1890-91.] THIRTEENTH MEETING. 25 



The Hon. William Proudfoot read a paper upon '" Some Effects of 

 Christianity on Legislation." Noting the difficulty of statmg that any 

 recent legislation could be selected as an outcome of Christian principle, 

 without being met by the objection that it was as probably due to the 

 general advance of civilization, to the progress of the human mind, to 

 reasons of State or expediency, perhaps to the exigencies of party strife, 

 he directed attention to those earlier times when Christianity, after more 

 than three centuries of oppression, neglect, and persecution, during which 

 its teachings and the pure lives and devotion of its worshippers had 

 spread their beneficent effects in an ever-widening range, at length 

 numbered the rulers of the world among the disciples of the Cross. 



The laws particularly referred to were those having for their objects : 

 The preservation and protection of infants ; the support of the poor ; 

 the establishment of hospitals for the sick and incurable ; the encourage- 

 ment of the emancipation of slaves ; the prohibition of gladiatorial 

 combats ; and the mitigation of punishments. That these were all 

 duties inculcated by the Christian religion was established by a number 

 of texts from the Scriptures. With what had these principles to 

 contend ? The Romans had long been renowned for their supremacy in 

 the arts of peace as well as of war. But one of the institutions peculiar 

 to them was that of the Paternal Power, or, as Livy terms it, the 

 Paternal Majesty. A historian sums up the particulars of this authority 

 as permitting fathers to beat their children with whips, to confine them 

 in prison, to make them work in chains in the fields, to sell them, and in 

 fine to kill them. The father was a family magistrate with the power 

 of the sword. In later times the supreme authority was rarely exercised. 

 But it was in full force in Cicero's time, when Fulvius, the son of a 

 Senator, was slain by his father's command for conspiring against his 

 country with the followers of Catiline ; and at a later period Erixo 

 whipped his son to death, and Hadrian banished a parent for killing his 

 son. In the early part of the fourth century the practice of killing, 

 exposing, selling, and pledging infants had become very prevalent in 

 Italy. 



Constantine the Great was the first Christian Emperor, and in the 

 year 313 he issued an edict granting toleration to the Christians. With 

 the view of deterring parents from destroying their offspring he provided 

 in 315 (amended 322) that poor parents suffering from want of food 

 and clothing might procure food, clothing, and necessaries from the 

 public funds and from the private fortune of the Emperor. This law 

 and several others of the same year are supposed to have been suggested 

 by Lactantius, a Christian of great eminence for his learning and 

 eloquence, and then the tutor of Crispus, the son of the Emperor. A 



