CHAPTER XVII. 



EARLY MARRIAGES : THEIR EFFECT'UPON THE CHILDREN. 



" The young man who marries before his beard is fully grown, 

 breaks a law of nature and sins against posterity." T. S. CLOUSTON, 

 M.D. 



THIS is a matter of grave importance alike to the 

 moralist, the economist, and the physiologist. I do 

 not purpose here touching upon it from a social or 

 economic point of view. That aspect of the question 

 I leave for the consideration of the social reformer, who 

 will have difficulty in discovering a field in which his 

 energies may be more profitably expended. Few will 

 deserve better of their country than he who succeeds 

 in staying to any appreciable extent the reckless rush 

 of precocious, ill-developed children into matrimony 

 which is at present going on among our people. 



This question of early marriages was brought before 

 the London Diocesan Conference in 1889, and it was 

 then agreed on all hands that the evil had grown 

 to such an extent as to render some reform in the 

 marriage laws urgently necessary. Before and since 

 that time the matter has frequently been under con- 

 sideration by various organisations, but up to the 



