CAUSES AFFECTING ILLEGITIMACY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 14 April 1904, Page 4

CAUSES AFFECTING ILLEGITIMACY

The second letter, which runs as follows, appeared in the * Evening Star ' of last Thursday :— Sir,— ln your issue of Monday I dealt with the disputants in your columns who recently took the statistical returns of illegitimate births in various countries as ' tests of Protestantism versus Romanism ' to determine which has the purer faith. I now come to The Causes that affect t,he rate of illegitimacy. They aic many , they diiter in eneigy , they sometimes neutralise each other, and they \ dry ' greatly in diffeient < ountnes and even in different di.stri.cts ol Uie same country. They may be divided, for the Purposes ol tins discussion, into two classes —(a) Those that tend— m themselves and apart fiom the action ol neutralising agencies*— to increase incontinence and the rate of illegitimacy , and (b) those that tend to lodme tine rate of illegitimacy without diminishing the total immorality of a country. To the first-named (lass helong, generally speaking, all causes w hich tend to directly or mdiiectly undermine the influence ot lelitMon, and all causes w inch— without necessanly impainng religious faith— increase the temptations to unchastity. Iloro are the principal — 1. Causes contributed by religious oi gam sat ions themsehes or their clergy, such as loose living, lack of zeal, la\ity oi mdeteiminateness of doc tune, etc 2. Tho spread of coarse materialism, or mfi'deht\ ,, or of debasing principles of moral conduct , wai upon icligious faith and practice, such as a long succession of amti-Catliolic Governments have been earning out in France (of. Lecky, ' Democracy and LibeiU,' \ol .i, p 81). 3. Suggestive, unclean, or demoralising hteiatiiic, all amusements and occupations that tend to blunt oi imlpair the inoial sense (cf Lecky, ' European Morals,' 12tlh dd . vol l , p 116). 4. Overcrowding, as in the slums of large cities (Yet in Catholic Mayo, Ireland, poor one-i onmed <-\ud two-roomed houses shelter thiee-foui Mis of the population of a county that contains the purest peasantiy on earth) 5. The presence of large bodies of militaiy (if Lecky ' Euiopean Morals,' 12th ed , vol i, p 111.) The wholesale conscription that prevails in the great militaiy nations of Europe is aggravated, in the ra-,e of France and Italy, by Freethougjit Administrations removing the citr/en soldiers as much as possible from reJ'igious influences (as to France, see Let'ky, ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol n , P- 86).

6. ' Amy restraint on early marriage, whether imposed by law or custom, or arising from severe industrial depression ' (Leffingwell. ' Illegitimacy,' p. 86). We shall see that legal restraints exist in 'Austria, Bayaria, and Italy. 7. Leflingwell (pp. 50-59) and others give a position of somo importance to the hypothesis of a special hereditary influence towards lubricity, which they suppose to exist in some races of mankind more than in others. A warm climate (as in Southern Europe), out-of-door life, and the legal right of inquiry into paternity are al^o alleged as factors that tend to increased rates of illegitimacy (Lecky, ' European Morals,' 12th cd , vol. l , p. 115 ; Leffingwell, p. 10). 8. All great national convulsions— such as wars and revolutions— which seriously affect the equilibrium of people's minds, disturb the established social order, or dislocate or impair the machinery of the Church. England, for instance, suffered terribly in its social and domestic morals for over 100 years after its two comparatively little revolutions of the seventeenth century. Italy, Spain, Austria and France have been through the agony ot much more serious upheavals at comparatively recent dates. Some of the evil principles of the Great Revolution of 1789-1799 are still at work' upon the social and domestic life of considerable parts of France. And the situation is aggravated by the savage campaign which has been carried on for thirty years by a well-organised minority having the reins of power (Lecky, l Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i , p. 48) to cripple and enslave the Church and to bamsih the whole code of Christian morality and tine very idea of religion from the hearts of the people. On the other hand, 'we cannot always,' says Leffingwell (p. 87), ' infer the existence of a higher tone of morals from A Low Rate of Illegitimacy (1) in countries where ante-natal destroictian of life largely prevails , (2) in countries where young women are specially guarded before marriage, yet wherein marital fidelity may be less observed ; (3) in countries wherein polyandry is alleged to exist as an acknowledged custom ; (4) in great cities, where other vices counteract the tendency to this, and where opportunities for concealment are far greater than in country districts.' ' In Great Britain,' says Mulhall, ' the death-rate of infants is 50 per cent, higher than in Ireland (' Dictionary of Statistics,' cd. 189!), p. 685). This may be in great part accounted for by the fearful prevalence of pre-natal murder and infanticide, for which I refer the reader to Lecky (' European Morals,' 12th cd., vol. n., p 285), and (not to mention a score of others) to the heart-breaking books and articles of the Rev. Benlamin Waugh 'It is possible,' says Leflingwell (p. 69) 1 that the great majority of girl-mothers of the middle ranks ' m (treat Britain completely ' hide their fall ' Elsewhere (p. 1) he says of the statistics of illegitimacy , ' Concealment and infanticide undoubtedly make the tecord everywhere less fughtful than its awful reality ' To the four factors enumerated above by Leffingwell \\ c should add (5) artificial sterility and (6) the social evil In France and Italy, and perhaps in other Continental countries as well, this great evil is carefully limited ami iegulated by the State, and its results in the physical order enormously reduced. In Great Britain no such rr-^t taints exist, and the social evil there seems to have touched its greatest extent, antd (.so far as Europe is cojicernod) its mjost revolting deaths of degiadation 'In no other European country,' says Lee kv, is it, ' so hopelessly vicious and so irrevocable ' (' Emopcan Morals,' 12th cd., vol n, p SB) This mar to some extent account for the first part of Lellingwell's statement (p 86) that in Great Britain illegitimacy ' seems to prevail least among the population of iities and chiefly m luraJ communities ' The ,i\ factors enumeiatod here are, no doubt, more or less ,ii woik in other countries also, and in varying degrees modily the returns of then illegitimate births 7 \cneieal disease is also a factor that Tends to Reduce t/he Rate of illegitimacy without in any way diminishing the total of .i ecUint'iy's immorality A* correspondent in youir columns, speaking in reference to Ireland, ' and more especially Catholic Ireland,' s*ays • — 'There are more 1 v. a\ ■> of keeping a country moral than by refraining ' The ' ways ' that he instances consist of the spiead of \fMieical disease And he refers to the ' countiv ' at. large Tho inference which he leaves the reader to draw is pei feet lv obvious and unmist askable As regards Ireland at large, be has not a scrap of evidence to oTiei \s leeanls even any part of it, he still has none— nothing but a bald and unsupported assertion that there are for were) in Ireland only two institutions (known as lock hospitals) for the treatment of those loathsome disorders ; that these are in Dublin

and Cork ; that each of them averaged almost exactly tea new cases every week ' for ten years ; and that these cases represent a state of immorality that is * simply appalling.' One cannot, of course, accept as evidence such statements, coming, as they do, from an anonymous writer and utterly devoid of reference or eorroboration of any kind. Even if we were to accept the statements of tihis masked man, we should utterly reject the brutal comprehensiveness of his conclusions. For we cannot lightly set aside the conviction that tihose punicive maladies are very little known in Ireland ojutsude Jarge cities and seaport and garrison towns. Neither can we ignore the magnificent testimony which Lecky (in two of his works), Froude (in one of his lectures), and a host of other non-Catholic writers have given to the chastity which is tine glory of Irisih Catholic womanhood, and to the people's ' intense and jealourf sensitiveness respecting female virtue.' Viewed in the li&ht of experience in these colonies, it ought not, I think, to be surprising that Cities like Dublin and Cork — with; their large seaborne population, their bloated garrisons, and their large residuum of poverty — should send ten fresh cases a week to free institutions of tie kind referred to. I have before me the 155t1h annual report of the London Lock Hospital. The report, issued in 1902, covers the year 1901. The hospital is situated in the West End, many miles from the great centre of the vice and crime and misery of the Modern Babylon. A table on page 23 of the report shows that 22,1250 persons were treated there in 1901, and that there were in the same year 5,193 new cases, or at the rate of 99.86 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 every week ' represent ' simply appalling ' immorality in Dublin and Cork, what will ' almost exactly ' " ten times ten " fresh cases represent in one small corner of London ? And what siiall we say of the cases in the hospitals of Australasia, and among the private practitioners and the ' advertising prefessionals ' and the horde of vocilerous harpies, quacks, and so-called ' specialists ' that are permitted to use the. Press and post office in touting for trade, and wax tat upon the multitudes that consult them ? The oflices 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, beside 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 retnaikable absence of that parasitic tribe from Ireland is due to lack of sufficient, opportunities for plying their trade. I have 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 zeal and energy, minimise The question will naturally arise . To what extent can she do this in a particular country ? But "uhis 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 Eincyclopedia ' or elsewhere With a brief further letter on the ' Fallacy of Figures '—my third and final point— l shall drop the subject.— l am, etc., Editor ' N Z. Tablet.' April 5. _