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 ILLEGITIMACY 
 
 By LADY COOK 
 
 (nee Tennessee Claflin) 
 
 9, Roland Gardens, London, S.W., 
 England.
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 By LADY COOK 
 
 (nee Tennessee Ciaflin). 
 
 We are now prepared to give to the world the 
 reasons why women have been working so indefati- 
 gably for the franchise. There are many laws which 
 admittedly require to be greatly improved or alto- 
 gether abolished. One of these is the law relating to 
 bastardy, of which a striking illustration has been 
 recently afforded by the Sackville Peerage case. There 
 are many other laws which need alteration, and to 
 these attention will be given in due course. 

 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 By LADY COOK (nee Tennessee Claflin). 
 
 ALL authorities concur that no social subject is 
 more difficult of right consideration than that of 
 illegitimacy, and none more urgently in need of 
 adjustment. Thirty years ago Mr. Acton, a dis- 
 tinguished member of the medical profession, read an 
 important paper before the Statistical Society of 
 London on illegitimacy in the parishes of St. Maryle- 
 bone, St. Pancras, and St. George's, Southwark, in 
 which he said : " Social evils claim as urgently to be 
 investigated and discussed as physical plague spots. 
 Society has resolved upon abandoning the fictitious 
 delicacy that was once a film before its eyes, and a 
 lying curb upon its honest tongue, and no longer 
 ignores them." Again he remarked: "No social 
 evil more constantly and unobtrusively presents itself 
 before us than illegitimacy, yet, curiously enough, it 
 has no literature." Stimulated by Mr. Acton's efforts, 
 another and more exhaustive paper was read three 
 years later by Mr. Lumley, then Assistant-Secretary 
 of the Poor Law Board, in which he stated that he 
 drew his facts from the unpublished returns of the 
 Registrar-General. These two papers form the most 
 considerable statistical contributions to the subject, 
 and led the way to later returns. 
 
 A perusal of them shows us the extreme complexity 
 of the subject. Unexpected and bizarre results con- 
 tinually crop up, although, on the whole, the percent- 
 ages are, with slight variation, much the same from 
 year to year for any given place. For instance, from 
 1841, when the first analysis of births was recorded in 
 this country, to 1860, the proportion per cent, of 
 illegitimate births to the gross number registered was 
 never lower than 6.57 nor higher than 7, so that the 
 fluctuation for nineteen years was never one-half per 
 cent. Our pleasure in finding that London, compared 
 with our other great towns, was the lowest in the 
 
 ( 3 )
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 scale of percentage of illegitimate births to total births 
 was modified when we discovered that a low illegiti- 
 mate rate in English towns means a high rate of 
 prostitution. Yet, strange to say, this rule does not 
 apply on the Continent. Dr. Stark, Deputy-Registrar 
 for Scotland, in his Report for 1856, says: "The 
 fact stares us in the face that in the Continental towns, 
 where illegitimacy attains a dimension which it is to 
 be hoped will never be witnessed in this country, the 
 so-called social evil exists to an extent quite unknown 
 in this country, and instead of tending to lower the 
 proportion of illegitimate births, greatly increases it." 
 Compared with Continental capitals, the rate for 
 London was again lowest being for 1845 only 3.7 ; 
 while the highest, Vienna, in 1851 was 51.7, or more 
 than half the whole births. Lemberg, 1851, was 51 ; 
 Prague, 46.7; Stockholm, 1831-5, 40.7; Milan, 1851, 
 34; Paris, 1858, 26.35; Madrid, 1859, 21.8; Turin, 
 1838, 18.91; Petersburg, 1828-9, 18.8; Berlin, 1840, 
 14.95. Such is the foul record of these great cities where 
 prostitution marched pari passu with illegitimacy- 
 Coming home again, we find it a delusion to suppose 
 than an urban life is more inimical to chastity than 
 a rural one, for in England illegitimacy is less in 
 the towns than in* the country. On the Continent, 
 however, it is far otherwise. There illegitimacy greatly 
 exceeds in the towns. Again, we find that those 
 counties where the population is most sparse have the 
 highest rate of illegitimacy. Thus density of popula- 
 tion is favourable to a low rate. It might be thought 
 that a high standard of education and prudence in 
 marrying would invariably conduce to legitimacy. We 
 find, however, that illegitimacy is far higher in Scot- 
 land than in England, although the former exceeds 
 all other nations in education, and possibly in thrift. 
 And in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Hereford, East 
 and North Ridings of Yorkshire the standards of 
 
 (4)
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 education and prudence are relatively very high, so 
 also is the rate of illegitimacy. Whereas in Monmouth- 
 shire, Cornwall, Lancashire, Staffordshire marriages 
 are early, education is low, but illegitimacy is also low. 
 In regard to Lancashire and other manufacturing 
 districts, we are credibly informed that the male factory 
 hand often delays marriage until he has proved the 
 girl is fruitful. He desires children because they 
 become profitably employed at an early age, so that 
 the more he has the better off he is. Thus, too, a 
 woman with several young illegitimate children is 
 more sought after by some than one who has never 
 borne, no matter how estimable her character. This 
 is corroborated by the brothers Mayhew, who showed 
 that in parts of the mining districts, as well as those 
 named, it is considered " unthrifty to marry a woman 
 who has not given evidence of fertility. She who 
 cannot, at least, show fair prospect of adding young 
 piecers, tenters, or hurriers, as well as her own person, 
 to the common stock is no better than an unproductive 
 encumbrance." " If thou houd'st I wed thee ; if thou 
 doesn't thou'rt none the \vaur, " is a North-country 
 proverb, familiar enough to many southerners, and 
 acted upon to an immense extent. This practice must 
 help to raise the rate. 
 
 In Cumberland the number of illegitimate to every 
 100 births in 1859 was 11.4; in Cornwall 5.8. On the 
 other hand, London presents this remarkable dis- 
 crepancy, that it is highest in education, very high in 
 reference to prudence, but the lowest in the scale of 
 illegitimacy. The number of illegitimate children 
 registered in England and Wales was upwards of 
 43,000 annually. The total stillborn to those born 
 alive is not known in this country, but records are 
 kept in France, Belgium, and some other Continental 
 States, and the presumption is that the ratio would be 
 much higher here. M. Legoyt sho\ved that in France 
 
 ( 5 )'
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 in 1857 the ttal births were 982,614, of which 41,905 
 were stillborn, being in the ratio of 4.26 to 100 births, 
 but the illegitimate stillborn to the legitimate were 7.15 
 to 100. In Belgium the total stillborn was 4.9 to 100 
 born alive. The stillborn illegitimate to the illegitimate 
 living was as 7 to 100. These numbers form approxi- 
 mate data for any calculations regarding stillborn else- 
 where. Overcrowding, when sufficient to destroy the 
 decencies of life, no doubt contributes very largely to 
 illegitimacy, but we note that those towns and counties 
 having the largest average number of residents per 
 house have not the highest illegitimate rate. 
 
 The Registrar-General, in his fourteenth annual 
 report, states : " The sex of the child is supposed to be 
 influenced to a considerable extent by the relative 
 ages of the parents, but the truth of this cannot be 
 tested by the English returns." A singular fact, 
 however, is shown, viz. : That there is less dispro- 
 portion between the sexes of the illegitimate than of 
 the legitimate. Either because natural unions operate 
 somehow more favourably in equalising the sexes or 
 because as a Prussian statist asserts the fruit of a 
 first pregnancy is oftener female than male. Dr. Stark 
 states that " in Scotland the illegitimate births are 
 almost solely confined to the labouring classes, the 
 mothers consisting chiefly of women employed in farm 
 or agricultural labour, of factory girls, domestic 
 servants, and persons engaged in needlework." Mr. 
 Acton tabulated the occupations of 339 mothers, of 
 whom 194 were domestic servants and three were 
 gentlewomen. So that domestics were responsible for 
 more than half the illegitimacy in the three London 
 parishes formerly named. In an analysis of the 
 occupations of the fathers of 180 illegitimate children 
 born in Marylebone Workhouse, male domestics figure 
 highest, being twenty-five of the whole; labourers 
 were twenty; unknown to mothers, thirteen; brick- 
 
 (6)
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 layers, tailors, and gentlemen, eight each ; soldiers, 
 seven ; clerks, six ; cabmen, five ; and other occupations 
 from one to four. Sad to say, forty-six of these 180 
 children died within a year of birth. Out of 388 illegit- 
 imate children that died in those three parishes in 
 1857, thirty-one did not survive a week and 326 died 
 before they were one year old. Out of 877 illegitimate 
 births, 392 died within a year. By Dr. Farr's table 
 of Expectation of Life, out of every million born 
 149,154 die in the first year. The illegitimates help 
 to swell this number, but if the ratio w r ere the same 
 as in the 877 births given 466,977 in each million 
 would so perish. It is certain that the whole number 
 of illegitimate deaths is never fully known. 
 
 The chances of life in the first year alone are at 
 least four times greater for a legitimate than for an 
 illegitimate child. Mr. Acton says : " No less than 846 
 babies are recorded officially as hanged, strangled, 
 poisoned, suffocated, and so forth during the year 
 1856. The majority of these, we are justified in 
 assuming, were the illegitimate offspring of first falls 
 from virtue. Babies \vhose lives might have been 
 saved by the hundreds, only no one cared about them. 
 So they are gone with many others to witness against 
 us and their mothers are where?" Of 178 single 
 women confined in one year in Marylebone Workhouse, 
 the ages ranged from thirteen to forty-three. But 166 
 were between seventeen and thirty years of age this 
 being the period during which women are most attrac- 
 tive, and most readily yield to natural impulses. In 
 1888 the illegitimate births registered in England were 
 4.6 of the total births ; from 1878 to 1887 they averaged 
 4.8; from 1841 to 1859 they ranged from 6.3 to 7 per 
 cent. The rate, therefore, is steadily decreasing; but 
 so is the legitimate rate. In Ireland, however, for 
 1888 the illegitimate rate was only 2.9 per cent. In 
 educated and prosperous Ulster it was 4.4 ; in ignorant 
 
 ( 7 )
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 and poverty-stricken Connaught 0.7. But then the 
 marriage rate for Ireland was only 4.2 per 1000 of the 
 population, against 14.1 in England; and in the same 
 year 80 per cent, of the Irish emigrants were between 
 fifteen and thirty-five years of age the period most 
 productive of illegitimacy as well as of marriage. 
 
 In submitting these statistics and statistics are 
 often a little tedious we are well aware, without 
 under-rating their great value, that for obvious reasons 
 they can never reveal the whole truth. They do not 
 give us the number of abortions, nor the stillborn, 
 nor the concealed births, nor the secret child murders, 
 that are never registered, so numerous are the facilities 
 for undiscoverable crime. Dr. Wakely, the Coroner 
 for West Middlesex, stated that if a woman be de- 
 livered over a pail of water and the child dropped into 
 the water, no one can say whether or not the child has 
 been wilfully destroyed. Again, concubinage is ex- 
 ceedingly prevalent in our great towns, especially in 
 London, and the offspring are frequently described as 
 legitimate. Neither do they give us the causes of the 
 facts they set forth. Briefly summarised, the latter 
 are as follows : 
 
 1. Domestic servants are the mothers of more than 
 half of our illegitimates born in workhouses. 
 
 2. Male domestics are the fathers of about one- 
 fourth of the same. 
 
 3. The mothers are nearly all from seventeen to 
 thirty years of age. 
 
 4. Early marriages lower the illegitimate rate and 
 reduce or exterminate prostitution. 
 
 5. Prostitution also reduces the illegitimate. 
 
 6. Sparseness of population compares unfavour- 
 ably with density. 
 
 7. High education co-exists with high rate. 
 
 8. Late marriages are accompanied by a high rate. 
 
 ( 8 )
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 9. The rate, both for illegitimate and legitimate, is 
 decreasing. 
 
 10. The deaths of illegitimate to legitimate in the 
 first year are as four to one. 
 
 11. Illegitimacy causes an immense amount of 
 known crime among the poor, and perhaps a yet 
 greater amount of undetected crime among them and 
 the wealthier classes. 
 
 To these we may add, that abortions are, as a rule, 
 known only to medical men, midwives, and herbalists, 
 and that stillborn legitimate and illegitimate are 
 usually known only to undertakers, by whom they 
 appear to be buried with as little ceremony as if they 
 were kittens. Race appears to exercise a wholesome 
 or deleterious influence, for the illegitimate birth-rate 
 is always highest in the area of the Danish settlements, 
 lowest in the South Saxon, and medium where the 
 Britons existed longest. 
 
 The laws for the discouragement of illegitimacy 
 are peculiarly harsh, and appear to have been made 
 rather with a view to the preservation of clerical 
 emoluments than to the reformation, or the ameliora- 
 tion, of the unfortunate and ignorant. It was in the 
 Synod of Northumberland shortly before that of 
 Calcluith held by a brace of Papal legates in 744, 
 that the natural and civil rights of the illegitimates 
 were attacked by two Articles: "Art. XII. No 
 illegitimate person shall be chosen Sovereign. Art. 
 XVII. Bastards, especially those of nuns, are incapable 
 of inheriting." We have it on the authority of the 
 Venerable Bede that the nuns and monks of those days 
 lived lives of open profligacy. The whole nation of 
 Northumbria was debauched, and was, therefore, 
 threatened by Pope Zachary with his excommunica- 
 tion. It was doubtless felt desirable that the property 
 of wealthy nuns should not be lost to the Church by 
 
 (9)
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 any such common little accident as unwedded mater- 
 nity. From that day to this the influence of the Church 
 has been exercised to harry and ruin these unfortu- 
 nates, and the spirit of her canons has extended to the 
 civil laws. Thus a bastard can inherit nothing civilly, 
 not even a surname ; he is filius nullius, filius populi. 
 Formerly he was incapable of holding holy orders or 
 any other Church dignity. In Scotland he could not 
 make a will until so late as the reign of William IV. 
 His parish is that in which he was born, as in law he 
 has no father. He may have been legitimated and 
 made heritable in Scotland, or on the Continent, by 
 the subsequent marriage of his parents for in almost 
 all Europe this merciful and wise law prevails yet 
 here, in England, he cannot inherit a foot of land. 
 In such a case, the law of England holds that the 
 succession to real property must be determined by the 
 lex loci rei sitce. The good sense of our ancestors 
 desired that English law should coincide with 
 Continental law in legitimising the offspring of those 
 who married after their children had been born in 
 concubinage. But this was rejected by the infamous 
 Statute of Merton, passed in the aoth of Henry III. 
 Notwithstanding, the law legitimised one sort of 
 illegitimates freely, but then they must have been 
 born in wedlock. If the marriage ceremony only 
 immediately preceded the birth, it was sufficient. 
 The law so cruel to the unwedded mother threw its 
 powerful aegis over the infidelities of the wedded, but 
 the latter have since been provided against. Lord 
 Coke laid it down that " if the husband be within the 
 four seas, and the wife hath issue, no proof shall be 
 admitted to proved the child a bastard unless the 
 husband hath an apparent impossibility of procrea- 
 tion." This incentive to adultery has since been 
 removed ; a husband now may plead non-access or any 
 other proof, and the legitimacy of an unusually long 
 
 (10)
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 or short gestation must be decided by special medical 
 testimony. 
 
 Parliament can legitimise a bastard, or, as \ve 
 think, bastardise a legitimate. Queen Elizabeth, when 
 Princess, underwent both processes. Her grandfather, 
 Henry VII., was descended from an illegitimate son 
 of John of Gaunt and his mistress, Catherine 
 Swynford, whose numerous and adulterous issue were, 
 after this marriage, legitimated by Parliament. Many 
 other cases could be produced. Royal personages, 
 our aristocracy and nobility, are sometimes loud in 
 their condemnation of the shortcomings of the poor. 
 We do not excuse their failings, but, at the same time, 
 we feel that the highest should set the example to the 
 lowest. Do they ? Are not their numerous morganatic 
 marriages alone a proof to the contrary ? They do as 
 the humbler citizens do, but call it by a grander title, 
 and one " not understood of the people." And what 
 a long list of illegitimates could we name among the 
 higher classes! Heavily handicapped as they have 
 been, the roll of the bastards has been a brilliant one. 
 In peace and war, in Church and State, many have 
 especially distinguished themselves. One filled the 
 Papal throne and one the English. Where sons of 
 celebrated men, they have often surpassed their 
 fathers, and some have gloried in their ignominious 
 title. There is, to-day, in the British Museum, a deed 
 of grant by the Conqueror to his son-in-law of the lands 
 of Edwin, which runs " Ego Gulielmus Cognomine 
 Bastardus, Rex Anglice, do," &c. Cardinal Beaufort, 
 of towering, though malignant, genius, has been 
 immortalised by our immortal Shakespeare. So, too, 
 has Philip Faulconbridge, the son of Cceur de Lion. 
 Monmouth was as superior to Charles II. as his cousin 
 Berwick was superior to James II. 
 
 We may fairly assume, cceteris paribus,that no man 
 is one whit the worse mentally or physically for being
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 a natural child. On the contrary, the evidence inclines 
 to his having a large share of energy and ability. 
 Nature stamps him, as it were, with her approval. 
 Can nothing be done for the lives and fortunes of the 
 fifty thousand natural children born annually in our 
 country, half of whom are wrecked in their earliest 
 youth, and for their unhappy mothers, who are driven 
 to suicide or the streets through the selfish wickedness 
 of their seducers and the cruel laws of the land ? Can 
 nothing be done to prevent the countless abortions 
 and the numerous stillborn ? Are we, who claim to 
 be a humane and just people a Christian people to 
 sit calmly with folded hands while these tens of 
 thousands of innocents perish daily before our eyes, 
 and thousands of pure maidens become the foul and 
 loathsome creatures that infest our streets and con- 
 taminate our youth ? Thirty thousand of these \vomen 
 in England are registered public prostitutes (but it is 
 believed there are fifty thousand in London alone), 
 flaunting themselves openly and shamelessly, to say 
 nothing of all the private ones who ply their filthy 
 trade in secret. Many of these are irreclaimable, 
 abandoned beyond cure, being destitute of all womanly 
 delicacy and goodness ; but may they not be restrained ? 
 Easily, so we think, and with advantage to the com- 
 munity and to themselves. But then, say the 
 statisticians, the illegitimate rate would immediately 
 go up. But would not the law and public sentiment 
 bs ameliorated to meet that increase ? 
 
 No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes 
 to reproduction ; our procreative faculties are matured 
 early, while passion is strong and judgment and self- 
 restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can 
 alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand 
 an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice 
 what is due to ignorance. And we ask, Which is 
 preferable that our illegitimates increase, or that
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 30,000 public prostitutes should be in our midst, each 
 a centre, spreading physical and moral poison among 
 hundreds of thousands of the males of the present 
 generation, who in their turn impart it to pure women 
 and wives, thus contaminating with ineradicable 
 disease the millions of the future ? If we must undergo 
 one of two evils, let us be wise enough to choose the 
 lesser. Prostitution has no redeeming feature ; it is a 
 foul, and unmitigated, and unnatural evil. Illegiti- 
 macy, however, may, and does, exist with much that is 
 pure and moral. In Scotland, for example, couples 
 often live together and bring up families, and conduct 
 themselves in all ways as decorously as if they had 
 gone through the marriage ceremony. Except for 
 their greater regard for each other, no one would 
 suspect them of not being legally married. Many, 
 too, of higher rank are restrained from marrying the 
 women they love through fear of being disinherited ; 
 others, from disparity of birth. So they are driven to 
 make concubines of those who should be wives, and 
 who always retain their real affection, while the 
 children, for whom they feel parental love, are counted 
 with the illegitimates. Illegitimacy is immoral 
 because morals are manners, and men make them. 
 
 Euripides, in his " Hecuba," causes the Queen to 
 excuse herself for refusing to visit Polymnestor by 
 saying, " It is indecent for a woman to look a man in 
 the face." Giraldus Cambrensis states that formerly, 
 in Wales, they hardly ever married without cohabiting 
 beforehand ; and Ulloa says that the natives of Peru 
 disdain to marry unless their wives had previously 
 enjoyed many lovers. When Iceland was largely 
 depopulated by an epidemic in 1707, the King of 
 Denmark caused a law to be made authorising young 
 women in that island to have bastards without loss of 
 their reputation. They were restricted to six children 
 each. After a few years the population was normally 
 
 ( 13 )
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 restored. Morals, then, may be anything and opposite. 
 But nature is ever the same, and until human nature 
 has reached a higher plane, and as long as young men 
 and women can come together, so long will illegiti- 
 macy exist. But we demand that the law shall not 
 lay the onus of the indiscretion wholly upon ihe 
 mother; if the receiver of stolen goods is worse than 
 the thief, the seducer is worse than the seduced. 
 Although, as we believe, the woman occasionally 
 seduces, it is more frequently the man, and as he is 
 usually in her own rank, it must be by a profession of 
 love, if not by a promise of marriage. Therefore, the 
 responsibility of parentage and maintenance of the 
 offspring should fall chiefly on him. At present his 
 meanness and his cowardice protect him ; maintenance 
 has to be sued for in open court, and parentage proved 
 publicly before he can be made responsible ; whereas, 
 if parentage were proved in camera after due notice 
 given, many a girl who is now restrained by shame 
 and destroys her child from poverty would give 
 evidence of paternity, and many after-marriages would 
 ensue when both had not been publicly disgraced. 
 
 Why should a girl, in order to secure natural 
 justice, be obliged to proclaim her indiscretion and 
 ignorance in public, and all for the miserable and 
 insufficient pittance which the law awards her for her 
 child? Her remedy is thus a greater injury to her 
 than her seduction. And why should not the un- 
 married father, after proof of paternity, be as much 
 constrained to properly support his child as the mar- 
 ried one ? The act of paternity isas voluntary in his case 
 as in the other. While the young and inexperienced 
 mother is weighed down with disgrace and care, the 
 father goes wholly or almost scot-free; she becomes 
 an outcast, but society receives him much as before ; 
 what is an indelible stain on her scarcely smirches his 
 honour. Where is our boasted equity in such a case ?
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 Is it any wonder that, betrayed, forsaken, disowned, 
 maddened by her hopelessness and helplessness, she 
 is irresistibly urged to criminality and death ? 
 
 Parents are deeply to blame for a large portion of 
 the miseries enumerated. If fathers encouraged their 
 sons to be frank and trustful with them as they would 
 be with their youthful friends, their experience and 
 advice would prepare their children to beware of " the 
 strange woman whose steps lead down to hell." Vice 
 exposed and robbed of its mystery would disgust rather 
 than charm ; they would recognise the scientific truth of 
 St. Paul's teaching that " our bodies are the temples 
 of the living God " when preserved in purity. And if 
 mothers would only learn to win the confidence of 
 their daughters, and to teach them all they ought to 
 know of themselves, thus guarding them from dangers 
 and instructing them in the sacred duties and responsi- 
 bilities of maternity, how many a girl would have been 
 saved who is now lost through sheer ignorance, and 
 from the foolish and misplaced modesty of the only 
 one who could have properly enlightened her. We 
 women are not permitted to legislate, but if we were 
 we would sweep away the present laws relating to 
 illegitimacy, and try to mete out equal justice to man 
 and woman. We would leave a door open for rehabil- 
 itation by making marriage, at any time, legitimate 
 the offspring. What has worked well for so long, and 
 is working well still in Scotland, would work equally 
 well here. Whilst safeguarding men against spurious 
 charges, we would compel fathers to maintain their 
 children and to compensate the mothers for pecuniary 
 loss incurred through child-bearing. We would 
 devise means to meet the worst cases : State foundling 
 hospitals for those who would be rid of their little 
 ones ; hospitals governed on a new method, and which, 
 so far from removing restraints like those of the Con- 
 tinent, should materially assist in increasing them. 
 
 ( 15 )
 
 ILLEGITIMACY. 
 
 For we would invest them with the power of recovery 
 of cost of maintenance from the fathers, and thus 
 remove the possibility of the mothers profiting in any 
 way, while at the same time removing the temptations 
 to infanticide. On the same principles we would have 
 maternity hospitals, homes of real mercy, for those 
 who felt- the need of nursing, of care and reclamation. 
 We have our workhouses and infirmaries for the 
 physically weak or worn-out, the helpless and indi- 
 gent ; and asylums for physical monstrosities. We 
 need houses, too, for lacerated minds, for the weak in 
 spirit ; homes which, like the angel of old, should 
 stand between the living and the dead until the plague 
 be stayed. Do we ask too much when we pray for a 
 new legislative spirit one that shall be free from 
 every vicious taint of those old polemic laws which 
 have enfeebled and oppressed us through the long cen- 
 turies ? If we thought so, we should despair of 
 humanity. But we see visions and dream dreams : 
 visions of the time when all will say with Tennyson : 
 
 The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarf d or Godlike, bond or free ; 
 
 dreams of the happy day when evci> motner shall be 
 reverenced as the race preserver, and the life of every 
 little one be guarded as a jewel of great price. What- 
 ever our imperfections, it remains for us to 
 
 Act and love, a closer link 
 
 Betwixt us and the crowning race 
 
 Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 
 
 On Knowledge ; under whose command 
 
 Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand 
 
 Is nature like an open book ; 
 
 No longer half-akin to brute, 
 
 For all we thought and loved and did, 
 
 And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 
 
 Of what in them is flower and fruit. 
 
 PRINTED BY THE LONDON AND COUNTY FEINTING WORKS, DRURY LANK, LONDON, 
 W.C., AND PUBLISHED FOR THE PROPRIETOR BY MESSRS. STUART AND WELLES, 
 9, ROLAND GARDENS, LONDON, ENGLAND.
 
 
 
 
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