The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1890-04-19
COMPULSORY MARRIAGE.
The Last French Scheme for the
Increase Of the Population.

| POoACN IA q AC" AOA Ia III WV "AuOAJ
separated legislative bodies. The
Quebec Legislature has enacted that
every head of family of twelve
legitimate children shall hereafter
receive from the government 100
acres of land, and the French Cham
Der Of Deputies has directed the
Minister of the Interior to investi-
gate thoroughly the subject of max
ing marriage compulsory.
The proposition to increase the
population by law was brought be-
fore the French Chamber in the
shape of an elaborate petition. The
state must have citizens, the petit
toner argued; otherwise it must
dwindle away and disappear. If
circumstances shape themselves so
that deficit of posterity is threat
ened, the state must exert itself
just as strenuously to cover the de-
ficit of children as it would to cover
financial deficit. That, in a nut
shell, is the point of view from
which the petitioner sees the mutual
obligations of state and citizens in
the matter Of population. For it's
defense the petitioner continues in
detail, the state has introduced the
universal obligation to military
service, and for it's intellectual pro-
gress, the universal obligation to
attend the schools. Why not, then,
for its maintenance, introduce the
universal obligation to marry?
Consistency and reason demand
that every man should be compelled
by law to marry, just as he has
been compelled to get an education
and to learn to fight for his coun-
try. A certain age for marrying
should be fixed by the government,
and every man who passes that age
wifeless should be punished as a
fugitive from marriage" as severe
ly in proportion to his offense as
the small boy is punished for play
ing hockey or the soldier for desert
ing. The preliminary penalty for
remaining single beyond the legal
period, the petitioner suggests,
should be tax of so per cent on
the bachelors income. In case this
tax should not drive the bachelor
to matrimony, he should be de-
prived of all his rights Of citizen
ship. /
Theproposed legislation, however,
would not stop at the altar 1t
would follow it's unwilling victim
into his domestic life and bulldoze
him into having big family. Af-
ter stated period of married life,
every couple would be expected to
have at least two children. In case
a husband should have no children
at the end of the legal period, he
would be subject to a heavy child
tax. Should he have one child the
tax would be halved. The parents
Of five children would be free from
all taxes. The parents of six or
more children would be free from
LAKES and entitled to have their
whole family educated at the pub
lie expense. No couple would be
exempt from the provision of the
aw on account of their poverty, for
he state would educate, clothe and {
eed all the children of very needy {
Such is the petitioners {
plan for curing the ''dry rot" which s
las long kept the population of
France stationary, while the hated r
Germans beyond the Vosges have r
'een increasing 100000 a year. The
'etition is no hoax. 1t has been
arnestly discussed by French Dep
tiles and dailies, and is receiving i
asst deal of attention from the press g
# Germany and Austria. t
The Canadian plan for increasing v
he number of Frenchmen in the [
Vorld by law has none of the elab-
rateness and originality of the .
ontinental French Scheme. In y
most respects it is only an imita- e
ion Of Colbert's famous order of II
666. This order granted freedom q
rom taxation for five or six years a
o every man who married before u
is twentieth year, freedom from all u
axation for life to every father of s.
en- legitimate children, and thereto II
pension of 1000 livres when the
ather was nobleman. The noble n
ather of twelve children got pen :,
ion of 1000 livres, and an untaxed 9
nd untitled man half as much. = =
he Hanoverian lawmakers up to =
1852 had pretty much the same - -
lea when they appropriated to the !, Il
late all the property of dead bach :
lors.
Frederick the Great, too, took his ell
Urn at the same policy, and with a Al
lew to getting more men to help II
i'm fight the rest of Europe, linn b
ed the mourning period for wild b
wers to three months and for wild 81
VS. to nine months. But even in tt
lose days, long before Malthus
I'D his reaction against big fami- Al
es were dreamed of, many states :; -
en and economic writer's expressed ~ =,
leir lack of confidence in the gov =, -
nment'a policy by asking in the - IL