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

BASTARDY CLAUSES-POOR LAW BILL.

The Bishop of EYE TE dsaid that pursuant to the notice
he had given, he rose to move that the 55th clause of the
Poor Laws Amendment Bill, one of the clauses affecting the
law of bastardy, should be removed out of the Bill. The
pur-
port of the 55th clause was to make any person who married
a woman who had had a child by another maintain that child.
That was the meaning of the clause ; but he should beg to be
permitted not to confine himself to that clause, but to trespass
upon their Lordships with observations upon other and subse-
quent clauses upon the same subject, as the course of proceeding
more convenient to their Lordships, and best calculated to save
the time of the House by confining him to one address.—
( Hear, hear.) He could assure their Lordships that his in-
tention was anything but that of offering a vexatious opposition
to this measure. He entreated them to take the opportunity
of deferring until another session the very important questions
involved in the branch of the Bill to which the clauses relating
to bastardy belonged. After the large majority given in favour
of the general principle of the Bill he should not have pre-
sumed to trouble their Lordships further, were it not, that the
clauses to which he entertained objections formed a distinct
part. of the measure, and that the main business for which the
Commissioners would be appointed would go on without inter-
ruption whether those clauses were inserted or not this year,
or gave place to others of a more desirable nature next session.
He had had the satisfaction to receive a letter from an Hon.
Member of the other House, the Member for East Somerset
( Mr. Miles), a gentleman with whom he had never before
had any correspondence or intercourse, earnestly entreating
him to persevere in the attempt to postpone until next year
the bastardy clauses, in order to prevent the mischief conse-
quent upon letting the fathers of bastards escape. That
Hon. Gentleman stated that a clause proposed by him, having
that object in view, had been very favourably received by the
other House. If therefore their Lordships were to send this
Bill down to the other House denuded of these clauses, it
would not be in the predicament supposed by the Noble
and Learned Lord on the Woolsack to be so inconvenient at
this of the Session. The Noble and Learned Lord had last
night said most truly that it was undesirable at this late period
of the Session to send down to the other House Bills so ex-
tensively altered as to require more time for consideration
than could at present be given. The late period of the Ses-
sion at which clauses of so much importance were brought up
to their Lordships for consideration and adoption brought
this measure fully within the scope of the observations so
forcibly addressed to them on the previous night by the Noble
and Learned Lord; and their application would be still
stronger if the motion to be made by the Noble Duke oppo-
site (the Duke of Wellington) should be carried. He con-
tended then that in order that these important principles in
they Bill might have a fair discussion they should be referred
to another Session. What would be the consequence of
such a postponement? Only that the present Bastardy
Laws would remain for another six months in force.
They would not, however, be allowed to produce the
same extent of mischief as heretofore he fully ad-
mitted they had produced • for they would be admi-
nistered by men of great ability and great research, the
Commissioners to be appointed to carry into effect the general
provisions of this Bill. They would take care that the Bas-
tardy Laws in the interval were administered carefully, ably,
and effectively. He would remind their Lordships that the
Bastardy Laws, as they had been represented to be, had
been effectively administered in a few parishes. When their
Lordships returned after the recess, they would be prepared
to deal with the measure coolly and calmly; and, after having
become practically acquainted with the opinions of that wise
and experienced part of the community, who, from having
more to do with the administration of these laws, were even
better qualified to judge of the proposed alterations than their
Lordships could be. He hoped, therefore, that their Lord-
ships would adopt that course ; and if he thought he might
be permitted to encourage that hope, he should stop here,
and not detain them with any renewed discussion upon the
details of the Bill. But he feared he could not do so, and
must therefore proceed to say a few words upon the clauses
to which he particularly objected as they now stood. One
of the first objections that he opposed to the measure was,
that it was founded in injustice. He believed that it was
on all hands an admitted injustice. He apprehended that
no Noble Lord would venture to say that the clause in Ines-
tion was otherwise than unjust. If there were any single
Noble Lord who thought it otherwise than unjust, he would
be heartily obliged to him to signify his opinion. He saw
no signs, and he therefore took it for granted that the
principle of the clause was admitted to be unjust.—( Some
cries of " No, no.") It was not admitted. Well, then, he
must. be permitted to enter into the diicussion of that ques-
tion, and to establish what some Noble Lords would not admit,
What he had asserted upon a former occasion was, that the
duty of providing for their offspring by parents, by the laws of
nature and by the law of God, belonged equally to 'either
parent, or to both proportionably. What he then and now con-
tended for was, that the laws of God laid upon the father as
much the burthen of maintaining his child as upon the mother.
He also felt`himself warranted in saying that he might go fur-
ther, and assert that the law of God imposed those duties on
the parent in the case of his bastard children as much as
when they were legitimate. He thought in saying this that
he was speaking on no light grounds, m spite of certain indi-
cations of doubt which he saw from others. Whatever doubt
others might have he had none, for he knew this doctrine to be
founded upon the Holy Writings ; for, while he admitted that
there were no express laws or words laid down for the govern-
ment of suai cases, yet he would maintain that there were
Principles frequently and clearly repeated from which such a
regulation of man's duties must necessarily flow. He alluded,
amongst other passages, to those which exhorted all parents to
train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord, and which in his mind referred alike to all children,
bastards as well as those legitimately born ; and, while he
drew this conclusion from Scripture, he was happy to think
himself fortified by the highest human authorities in the opi-
nion that the same laws had been recognised by them as
founded upon the law of nature.—( Hear, hear.) For this pur-
pose he should be content to refer to the laws of his own
country. He should not say anything of the law of France
or the law of Italy upon the subject, for in truth he did not
know anything of them, and was perfectly contented, especially
on such a question as this, to abide by the principles of British
law. The great commentator upon English law said—" Let
us next see the duty of parents to their bastard children by our
law, which is principally that of maintenance. For though
bastards are not looked upon as children to any civil purposes,
yet the ties of nature, of which maintenance is one, are not so
easily dissolved." The same great authority said again—" It
is a principle of law that there is an obligation on every man
to provide for those descended from his loins. He then went
on further to explain the principle in detail—" The duty of
parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a
principle of natural law ; an obligation laid on them not only

by nature herself, but by their own 'proper act in bringing them
into the world, for they would be in the highest manner inju-
rious to their issue if they only gave their children life that they
might afterwards see them perish. By begetting them, there-
fore, they have entered into a vcluntary obligation to endeavour,
as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed
shall be supported and preserved. And thus the children will
have a perfect right of maintenance from their parents." This
was the law of England. With regard to the other portions of
the empire he found in " Erskine's Institute of the Law of
Scotland" the following recognition of the same principle :
" Parents are bound to maintain their issue though the rela-
tions should be merely natural ; not only the mother who is
always certain, but likewise the father, if he hath either ac-
knowledged the child for his, or may be presumed from other
circumstances to have begotten him." While these were the
principles of British law, which had long prevailed both in
England and Scotland, he rejoiced to say that the same prin-
ciples had been recognised by all the great jurists who had
instructed mankind in their civil rights and duties upon these
important points. They were clearly stated by Montesquieu
in his " Spirit of Law ;" and the most eminent jurists, such as
Grotius and Puffendorff, were all found confirming him in the
same views. But in truth, he could not bring himself in
an English assembly, such as that which he had the high
honour to address, to appeal to any foreign authority, or
to any other than their own sense of justice and of right,
to establish the principle that a father was bound to main-
tain his child.—( Hear, hear.) He would not so degrade
himself, or insult their Lordships.—( Hear, hear, hear. )
He had no necessity for doing so, because he had the highest
authority at home for the principle he was maintaining, in the
names of his two Right Reverend Friends as subscribed to the
Report on which the measure was founded--names which had
unquestionably a far greater weight with him even than the
names of the intelligent individuals which followed theirs in
the list. In this Report their Lordships would see that both
his Right Reverend Friends had fully concurred in the prin-
ciple for which he contended, in that passage in which they
referred to the passing of the 18th of Elizabeth, of which they
said " the object of this law was to force the parents"—parents
in the plural—" to maintain their bastard children, which be-
fore had been done by the parish." Now he would appeal to
his two Right Rev. Friends instead of to Grotius and Puffen-
dorff. And after having done this, and having so unanswer-
ably established the legal and the moral duty of the father, he
thought it would not require much to convince their Lordships
that it was wrong to take that duty from him and lay it upon
the helpless shoulders of the poor woman.—( Hear, hear.)
He said the helpless shoulders of the woman, and he would
not shrink from the task of showing that she was far more
helpless to bear the burthen thus to be thrown upon her than
the man. Although it was true she could do much for the
care and rearing of her offspring which a father could not do,
yet in bringing her offspring into the world it had pleased God
to show her utterly helpless and dependent upon others for sup-
port, and in this extremity of her suffering and distress she was
to be cut off from all claim to help from every human being.
In this state the woman must be helpless, and for a long time
after nature disabled her from supporting either her child or
herself. Why, then, it was a mockery of nature, and, as lie
thought, a mockery f something which ought to be still more
sacred, to cast upon the helpless shoulders of the woman this
undivided burden. It was plain that the woman was not made
by nature to bear it all, and upon whom did the sharing of it
fall, if not upon the other parent ? The only plea which had
been advanced to justify this departure from a principle thus
plainly engrafted upon the law of the land, as founded upon the
law of nature, was the necessity of putting as strong a check as
possible upon the woman, to preserve her chaste. Here again
he would take leave to say that in the Holy Scripture there
was nothing in the law which God himself had given to man,
which recognised a difference in this respect between the man
and the woman. In the reference he formerly made to the
divine laws imparted to Moses he had never contended, and
could not be supposed to have contended, that all the Mosaic
laws ought now to be carried into effect. But he contended
that the principles of those laws were to be recognised as most
wise and just, and to be taken as the foundation of all Chris-
tian legislation. He said, then, that God, to prevent the incon-
tinence of the Jewish people, did not inflict penalties and re-
straints solely upon women ; but, on the contrary, addressed
them to the men, and where the parties had been equally
guilty, where the woman had consented to the solicitations of
the man, imposed upon qim a penalty, and, in order to deter
others from the offence, he was made to marry her, and because
he had humbled her by defiling her, he was never again to put
her away. Now he contended that the reasons given to justify
this departure from the principle so laid down was necessarily
vicious, because contrary to the law of God. Another of the
reasons advanced with the same object was, that only one of
the parents of the illegitimate child could he ascertained.
That was a principle which had been contradicted by almost
every other authority, including that of both Houses of Par-
liament, in their proceedings upon this very measure. The
clause introduced in the other House, and which had since
been struck out, recognised and proceeded upon the possi-
bility of finding the father. Thus the authority of the
House of Common; distinctly acknowledged it.—( Hear,
hear.) But there were also two clauses to be moved by
a Noble Duke to-night, and which, he understood, were
to have the approbation of so many of their Lordships as
would ensure their being carried, and these two clauses were
to fix the maintenance of the child upon the father in certain
cases. Thus, besides the authority of all the great jurists of
all countries, and of the great commentator upon our own
laws, there was that of both Houses of Parliament for the
time being, and therefore he asserted that another of the main
principles of the clause was struck from under it. But was it
plain that the other parent could always be so easily ascer-
tained ? Was it so plain that under this law they should al-
ways ascertain who was the mother of the illegitimate child ?
It would be well for their Lordships to consider this, for they
might depend upon it that it would soon be tried. They might
be sure that the ingenuity of woman would be taxed to its ut-
most to defeat this most iniquitous, this most oppressive, most
cruel law. Their Lordships must be prepared to see the ap-
palling consequences in crimes for which he feared they would
have the responsibility of having in some measure compelled
their perpetration. He implored them to look at what would
be the feelings of the wretched woman when beset with all the
miseries and temptations of her unhappy condition. She would
feel and be told that they had taken away from her the sup-
port of the father of her child, and in the time of her utter
destitution and distress every temptation aggravated by misery
would come upon her in its fullest might, and tell her that—
" The world is not her friend, nor the world's law."

These were strong temptations, and, when they had defeated
the last expiring virtue in their hapless victim, he would not
say that their. Lordships, when they passed this Act of Parlia-
ment, had tempted her to destroy her child, but he feared that
in many cases its destruction would ensue. Besides this,
many, he had no doubt, would be tempted to resort to other
means of placing the poor babe out of their own hands into
the hands of others. It would be taken to the doors of others
in baskets, nicely wrapped up, and there left to the chances of
the world. Frequently they would be taken to the door of the
constable, of the overseer, or of the clergyman. He hoped
they would be taken to the clergyman's door; for they had
the satisfaction of knowing that he, at least, would take care
that the poor child was placed in security from the world's
storms. He wished that this might be the worst effect of the
desertion of infants ; but he feared there would be far other
scenes when every workhouse should become an hospital for
foundlings. It was said by the supporters of the Bill, that
by these terrors women were to be frightened out of leading
unchaste lives. He admitted that they were terrible indeed ;
but he had no confidence in them as a nostrum to be used
for such a purpose. He earnestly prayed that the law
might have the effect of deterring women from falling into
unchaste lives, and if it did, it would have done something
by way of compensation for the monstrous violation of the
principles both of the laws of God and of nature which it
would inflict upon the wretched victims of that sin. He
prayed their Lordships to reflect upon the long train of
evils and of penalties which it would inflict beyond the
first hardship upon the woman of providing for the birth
and support of her child. Let them remember that this
measure would cut off from her all hope, and, amongst the
rest, that first best hope of woman, an honourable settlement in
marriage. As the law at present stood the woman who had
once committed the sin of incontinence, and had had a child,
had at least some refuge, and might go where her shame was
unknown, and by a reformed course of life recover her cha-
racter, and the former station and. honourable settlement which
she had lost. He appealed to the experience of their Lord-
ships, and he was sure that they must all of them, in the
performance of their great duty as proprietors, when looking
into the state of morals among their dependents, have seen
that those women who in humble life had once fallen from
chastity and were married, often become chaste and good
wives. Indeed it was a remarkable circumstance that such
women were very seldom found to be guilty of a breach of the
marriage vow. Why, then, this clause took away from them at
once the inducement and the means for recovering the stations
from which they had fallen, excluded them from that last hope
and left them for ever abandoned to a course of crime and
misery. "It tells them," said the Right Rev. Prelate,
tjiat they have nothing left to hope on earth. God grant
that they may still be taught by others how they may be se-
cure of better hopes hereafter. But indeed, indeed, my
Lords, the position in which you place them by this Bill must
lead to the fearful consequence of lessening even that
hope, for it will render them less likely to receive those
lessons with effect. For as they will have little to hope
on earth from the return to better conduct, so they will
have little to fear from continuing in the paths of depra-
vity and vice. And though you will not suffer them to do
better, you must remember that you leave the door open
for them to do worse. You must not forget that if the woman
is not permitted to hope to ascend the marriage bed she may
let others ascend her bed without the sanction of marriage.
She may have other children, and no law can enable the parish
to compel her to maintain more than one. If she shall have
a child every year after she becomes the inmate of the work-
house, she will not be compelled to maintain them, and there-
fore her situation becomes no worse. Why, then, my Lords,
what shall you have done by the passing of this cruel, unjust,
and atrocious measure? For the sake of a theoretical fancy
you will have reduced a class of your fellow-creatures—ay,
and even with yourselves the humblest of that class is equal in
the sight of Him who is father of all—to a condition in which
there will be nothing for them to hope or to fear in this world.
Is that a state into which you would see them reduced ? If
not, you will hesitate long before you permit this clause to be-
come the law of the land. lam afraid that if you do, the
great majority of those who have once become mothers with-
out the sanction of the marriage vow will for ever be deprived
of that hope as a stimulus to the reformation of their lives ;
and that thus shut out from hope, and dead to every feeling of
shame, they will abandon themselves to vicious courses, and
run through every grade of crime until they reach its lowestt
depths. We may be told that this is the penalty of the first
departure from the purity of woman, and if it is in .t