MAGISTRATE’S REMARKS.

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 August 1939, Page 5

MAGISTRATE’S REMARKS.

(to the editor.]

Sir, —Yon may have aimed to expose, not to commend, the London . Metropolitan Police Courl Magistrate, Mr. C. Mullins, when you published to-day his cruel and despicable condemnation of a mother simply because she had given birth to a family of seven children. My only reason for adverting to propaganda so dangerous as this is, to the welfare, and the very life, of the community, is that readers might in some cases be misled by the fact that the outburst was that of a man clothed with some legal authority. The case was that of two parents whose seven children, while they gave every evidence of being well-fed, were living in the verminous rooms of a house that had been condemned, and were ragged and grimy. I may say that this case has had also publicity elsewhere, and that the Magistrate is quoted as saying: “Until society realises the blasphemy of the widespread attitude to such births’ as these, such conditions cannot be prevented. I have not heard of any attempt by the public assistance authorities, or others, to teach these people birth-control. Society and religious opinion are mainly to blame, in my opinion, for these horrors!” Now, sir, this talk is pure paganism.

i It means that if there are insufficient houses, or if landlords, to draw larger rentals, devote all available land to flats, there must not be families. It means that human being must be limited in number so as to suit a bad, decadent, unnatural set of social conditions. Surely “the body is more than the raiment,” and the human being more than the environment? But the important point is that this Magistrate misused his position as an interpreter of the civil law to make an attack on the Divine law. For him the poor children were a “horror,” but the cause of their condition was not a horror. That cause was not their existence, but the existence of something else. The cause was the condemned house! Whose was the responsibility for permitting this unfortunate family to remain in it? The Magistrate never mentioned the owner, oi’ the verminous rooms. He ignored the primary cause of the “horror" —the terrible social conditions forced on a. section of the community. Instead he sought to find a scapegoat in tile Church, because it,refused to subscribe to a “solution” of the problem as pagan as is the social spirit of the society in which pre-natal murder, or contraceptive race-suicide, is preached as a “solution.” This Magistrate is doubtless only too well

aware that humanitarian societies abound which, in the name of a false .humanitarianism, trade birth-control instruction to the : poor with more liberality than they give any genuine relief. The Bri>ih Commonwealth of Nations faces many perils, but none so grave as that exemplified in the propaganda of this Magistrate who “puts across” in a Court of Justice, as a legal pronouncement, his own personal preference for birth-prevention., instead of what was to have been expected of him. Why did he not denounce the landlords, and refrain from a laudation of the practice rightly called race-suicide? The poor mother, when asked why she had seven children and whether she wanted them, rightly replied: “The Almighty allotted them to me.” That should have stopped the mouth of Mr. Claud Mullins. Though he had only three children of his own, he had no right to propose such a limit for any other parent, much less to give vent to his “boiling ragf’ because there were four more children in this family than the number he stipulated.

Were there any blasphemy, was it on the part of those who did prevent the birth of a family of seven to poor parents, or on the part of such as denounced this large family? Before he gaoled both father and mother for a month, Mr. Mullins declared himself to be “in no condition to be judicial.” Was he any more judicial when he blamed the parents, society, and religion for the effects of a condemned and verminous house upon these children? Was he more judicial when he ignored the house and those responsible for its condition, and who were in receipt of rental therefrom? Seemingly, in the estimation of this advocate of birth prevention, a verminous house is no “horror,” while a family to the extent that its

size exceeds three is a “horror.” It is a “horror” when there are four children “too many.” Is it any wonder that the spread of such propaganda as Mr. Mullins has provided, prompts complaints on its effects? Is it any surprise, indeed, if the fear grows of nations being morally and physically undermined by such paganism? It is a coincidence that in the portion of Holy Scripture appointed to be read in the Divine Office to-day, these words occur: Ecclesiasticus, Chap. IV, 10. 11, “In judging, be merciful to the fatherless as a father, and as a husband to their mother.” “And thou shalt be as the obedient son of the most High: and he will have mercy on thee more than a mother.” Surely, sir, it is in following such guidance from religion rather than the irresponsible dicta of Mr. Claud Mullins that the salvation of society is to be secured.—l am, etc., J. LONG. St. Patrick’s Presbytery. The report, of the Magistrate’s remarks was published as being of general interest, and entirely without prejudice. Ed., ‘Star.”