The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-09 00:00:00

must be suffered. But, my Lords, amongst those who have to
suffer it, let us remember that there must be some who, though
fallen from their chastity, are not lost to all feelings of
honour, who have not yet parted with the last influence of that
charm of self-respect without which, in some minds--ay, even
in the minds of these—life itself were hateful.—( Cries of
" Hear, hear.") Nay, that in their breasts the last spark of
that feeling is not yet extinct which places an inestimable value
upon the respect of others. Why, my Lords, what will be
the effect of your legislation upon minds such as these ? What
but that all the terrible penalties of your laws will rise up in
guilty conflict with the best instincts of their hearts, and I
fear that in such cases you must expect to hear of the worst
incidents having occurred. I fear that the hands of the mo-
ther—perhaps the unhappy victim of the arts of the seducer,
who escapes untouched—will be raised against herself qr her
poor babe, rather than meet all the miseries which you will
have prepared for her bitter lot. My Lords, these are my
views of the measure, and I say that, with this conviction or
foreknowledge of its terrible injustice and cruelty, it is not
that most monstrous and mischievous of sophistries, the pre-
text of doing evil that good may come, which can so reconcile
me to it, but that I should shudder at being a partaker in the
responsibility you are called upon to incur. And, while such
will be its mortal effect upon the woman, have we not altoge-
ther lost sight of what is to be its moral effect upon men ? We
have heard the supposed effect of the existing Bastardy Laws
on the morals of men in this country from the Hon. and
Learned Lord. I beg that he will consider me guilty of no
want of respect to him when I express my hope and belief
that the statement he had made was grievously unfounded. I
confidently believe that there is no part of England in which
that state of masculine morals is to be found of which an ac-
count was given by him the other day. I trust that it is not the
case. I know it was not 30 or 40 years ago, and, whatever de-
parture from the standard of morals then observed by the youth
of the country may have taken place, I do not believe that any
thing like the immorality which he stated will be found to
exist in any large portions of society. I believe that
such a state will constitute the exceptions and not the rule.
But, my Lords, its influence upon the morals of our young
men will not be the only moral consequences which I fear as
likely to follow from this Act. There are other moral evils
which it must produce. My Lords, there is a direct tendency
in this Bill to harden the heart of man, and to increase his
feelings of selfishness to an intensity of which we have never
yet believed him capable. Nay, further than this, it goes to
confound his practical sense of right and wrong.--( Hear.) It
tells him that an Act of Parliament may release him and has
released him from his duty to his God.--( Hear.) This, my
Lords, will be the effect of this Bill—of this moral Bill, for-
sooth—( Cheers)—of a Bitl which establishes the tyranny of
man over that part of the creation whom it has hitherto been
his first duty and his first pride to protect.--( Cheers.) I have
but one more observation with which to detain your Lordships,
and it is this :—Every law to be effective in this country must
have the sanction of public opinion. I will venture to say,
my Lords, that this Bill never will have the sanction of the
British people. The British people do not respect the laws
because they minister to their vilest passions, or make them
the slaves of their grossest appetites. They respect their laws
when they cherish the weak, assist the distressed, and relieve
the oppressed. My Lords, if such be the case, I ask you will
you pass this measure as it stands ? Remember it is impos-
sible to disgust the people with one portion of your legislation
w:thcut extending their suspicions farther. If you once tell
them to cast off their respect for one law, you will soon cease
to have their respect for any of your acts, or for t'ae laws
which your predecessors have established, and which have so
long been the objects of their veneration and just pride. I
will not now go farther into this measure, my Lords; but,
casting myself upon your own hearts, I now call upon you to
vote with me against this measure. I call upon you by your
feelings of justice, by your bowels of mercy, ay, and by your
sentiments of manhood, to reject this clause. And Ido now
move that the 55th clause be rejected."—(Cheers.)
Lord \%YNFORD and the Bishop of LONDON rose together;
but the former gave way, the cries for the latter being loud
and general.
The Bishop of LONDON said that no one could appre-
ciate the able and eloquent address which his Right Rev.
Friend had just delivered more highly than he did ; but,
however powerful that address was, and no one could have
listened to it without being sensible of its power, he did not
believe that the effect anticipated to be produced by it on their
Lordships' mind would result from it.—(Hear, hear.) He
was fully aware at the time he undertook to assist in the un-
gracious task of inquiring into the state of the Poor Laws,
with a view to their reform, and the removal of the errors
which had crept into them, of the obloquy which he was likely
to encounter ; but still he would not have risen at the present
moment, if he had not been made the object of gloss and
malignant attack by parties out of that House. Now, with
respect to the part which he had taken, not only in getting up
the report on which this measure was founded, but in facili-
tating its progress through their Lordships' House, he trusted
that their Lordships would permit him to make a very few
observations.—( Hear, hear.) When he was first applied to
by the Noble Lord (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to be-
come a Commissioner under the Poor Law Commission, he
expressed the reluctance which he felt to enter upon a task
which would subject him to obloquy, if he paid that attention
to the duty which the importance of the subject seemed to
him to require ; and it was not, therefore, without great soli-
citation that he consented to take upon himself an office in-
volving a responsibility so unpleasant to a person in his situa-
tion.—( Hear, hear.) This he had done, and therefore, if
the result was that he now felt compelled to adopt opinions at
variance with those entertained by his Right Rev. Friends,
and other Noble Lords whose sentiments he always respected,
he was not on that account to be accused of acting under the
influence of unworthy motives.—( Hear, hear.) His Right
Rev. Friend had charged the clauses now under their Lord-
ships' consideration as a piece of unkindness towards the most
interesting part of the community ; but, so far from thinking
this charge well founded, it was his belief that if the principle
involved in them were properly followed up it would be the
source of improvement and not of injury to the morality of the
country—( Hear, hear)—His Right Rev. Friend contended
that both the parents, the father as well as the mother, were
equally bound, whether by the law of nature or the divine law,
o support their offspring without regard to their legitimacy or
illegitimacy. He (the Bishop of London) would admit that
this was true—that the obligation to maintain the progeny of
both parties was mutual ; but then he would deny that this
was the issue which their Lordships were now called
upon to decide. The question was whether the duty was one
which ought or could be enforced by human legislation, and
that was, in fact, the principle upon which this part of the
Bill was framed.—( Hear, hear.) But was not his Right Rev.
Friend well aware that various duties were imposed on men
which no human law could by any possibility enforce ? There
were, he would admit, delicate duties which were reciprocal
in their nature ; such, for instance, as the duty which was due
from a child to a parent; and he would ask their Lordships
whether any human could be devised which would insure the
right conduct of a child towards a parent ? His Right Rev.
Friend said that if this Bill were passed the female would be
reduced to the utmost extremity of want at a period when na-
ture cried out that she would stand most in need of relief, and
that, instead of receiving assistance when she most required it,
she would be told by the framers of this Bill, not intentionally,
but by implication, that it was not the duty of the father, but
her duty alone, to provide for the support of her child. Now
he (the Bishop of London) must deny that this Bill pronounced
any opinion of the kind. What it said was that the mode of
enforcing the duty of the father led to results which were
more detrimental to the morals of the community thin if the
matter were left to the course of nature, and that was the
principle on which this Bill proceeded. His Right Rev.
Friend had said that these clauses were not in accordance with
the principle laid down in the Holy Scriptures, and he refer-
red to the Levitical law to show that a penalty was affixed upon
the seducer of female virtue, or rather the violator of female
chastity. Undoubtedly such a passage was contained in the
Scriptures, but then what was the penalty it enjoined? Why,
that the man should be compelled to marry the female whom
he had defiled. But was there a single one of their Lordships
who would say that it would be right to effect such an object 41P
by means of legislation ?—( Hear.) It was quite clear that
there was not, and therefore it was that no such principle was
to be found in this Bill. He would not now weary their
Lordships by again referring to the painful, the disgusting il-
lustrations which he had adduced on a former occasion ; but,
without repeating the statements which he had previously
made, he would assert that the whole tenour of the evidence
collected on this subject went to prove that the discovery of
the real father of an illegitimate child was a matter of almost
insurmountable difficulty. This Bill proceeded upon the as-
sumption that the actual father could not be discovered with
any thing like certainty, moral or legal ; and although, as in
a game of chance, the right person might now and then be
fixed upon, still,as the fact was incapable of being satisfactorily
ascertained, he thought that not only the authorities on which
his Right Rev. Friend relied, but the arguments which he
used in support of continuing the liability of the father, must
fall to the ground. With their Lordships' permission he
would read an extract from a letter which he had received from
a magistrate of Warwickshire on this part of the measure.
After alluding to what took place on the former occasion, and
expressing his entire concurrence in the view which he (the
Bishop of London) had taker., this gentleman said—
" I feel persuaded that your Lordships will pardon my stating
three cases which have very recently occurred in this parish, as
they cannot but tend to confirm your Lordship's opinion, and
fully justify your Lordship's sentiments. The first case has that
of a young woman who swore a child to a person, who proved to
our Magistrates that only five months had elapsed from the day
he had first had an illicit intercourse to the birth of the child ;
consequently the order was refused. The actual father escaped,
and the child and the mother came on the parish for relief, ac-
cording to the existing Poor Laws. The second was an infamous
girl in the -workhouse, who became pregnant. On being asked
stwheearchhielrd chhaildd
stoo ,
mshaenysaid,
stkgrbeleahtadest
notas-
sl'u.hraonschee, would
'that
yet fixed upon one.' At last she fixed upon a. roesopetchea
witnesses
having
Tense that
man, whose friends employed an attorney, and
young gincur
an consented to his
the case order. The parish officers having resolve
man co
having been examined, the Magistratesd traoe ftuaskeed
d etulties. The th
paying one shilling per week. ratheriffi fathers,'wththtahte
Quarter Sessions, the friends of the
would involve them in pecuniary third and most
and
atrocious case was that of a artfulmosttabandoned girl, who
the
came before the Magistrate and had audacity to swear her child
to the son of a beneficed Clergyman, a youth of about seventeen, of
unblemished reputation. When she came into the Justice-
room he did not know her even sight, and it was clearly proved
to the Magistrates that he was at school during the very time she
swore he was at home, and being connected with her. The Magis-
trates refused an order. The parish officers ams make an
thesae
carried it to the
(Jeneral Quarter Sessions. The father of the young Gentleman
engaged for his son special Counsel. The Learned Sergeant,
having elicited from the girl that she had received money front.
different persons not to swear the child to them, thought it unneces-
sary to call his witnesses. The girl's testimonyreceived.and
was J.
an order made upon the youth on the oath of a girl not"IF"
better than a common prostitute, So deeply convinced rte.; the