The Express. — 1863-02-13 (London, England)

LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13.  Ir we may trust s paragraph which has been going the round of the papers, a Coroner in the East of London has been advocating at an inquest the establishment of Foundling Hospitals as a re medy for the infanticide which is one of our chief disgraces and afflictions. "Several gentlemen pre" sent," we are told, "concurred with the Coroner "as to the necessity of such an institution, " and stated that they would subscribe towards " its erection." We cannot but suppose that both the Coroner and these gentlemen must be very young men—unaware of what everybody knew thirty years ago about the operation of Foundling Hospitals, or they would no more have proposed to check child-murder by such means than to extinguish licentiousness. The fact of the enormous increase of vice, and of child-murder, wherever Foundling Hospitals have been established, has been hitherto supposed, too easily we now perceive, to be universally understood. We must hope that the citizens who live within this Coroner's district are too well aware of the fact to be induced to countenance his scheme ; but the mere  mention of such a project, and its meeting with I any countenance at all, are a call upon us to warn the parties and the public against as grave and unpardonable a mistake as ignorant benevolence and thoughtless sentiment could commit. The constancy of the results from all institutions of the class is remarkable. In the earliest cases, when one or two heathen polities endeavoured to check the mortality caused by the exposure of infants by providing a refuge where children were reared, to become slaves of the State, the exposures increased, as might have been expected. In the early days of conventual celibacy, when babes were found in holes and corners, and were seen floating down the riven, they were numerous in proportion to the efforts made to provide for the exposed infanta. The Popes felt and thought exactly as our Coroner of East London feels and thi.nks ; and to save the mothers' feelings and the infants' lives, the Holy Fathers devised the plan of the turning-box in the hospital wall, by which the babes might be received without the bringers being seen. The consequent increase of illegitimacy threatened the dissolution of society, as it would with us now, if we were to follow the same course. Sr. VIRCINT DI PAUL was shocked at the number of children deserted in the streets of Paris ; and he applied himself to the reformation and extension of Foundling Hospitals. The result was that whereas the number of illegitimate births in France, when such estimates were set about, was one•tb;rteenth where no such refuges existed, it had risen to above one-third in Paris within the range of the Asylum for Foundlings. The same experience has been universal up to this day. After every allowance made for the tricks of wellto-do citizens and members of the aristocracy who may have inconvenient children to dispose of, and of guardians of the poor, who may be tempted to get rid of some of the burdens of their datrict, and of married poor people under a yet stronger temptation, there is evidence of a rapid and constant increase of seduction, tending to a complete disappearance of female virtue, wherever these institutions arias to relieve the unchaste from the burdensome consequences of their aio. Here are some of the facts.  Within five-sad•forty years the foundlings in Paris have trebled in number, under the encouragement of the Hospital approm iatcd to them. That Hospital received five thousand new-born babes a year in 1847. Have our readers ever been within its walls I Have they seen the arrangements—the best practicable under suc'i pressure of numbers 1 If they have, they will scarcely be surprised to hear that two-thirds of the infants die during the first year. Yet the increase of numbers goes on ; and we now hear of the intention of the EMPEVIII to found another such asylum ! If she cannot learn from prior experiments, let us hope that our East London Coroner may. It appears that of illegitimate children in Paris, 58 per cent. are abandoned by their mothers, within the range of the Hospital. As for Vienna, the story of the provision made for the encouragement of profligacy is too gross for  production here. The well-known coarse description that