Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, OCT. 13, 1900. Our Population.

Manawatu Herald, 13 October 1900, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, OCT. 13, 1900. Our Population.

The Premier has received a number of recommendations which have been drawn up by a conference of ministers representing the Protestant Churches of Christchurch, and the first is that " We, Ministers of the Gospel, assembled in conference, hold that, except in special cases, which can only be pronounced upon by medical authority, the use of preventatives is absolutely immoral," which reads, lacking a further explanation, that muuitfd people are to plage go re-

striction upon their passions. It is much to be regretted that such a statement should be made without something being said on the other side of the question, and with all due deference we think that ministers of religion, with v.n assured income are hardly the people to speak advisedly on the cases of persons whose income is of a precarious character. The greater portion of the inhabitants of j this colony, as well as of the world, are those who practically live from hand to mouth. For weeks, months or may be for a few years their income is assured, but owing to the conditions of their employment it may at any time cease to exist. It is a proper and a Christian teaching to " owe no man anything," but if a labourer has a fairly large family which he keeps periodically adding to, and starts, his married life in receipt of wages which equal to that he is able to earn after his family number some four or five, it ia an impossibility to keep to the teaching of strict honesty, if liabilities, of his own forming, arise after his employment has ceased. Who then is to pay the costs of his wife being laid up ? Men who are assured of their income often fail to understand the anxieties attending those who have families to provide for with an erratic labour market to face. Many years ago in England it used to be the general remark that clergymen and civil servants had the largest families, and we believe this to be perfectly true, and arose from the removal of the dread as to where their daily bread was to come from. In the exercise of abstinence there cannot be anything immoral, being nothing more than the avoidance of incurring an expense which it is not clear can be met. It is undoubtedly immoral to use preventatives, and does a wicked wrong to the weaker sex. We do not want to dwell upon this point, but we desire to say that the urging of an increased birth-rate wants some alternative to fit men to fulfill Scriptural teaching, and the duty to a man's wife and children is, in his case, greater than his duty to the btate, inasmuch as at present the State makes nothing like a suitable provision to enable him to succour his family in the hour of sickness. The urgency of a better system of medical aid to the people crops up each time the duty of the settler to the State is mentioned, and to secure success both must work together. The experience we have had of socalled medical men in country townships is so unsatisfactory that we have had no surprise at the resultant low birth-rate, and as this state is now causing some commotion, and rightly to, we rejoice as we do not doubt but that it will be seen the essence of the difficulty can be removed by the means we have pointed out-