The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-22 00:00:00

WIDOWERS AND WIDOWS.

If unmarried men and women suffer from disease
in undue proportion, the have-been married suffer
still more. At the ages under 40, the mortality
of widows is higher than the mortality of unmar-
ried women. At the earlier ages their rate is
doubled. At 40 and upwards their mortality is
lower than the mortality of unmarried women of
corresponding ages. At all ages widows are more
mortal than wives.

Yoang widowers under the age of 30, and even
under the age of 40, experience a very heavy rate
of mortality ; and after 60 the widowers die more
rapidly, not only than husbands, but more rapidly
than old bachelors.

This is the general result. Marriage is a healthy
estate. The single individual is more likely to be
wrecked on his voyage than the lives joined toge-
ther in matrimony.
In what respect do the married among the bulk
of the people differ from the unmarried classes ?

Where the earnings of the------------------- the
same ages are equal the married man must have a
smaller share of the means of living than the single
man—he shares his gains with his wife and chil-
dren. His food and clothing may be of a lower
description,. or his lodging be more crowded ; but
this often counteracted by his stimulated indus-
try. The single man can move about more freely,
and can carry his industry to the best market.
Upon the other hand, his household comforts are
less ; the watchful care of a woman does not direct
the economy of his dwelling ; the very
.amplitude
of his means exposes him to the temptation of in-
temperance and vice. His faculties fall, and some-
times rise, into excesses of various kinds.
The priests and the soldiers represent the unmar-
ried classes. Men of letters, men prosecuting the
abstract sciences, men of family
.and small means,
probably figure in large proportion amongst their
highest ranks. Criminals, lunatics, vagrants, and
mendicants among the inferior orders. If they con-
tain some of the lowest, they contain also some of

the highest members of their race, ascending from
the idiot up to Newton.
The saying of the great Chancellor Bacon has in
it a colouring of truth—" Certainly the best works,
and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded
from the unmarried or childless men, who both in
affection and means have married and endowed the
public."

The wife shares the fortune of the husband ; he
is exposed to violence, she to the incidents of child-
b earing.
Nuns, religious sisters, many ladies of birth, are
at the head, grisettes, courtesans, at the bottom of
the unmarried troops—which figure also in larger
proportion than the married among the female cri-
minals, lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb, blind, and
deformed. They include some of the loftiest and
some of the lowest of their sex.

Is any part of the excessive mortality of the
single in France referable to vice ?

* This is accidentally an exaggeration ; the facts are in-
sufficient.
Yes, to vice and its attendant irregularities.
Levy asserts that the colleges of France are in-
fested by vices which induce debility, and death
later in life. The French youth do not yet indulge
in the strong athletic exercises which it is well
known are the safeguards of our public schools.
Syphilis—the odium of the human race—induces
half the sickness, and, indirectly, some of the mor-
tality of the army, which in this respect fairly re-
presents the unmarried population. (See Acton's
works.)
Courtesans die of their various irregularities, but
this class of causes operates chiefly in early life.
It is known to everybody that all species of cul-
tivated plants, and all the -breeds of domestic ani-
mals, have been greatly improved in Europe. The
improvement is partly due to the favourable condi-
tions in which each kind has been placed. It is
mainly due, however to the constant elimination of
imperfect types, and to the skilful selection of the
finest individuals out of each successive generation.
Now the same principle evidently regulates to a
certain extent the marriages in France. Cretins do
not marry; idiots do not marry; idle vagrants herd
together, but rarely marry. Criminals by birth and
education do not marry to any great extent; for-
merly they were executed in great numbers, or they
perished in the prisons, and now the galleys interfere
with their career. (Of 100 French criminals, 60 are
unmarried. Two in three suicides are unmarried. Of
1,726 women insane ; 989 were spinsters ; 291
widows, and 397 wives.—Levy, vol. 2, p. 74.)
The hildren of families which have been afflicted
with lunacy are not probably sought in marriage
to so great an extent as others • and several heredi-
tary diseases present practically some bar to ma-
trimony. The beautiful, the good, and the healthy
are mutually attractive ; and their unions are pro-
moted by the parents in France, who are usually
on very friendly terms with their children, and
often decide the choice of their daughters too ab-
solutely and with too little reference to the affec-
tions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in one of
his most delightful romances, tells us that falling
in love at first sight is the only genuine way in
which people do fall in love. But this is not op-
posed to the theory of selection ; for it always hap-
pens, as we see in the most authentic stories, that
the lovers at first sight are invariably full of irre-
sistible charms.
Selections then—not such as the Insurance offices
exercise—but a certain selection does reduce, to
some extent, the mortality of the married,
And upon the other hand, we shall be justified
by our medical friends in admitting that a certain
number of young women, and young men also, die
directly or indirectly of disappointed affection—die
of love, in fact. Some destroy themselves ; others
pine away mostpiteously ; and others register secret
vows in heaven never to marry.
Finally, it is held generally that the suppression
of a physiological function is prejudicial to health,
which our tables confirm, and at the same time
qualify. Chastity in itself does not, as in the case
of Deparcieux's nuns, raise the mortality of women
under 40 ; and notwithstanding the consequences
of vice in the vicious, the selection operating
against the unmarried, and. the pangs of disap-
pointed love, the mortality of unmarried women in
all France is lower than the mortality of married
women. After that age the health of the nuns gave
way to some extent ; but this was, perhaps, as
Deparcieux asserts, the consequence in that period
of various kinds of austerities, an absence of per-
sonal cleanliness, and the want of little comforts
which were found in the dwellings of simple arti-
sans who knew how to keep their houses in order.
The effects of religious chastity in France have
been recently discussed by Dr. Mayor, who with.
some Catholic authorities contend that it has in it-
self no prejudicial effect ; but this is not the preva-
lent opinion. Levy professes the contrary doctrine.
I cannot discuss this medical controversy here. But
the poets, where the affections are concerned, pos-
sess an insight almost divine, which is true in its
indications as analytic science. Virginity in the
poetical creed was ever proof against danger ; the
lion would not harm the "heavenly" Una.
" So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand angels lackey her,
Driving far off Rach thing of sin and guilt."
The body partakes of the soul's " immortal es-
sence ;" but no sooner is " defilement" let into the
temple than the life grows " clotted with contd.-
gion." The reading of the allegory is evident. The
poets, however, see all sides of character, and
Shakespeare's Parolles, a " great way-fool" as he
is, says, all the evil that physiology has yet sus-
pected in this estate. Lallemand describes vividly
the sufferings of the French priests from celibacy
—exposed to the fiery ordeal of the confessional—.
vows of celibacy on the part of large bodies of
young men and of young women are also dangerous ;
but the question of marriage or celibacy, is a ques-
tion of temperament and of circumstances—so it is
very properly left in England to individuals of full
age to decide their lot on their own responsibility,
under friendly, or if they please, professional ad-
vice. In France there is always a large number of
unmarried women of a marriageable age. (Thus, in
the last returns, 2,631,000 women figure as spinsters,
of the age of 20 to 40 ; the wives of that age num-
bering 3,201,000.)
Is this the result of religious vows, or of the ca-
tholic doctrine of celibacy P—Not to any great
extent. In Great Britain the proportions are not
very different. Ultimately nine in ten who live
marry. The notion that the number of women shut
up in convents had any direct effect in diminishing
population was incorrect. In every society large
numbers will not, and large n ambers should not
marry. They have wide fields before them, and
public works, devotion, noble foundations, friendly
love, will enable them to achieve those triumphs
which Bacon has taught us to expect at their hauds.
Why is the mortality of young widows and
widowers so excessive P

1. They share the pains of the unmarried. 2.
The pairs, of which one dies prematurely, must in
the aggregate be in more unfavourable sanitary
circumstances than the rest of the population. 3.
The one may take from the other fever, and in
crowded chambers, catarrh, ending in consumption,
as the. army returns show. 4. The widow with
children, especially in France, there being no poor
law, suffers from privation ; the widower from a
disorderly house. The loss of a beloved wife is the
heaviest affliction which a man can sustain. It un-
settles many minds. Jacques Bonhomme is left
desolate ; his wife no longer cheers his home, nurses
him in sickness, shares his cares, consoles him,
counsels him, loves him. The voice which followed
Jacques to the cabaret, and reminded him of the
hostages which he had given to fortune, is silent.
He plunges into intemperance ; vice and disorder
follow; his plot of land is torn from his grasp by
the mortgagee, and his body finds its way to the
cemetery, his soul, we may hope, soars to his com-
panion in heaven, for Jacques Bonhomme was
solely destroyed by her untimely death.
Children supply in some respects the loss of the
dead; and where the living are childless they have
the resources of their unmarried life to retreat
on. But re-marriage is the favourite consolation ;
young widows in health marry at a faster rate than
maids,and widowers marry three or fourfold as fast as
bachelors. The weakly and sickly are left by this
second selection, and swell the apparent mortality
of the class. All the descriptions of wedlock, how-
ever, leave a "rooted sorrow," and the day is to be
desired when " Conjux Univira" may be inscribed
on nearly all tombs.
It is satisfactory to find that by a wise ordinance
of Heaven, the fathers and mothers of a nation—
those who transmit its life from generation to gene-
ration—live long. They sustain their children and
live with their grandchildren. Families are thus
not detached fragments. The traditions, the works,
the thoughts of the nation go on continually • and
the common life flows like a mighty river. The im-
mortality of the race on earth is secured bymar-
riage ; and mortals in giving seem to receive life
from the fountain of life. If " nuptial rnaketh" it
also
25,an kind.
At married men enjoy an apl
all ages
e ry e t
afterh"
im-
munity from illnesses, or their diseasesaieless fatal
than the diseases of the unmarried men of corre-
eponding ages. And wives of the age of 40—after
they have nursed children—enjoy a degree of health
which neither their selection, nor the vices nor the
virtues of the unmarried can explain. But we seem
to hear the wails of the young mothers dying every
year in child-birth. Well, those sorrows can be
mitigated by science. Through the progress of
medicine the deaths of mothers are every year de-
creasing, and as sanitary science is diffused, by
associations like this, they will become uncommon,
if none but healthy women marry, and if young
persons under age, except in rare: exceptional cases,
* 1 •

will postpone their marriage at this price—th
they are at liberty to prolong what the Vicar
Wakefield called the happiest hours of life.
I have now passed in review the six classes of
the population of France, and have ventured to
draw some deductions of general application. The
French differ from us in some respects ; but the
English and French nations consist essentially
of the same three races-1, Celts ;2, Franks, or
Saxons • and 3, Normans—in different proportions,
and modified by position and climate. The facts
show that the state of manners is not fairly repre-
sented by the common French novels. The French
people have among them many vicious, and still
many more virtuous characters. The bulk of the
small agriltulturists and artisans is moral, yet I trust
that in some respects they are excelled by the'
people of England. I trust that poor widows are
better provided for in England than in France, and
that the unmarried population in England suffers
somewhat less than in France. The husbands and
the wives differ in one essential respect from their
French neighbours. 6,948,823 wives in France
gave birth to 896,292 children annually ; 6,329,321
wives in the United Kingdom gave birth to about
800,000 children annually in the years 1849-53 ;
and in the year 1856 the English births probably
surpassed the French in numbers. They are our
rivals—not our unworthy rivals—in arts, manufac-
tures, arms, and diplomacy. In the increase of po-
pulation as well as of the power which it repre-
sents, and in planting colonies--future nations
—France has been surpassed by England. This the
country owes to the numerous children of English
parents, without any injury to the health of the
father or even the mother. English mothers are, I
believe, as healthy as French mothers ; and there-
fore what we have proved holds in France holds
also in England.

CO UI(TRY MARIBTS.

MANCHESTER—OcT. 21.

Our market this morning was fairly attended. Wheat of
the choicest quality found buyers at the prices of last
week, but all other sorts were neglected, and to have effected
sales it would have been necessary to take is per qr. less,
but this sellers were not willing to do. Flour was in very
limited demand at the currency of this day se'nnight. Oats
and oatmeal were more inquired for and steady in value.
Beans rather easier to buy. In Indian corn there was no
material alteration.

BIRMINGHAM—Om. 21.
At this market to-day there was a full supply of wheat,
and in some instances an advance of is was obtained • but
we make no alteration in our quotations. Fine barley fully
as dear, but inferior is per qr. cheaper. Oats realised quite
as much money. Beans Is per qr. lower. More doing in.
peas.