Laws Against Bachelors.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 292, 22 August 1888, Page 2

Laws Against Bachelors.

Some years since a novel feature was introduced in municipal taxation in Belgium by allowing a rebate to all married men, with an allowance also for each of the family, the chief burden thus falling on the bachelors. In France it is now proposed to tax bachelors as they were taxed in the days of the first Republic, and there is no doubt that the measure would be carried by an overwhelming majority if the women had a voice in the matter. It is a fact, by the way, that Republics, for some reason or another, have been very severe in their laws against bachelors. Plato the Wise condemned them to a fine,, and in Spar a they were diiren at stated times to the Temple of Hercule* by the women, who, haung undressed the poor fellow*, would drill and castigate them. The old Romans, too, were severe with their bachelois, who wore made to pay heavy fines, and worse than that, for after the seige of Veil it is told how Camillus compelled them to marry the widows of the soldiers who had fallen in (he war. In the time of Augustus,, also, all other things being equal, the mairied were preferred to single men for public offices. Then the "Roman who had three children was exempted from peisonal taxes, and the bachelors not only had to pay for them, but wrie pie\ented from inheriting the property of any one not a Roman citizen. So that the present revival of laws against uuchelois iv France is no novelty after all.