RESTRICTIONS ON MARRIAGE.

Evening Star, Issue 3359, 25 November 1873, Page 3

RESTRICTIONS ON MARRIAGE.

The Melbourne Arpn* says :-Tn the current i)nmber of the Contemporary Renew, Mr Darwin. the naturalist, pleads strongly in favour of imposing legislative restrictions upon the liberty of marriage. He contends that, independently of those now in force, “ less the absurd laws against marriage with a deceased wife’s s : ster or husband’s brother.” no unions should be allowed to be contracted without the production of an untainted pedigree on both sides ; while divorce should be pronounced on the appearance of certain diseases, and all persona should be called upon to undergo a medical examination for this class of diseases before marriage. If these restrictions wore instituted, he is sanguine enought to anticipate that the race would improve in health and stature, several years might lie added to the term of human life, our ability for mental and manual labor would be immensely increased, ami “the coming race might end by becoming as much superior to ourselves in mind and body as the racehorse is superior in form to a shaggy pony.” But while we agree with Mr W. R. Gregg in the opinion that men and women arc not likely to submit to any curtailment of the liberty of marriage, it would be unwise to shut onr eyes to the ilanjerri which menace the race, as exhibited with terrible distinctness and force by Mr Darwin. He shows that one person in 500 in England is mad, that in Scotland one’person in 221 is insane, fatuous, deaf and dumb, or blind ; but there lias been a steady increase of about 1,000 per annum in the insane population of England and Wales dining the last seventeen years; that this increase is one of the penalties of onr civilisation ; and that, in the opinion of the most competent judges, “diseases undergo transformation from generation (o generation, scrofula and phthisis in one generation leading to insanity and idiocy in the next.” Mental diseases, therefore, are not only rapidly on the increase, but, says Mr Darwin, “ suck increase will proceed by a geometrical ratio,” while he draws attention to the fact that the extent to which lunacy is inherited “is cnoimous, and very alarming, and that other diseases act and re act on one another in the production of insanity.” These are not cheerful statements to ponder over, but being presented to us by a man so eminent as Mr Darwin, they are entitled to serious consideration. When we know the full extent of the dangers which confront ns, we can apply ourselves without panic to the discovery and application of an efficient remedy.