A treatise on man and the development of his faculties / by A. Quetelet ; now first translated into English.

Date:
1842
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on man and the development of his faculties / by A. Quetelet ; now first translated into English. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    1 I I I I I I I I i I Yeai-s. Bh'ths. Legitimato Births to I Illegitimate. Legitimate. Illegitimate. 182.3, - 27,878 O.tMHi 2-70 1824, 211,812 10,221 2-82 1825, - 29,253 10,030 2-91 1820, 20,870 10,582 2-85 18-27, - 20,8(Ki 10,392 2-80 1828, 29,081 10,475 2-81 182J), - 28.721 9,9,53 2-08 28,587 10,007 2-85 laii,* • - 20,.'130 10,378 2-83 1832,+ - £0,283 9,237 2-84 Average, - 287,033 101,010 2-84 TIius, for 28 births there have been almost exactly 10 illegitimate children: I tlihik this ratio is the most unfavourable of luiy 'which has liitherto been made known.f * In these numbers, 1099 and I0C5 cliildren, acltnowledgcd and legitinmtised subsequent to birth, are not included. t [The views of JI. Q,uetelet on tliis subject do not appear to cmbraco all the causes of illegitimacy. It may happen that in countries where the means of subsistence are of diflicult attain- ment, parties, from prudential considerations, will not enter the married state. This is visibly the case in Scotland, where the illegitimate births are very numerous, but, from the want of n.ationaI registers, cannot be stated. The ratio of illegitunates, wo have reason to believe, is much greater in Scotland than in Ireland, whei'e matrimony is entered upon with little regal'd for the future. Thus, extreme prudence may be said to lead to immorality. Tlie possibility of effecting retrospective marriage (that is, dating it from before the birth of the illegitimate chil. dren), is another frequent cause of illegitimacy in Scotland; and it may be added, that the demand for wet-nurses by the higher class of mothers for their infants, forms another prevailing cause of illegitimacy, at least in largo to^vns. For the pm-pose of throwing light on this important subject in social statistics, we beg to subjoin the following passages from the Sixth Annual Report of the Poor-Law Commissioners of England, for 1840: they occiu' in the report handed in from Sii' Edmund Head on the Law of Bastardy‘ ‘ Mr Laing, in his recent Tour in Sweden, gives most instructive evidence as to the number and causes of Ulegitimate births in that counti-j'. It appe.ors that the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births in all Sweden, from 1820 to 1830, is as 1 in 14'G, and in Stockholm as high as 1 to 2-3. Mr Laing goes on to remark—' There are two minor causes, both, however, shoeing a degraded moral feeling, which were stated to mo as contributing much to this lax state of female morals. One is, that no woman in the middle or higher ranks, or who can afford to do otherwise, ever nurses her own child. A girl who has got a child is not therefore in a worse, but in a better sitimtion, as she is pretty sure of getting a place for two years, wliich is the ordinary time of nursing. The illegitimacy of the child is in this commimity rather a recommendation of the mother, as the family is not troubled ■with the father or friends. As to the girl's own chUd, there isa foundling hospital, the second minor cause; in that it can be reared at a trilling expense, din- ing the time the mother is out nursing. The unchaste are, there- fore, in point of fact, better off' than the chaste of the female sex in this town.'—Laing's Sweden, pp. 115, 117. It is well known that the results of the unrestricted reception of bustard children into the foundling hospitabi in Belgium made it necessary for the government to take steps, in 1834, for discomaging the operation of, if not for repealing, the law under which it took place. I do not know what the present state of this question in that countiy is.—(See Senior, Iforeign Poor-Laws, p. 137.) The legislation of the French Republic, by the haws of 27th Frimaire year 5, and 30th Ventbso year 5, explained by an ediet of 19th January 1811, was moat favourable to tlio motliors of bastards, and relieved them from all care of their own offspring. M. de Beaumont says— ‘ On sait qu’une loi de la revolution riicoinponsait les tilles m6rcs d’enfants naturela.'—(L’fr/audc, ii. 122, note 2.) Under the influence of these laws, which only carried out the principle involved in our former practice, the illegitimate children increased from l-47th (which they were, on an average of seven years, in 1780) to l-14th, in 1825. (See Senior, Foreign Poor-Laws, p. 120; M'CuUoch, notes to Adam Smith, p. 102, n.)—Malthus (vol. i. p. .375) reckoned the illegitimate births in France, at the time he was writing, as 1-llth of the whole. Since writing the above, I have received the Aiiniiairc dit nureaii des Longiludes, for 1840, which gives the most recent luformation on Flench statistics. ;i. The Influence of Political and Religious Institutions. Nothing appctirs more adaiited to multiply the population of a state, -without inducing injury, than multiplying the products of agriculture and industry, and, at the same time, ensuring a prudent dejnee of liberty, which m.ay be a guarantee for the public con- fidence. The absence of liberal institutions, which excite the activity of man, and at the same time increase his energy and comfort, must produce the effects which are observed in the East, where popula- tion languishes and decreases. On the contrary, in the United States, population increases with a rapidity which has no parallel in Europe. ]\I. Villemic* ob- serves, that at the period of the Erench revolution, “ when the tithes, duties on wine, salt, feudal tenures, &c., and corporations and wardeuships, had just been abolished (that is to say, when petty workmen and cultivators, in a word, the jiersons of no propertj', by far the most numerous class in the nation, found themselves all at once in a state of unaccustomed ease and competency, which they celebrated through the greatest part of the territory by feasts, and re- joicings, and more abundant food), the number of births increased, to dunmish gradually afterwards.” Years of war and peace have likewise a marked influence on the population: we shall only quote one example at present. From the date of the wars of the empire, it was insinuated that the French popu- lation, far from being reduced, only made greater increases. M. DTvernois, who has succeeded in pro- curing the number of births and deaths for this period, has endeavoured to verify this assertion, so often re- peated, and he has found that it was essentially in- correct : he has, moreover, established two remarkable facts.f “Whoever investigates births, learns that. It appears that in 1838 the number of birtlis in Paris w.3s on vjn (20,454 legitimate. I 9,289 illegitimate. The illegitimate were therefore 31-2 per cent., or, to the legiti- mate, as 1 to 2-2—a proportion larger than that existing at Stock- holm. In the whole of France, in 1837, Tlio total number of births was 943,.349{®no’nsn ’ I 09,829 illegitunate. That is, 7'4 per cent., or as 1 to 12'5. The ‘ mouvement moyen’ of the iiopulation, calculated on tlic twenty-one yeai-s from l‘817 to 1837, gives, as the annual nimiber of births. OCR legitimate. • 1 09,301 iUegitimate. That is, the iUegitimate to the legitimate as 1 to 12-979. It thusappears that the proportion of iUegitimate births is greater in France than in Sweden, the former being as 1 to 12-979, and the latter as 1 in 14-0, according to Mr Laing (j). 115), while the morality of France would seem to have deteriorated since the calculation of Pcuchct. I fear that there m-e rural districts in this country in which the proportion of Ulegitimate to legitimate births is far more imfavourable than that existing in the French empire. The population of the county of Radnor, in 1831, was 24,001. According to Mr Rickman, the number of baptisms rc- gistci'cd in 1830 was 049 20 add for unentered births and baptisms. 075 total. The number of iUegitimate children born in laD) is stated, on the same authority, to bo 100; that is to say, 1 in 0-75, or more than twice as many in proportion as in France. Tliis will not seem incredible, when wo find from the Uible pubUshed in tlio appendix to the Second Annual Report of the Poor-Law Commis- sioners, that the avci-agc annual number of bastards chargeable to tho parishes of the county of Radnor, in 1835 and 1830, was 417, or l-59th of tho whole population of tho county, acconling to tho census of 1831; imd it is not to be wondenxl at that there are at present fifteen women with bastard children inmates of the workhouso of the Knighton Union, of which tho iiopulation is only 8719—census 1831.]—Note by the Pnhtishers* * Sur la Uistribution p.-u- Mois, Ac. t Bibliotb6quo Univci-sellc do Clcnbvc.