PUBLIC MORALS AND ECONOMICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8411, 27 April 1907, Page 6

PUBLIC MORALS AND ECONOMICS.

. -<#■ ADDRESS BY BISHOP NELIGAN

By Telegraph—Press Association

AUCKLAND, April 26. Some remarks on public morals and economics and "the decay in home life," were made.by Bishop Neligan yesterday afternoon, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Protection of Wotm..n and Children and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The report of the society showed that during the pas): year 258, capes, including domestic infelicity, affiliation cases, and cruelty to young.children, failure to support parents and similar matters had been dealt with; in 1905 the number was 256. It seemed, said the bishop, that the proportion of such cases was altogether too largp when the population of Auckland was taken into account. It was a feeble argument to say that the number of cases in Auckland compared very favourably with the old country, for the opportunities of healthy development of public morality there were not so great as in New Zeaalnd. He spoke of cases of cruelty to young children, and said that the increase of affiliation cases was becoming a serious matter. The refusal of persons in many cases to support their parents was also commented upon as an extraordinary offence. He urged as a means of combating these growing evils that every effort should be made to raise the tone of the home life as much as possible, as he feared that in a large number of the cases referred to the cause was decay in home life. Referring to New Zealand legislation, he said he feared that our laws .had not produced the result that their advocates had hoped for. They could not be said to make people moral by economic means; they could help them, he admitted. But right down at the bottom of any measure for the betterment of any people lay the great question of morality in national life.