p. 4) he says of the statistics of illegitimacy: "Concealment and mfantimde undoubtedly make the record everywhere less frightful than its awful reality." To the four factors enumerated above bv LefljngweU we should add (5) artificial sterility and (6) the social evil. I n France ar.d Italy, and perhaps in other Continental countries as well, this great evil is carefully limited and regulated bv the State and its remits in the physical order enormously reduced. In Great Britain no such restraints exist, and the social evil there seem." to have touched its neatest extent and (so far as Europe is concerned) its most revolting depths of degradation. "In' no other European country," says Lecky, is it " so hopelessly vicious and so irrevocable" ( European Morals,' 12th ed., vol. ii., p. 86). This may to rome extent account for the first part of Lcffingwell's statement (p 86) that in Great Britain illegitimacy "seems to prevail least among the population of sities and chiefly in rural communities." The sis factors enumerated here are, no doubt, more or less at work in other countries also, and in varying degrees modify the returns of their illegitimate births.

7. Venereal disease is also a factor that tends to reduce the rate of illegitimacy without in any way diminishing the total of a country's immorality. A correspondent in your columns, speaking jn reference to Ireland, "and mare especially Catholic Ireland," says:—"There are more ways of keeping a country moral than by refrain■ng." The -ways" that he instances consist of the spread of venereal disease. And he refers to the "country" at large. The inference which he leaves the reader to draw is perfectly obvious and unmistakable. As regavis Ireland at large, he has not a scrap of evidence to offer. As regards even at? part of it, he still has iionc—nothing bin a bald and unsupported assertion that th'-rn are (or were) in Ire. land only two in.tf.itutions (known as lock hx-sp'tab) for thr. treatment cf thoseloaths n*» disorders; that. the.'« are in Dublin and Cotk; that each of them averaged almost exactly ten new cas'-s every week" for ten years; and that these cases represent a slriU-of immorality that is "simply'appallim:" One cannot, of course, accept as evidence such statements, coming, as they do. from an anonymous writer and utterly devoid of reference or corroboration of anv v lend. Even if we were to accept thestate-mr-nts of this masked man, we should utterly rejerf the brutal < omprehonsiveness of h-s conclusions. For we cannot lightly set aside the conviction that those punitive maladies are very little known in Ireland oufs-.de large cities and seaport and garrison towns. Neither can w© ignore the magnificent testimony which Leiky (in two of "his w«rks), Froude (m one of his lectures), and * host of other non-Catholic writers 'have given, to the chastity which is the glory of Irish Catholic Womanhood, and to the people's "intense and jealous sensitiveness MSipecting female virtue." .Yiewed ia ti«

light of experience in these colonies, it ought' not, I think, to be surprising that cities like Dublin and Co^k—with, their large seaborne population, their bloated garrisons, and their large residuum of poverty —should send ten fresh cases a week to free institu: tions of the kind ' referred to. I have before me the 155 th annual report of the London Lock Hospital. The report, issued in 1902, covers the year 1901. The hospi. tal is situated in the West End, lr.mv miles from the great centre of the vice ai-A crime and misery of the Modern Babylon. A table on page. 23 of the report shows that 22,250 persons were treated there in 1901, and that there were in the same year 5,193 new cases, or at the rate t.f G9.86 per week—that is, "almost exactly" 100. But these, I understand, represent only a fraction of the cases that are treated in general hospitals and by private practitioners. Now, if "almost exactly ten new cases tvery week" represent "simply appalling" immorality in Dublin and Cork, what will "almost exactly" ten times ten frtsh cases represent in one small corner of London? And what shall we say of the cases in the hospitals of Australasia, and among the private practitioners and the " advertising professionals" and the horde of vociferous harpies, quacks, and so-called " specialists" that are permitted to use the Press and post office in touting for trade, and wax fat upon the multitudes that consult them? The offices and dens of this motley fraternity are, to all intents and purposes, so many lock hospitals of various degrees of magnitude. It seems to me that, beride all this, Cork's and Dublin's alleged, but unproven, ten fresh cases a week are very mildly " appalling" indeed. And I am entitled to assume that the remarkable absence of that parasitic tribe from Ireland is due. to lack of sufficient opportunities for plying their trade. I havi 1 touched upon eight leading causes that tend to increase the rate of illegitimacy. For only one of them could a church be held directly responsible. There are others, the effects of which she might, by Zval and energy, minimise. The question will naturally arise: To what extent can she do this iD a particular country? But this can only be decided by a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of the country, and not by a few. garbled statistics, whether from 'Chambers's Encyclopaedia ' or elsewhere. With a brief further letter on the 'Fallacy of Figures' —my third and final point— I shall drop the subject.—l am, etc., Editor 'N.Z. Tablet.' April 5.