change of the law be sacrificed to the gratification of a morbid craving on the part of the few.
My first proposition will be probably conceded. The statistics of crime would otherwise furnish ground for the repeal of every law. If the statistics of unions deemed by all (at present) to be incestuous (such as brother and sister, uncle and niece), had been collected by Messrs. Crowder and Maynard, they would in the case of the poor, at least, have been found far more abundant than those of the marriages in question: one clergyman sent to our Society a statement that he had found in a large district but three cases of the marriages in question, and ten cases of brother and sister living together. This is no doubt owing to the wretched arrangements of the poor man's dwelling; a subject to which every philanthropist should give his attention[1].
My second proposition is, that the alleged fact that persons do not lose by breaking the law affords no ground for its repeal, and it rests on this
- ↑ It is not, happily, a common occurrence for educated people in this country to talk so coolly of breaking the law as an anonymous Solicitor before the Commissioners, who in answer to question 874 says, "I had a communication with two or three Clergymen, and the expression of one in particular was, that it was neither inconsistent with the divine law nor any other law, because he repudiated, very much as many gentlemen have done, the late Act!" Pickpockets repudiate Acts of Parliament, but it is not usual for Clergymen or Solicitors to do so.
