244 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



present nothing has been done to alter the law which 

 permits boys and girls, however sickly and ill-deve- 

 loped, undertaking the most important duty which 

 falls upon the citizen, viz., the renewing of the 

 population. 



The marriage contract is by far the most impor- 

 tant transaction which the ordinary citizen enters into 

 during the course of his or her natural life important 

 alike to the individual and to the state ; yet according 

 to the law as it at present stands, the minor, who is 

 not incapacitated by idiocy or raving madness, can at 

 almost any age become a party to a contract of this 

 nature which shall be binding during the remainder 

 of his or her natural life. That this is a grave mistake 

 I think all who seriously consider the subject must 

 agree. In ordinary contracts, unless the thing con- 

 tracted for can be proved to be "a necessary," the 

 minor can in almost every case successfully plead his 

 minority at the date of contract as voiding the engage- 

 ment. Yet in the case of the marriage contract, 

 where the thing contracted for can never by any 

 possibility be a " necessary," and where the lifelong 

 happiness of two persons and the well-being of a 

 possible family are involved, the under-age contractor 

 can get no relief, however designing and untruthful the 

 other party to the contract may have been. 



In this question of child-marriage the moralist and 

 the economist both consider themselves injured parties, 

 but neither the one nor the other has a tithe of the 

 solid ground for complaint that the physiologist has. 



