Matrimonial Persecution.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 532, 12 January 1882, Page 2

Matrimonial Persecution.

For a considerable time past there . has been a startling decrease, it seems, I in the number of marriages contracted |in France. This fact has engaged the j particular attention of a member of the | French Chamber, who proposes to deal | with it in a manner which has often } been suggested in fun, but which is I now proposed in sober earnest. This is to impose a tax upon bachelors, and the member of the French Parliament ]l above referred to is actually contemplating the introduction of a Bill providing that every bachelor between t the ages of 30 and 35 shall pay to the 5 State a yearly tax of five francs, the ! sum being doubled immediately he has passed his thirty-fifth year and until his fortieth, and increased in proportion as he advances in life without entering j the connubial state, until the yearly • tax reaches 100 francs. Poor French ; bachelors ! let us pen a word of \ sympathy for you, threatened with this I matrimonial persecution. It is certainly j hard lines, and yet (joking apart) ; statistics go to show that the married : man is much better off than the celibate. It is notorious that the benedicts are longer lived, as a general thing, than the bachelors. Probably 1 this fact is attributable to the more j regular hours kept by married men as a rule, and the fact of the domestic j hearth serving to occupy their spare I time and attention, to the exclusion of j less worthy objects. Again, we are . told, unmarried men go mad twice as often as married men, and statistics on suicide show that where one married man puts an end to himself, ten single ones adopt a similar course. However the poor bachelors may view it, we have no doubt that the proposal of the French legislator will meet with the heartiest approval of the ladies.