The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-09-19 00:00:00

"TO PERSONS ABOUT TO MARRY."

(From the John Bell.)
The Registrar-General has within these few days issued
a document full of lines and figures ; the object of which
is to prove that when business is brisk, and employment
plentiful, labouring men make themselves happy by mo-
rally taking unto themselves wives; and that when busi-
ness is dull, and employment scarce, labourers get
miserable, and their children die off. We can believe
the statement; but we protest at once, and as strongly as
we can, against the moral which puhlic writers have
already drawn from the facts. Because once in years
there is a revulsion in trade, and because the tendency of
such a revulsion is to increase the mortality of the la-
bouring classes, therefore working men should not marry
in the day of prosperity, but live wretchedly and immo-
rally during five years of their laborious existence, in order
that they may not be suhjeet to the penis and penalties
which the most exact calculation prescribes for them on
the sixth.
To say nothing of the absurdity of inculcating a doctrine
ag,ainst which nature and Providence both set their face,
and of attempting to disprove by figures a position whicll
is vigorously maintained by the heart of man, we hold it
to be thoroughly impolitic to dissuade men from a prac-
tice suggested by the holiest affections, and sanctioned by
religion, instead of more rationally advising them how to
perform the duties incumbent upon all who, whether they
be poor or rich, accumulate care fend responsibility in life.
Let us instruct the poor to be thrifty and econon-lical ; to
spend, during the five years of plenty, somewhat' less than
their earnings, in order that they may not be wholly un,
prepared for the storm 3 of the sixth ; let us teach them
to love their habitations, by improving the characters of
their homes ; to prefer the blissful erjayments of the fire-
side, however humble, to the pleasures of the g.inshop,
however gaudy ; to take delight in virtue, because it yields
contentment, and to abhor vice because it leads to misery
and death ; and marriage, enjoined by God, need no lon-
ger be repudiated by man. Because Christian England
has forgotten her mission, and Las left poverty to fight its
own battle, and ignorance to drag its own way up, we
must not hope to repair the consequent mischief by fruit-
lessly attacking that which can never be successfully over-
come—and by the application of arguments to Which an
unerring law, Divine as well as human, stands eternally
opposed.
The poor tall marry. Marriage,is their. joy during a
gleam of sunshine. It is their consolation under the cold
cloud. The axiom must be accepted whether we like it or
not. If mortality is increased in consequence, we must
meet that evil if we can. Of one thing we may rest as-
sured, if we cannot prevent death, to prevent birth is
wholly beyond our reach. We unaffectedly believe that
the working classes may be taught to do their duty in their
vocation ; that foresight and prudence may be acquired by
the humble, as well as the conviction that present prodi-
gality is no satisfaction for ultimate want and wretched-
edness. If the poor have not that conviction now, they
share the ignorance at least with the class above them.