EARLY MARRIAGES. 253 



these immature persons married robust individuals of 

 mature age, the result would have been much less 



D ' 



injurious to posterity than it will be, for the union 

 of an immature with a mature parent is decidedly 

 less injurious to the offspring than the union of the 

 immature with the immature. Upon analysis, how- 

 ever, we discover that 33,526 lads of twenty-one to 

 sixteen years of age married wives of twenty to 

 fifteen years old, and that 33,526 girls of twenty 

 to fifteen years of age took for husbands lads of 

 twenty-one to sixteen years old. Now if we remember 

 that the vast majority of these boy "and girl husbands 

 and wives belonged to the working-classes, and that 

 the greater number of them sprang from the ill- 

 developed, prematurely decrepit city dwellers we have 

 been speaking of, we shall get some idea of what 

 suffering and poverty these premature unions caused, 

 what child-death they represented, and what a source 

 of contamination they must prove to the health of the 

 people. 



But why, it will be asked, should these thoughtless, 

 improvident boys and girls be permitted to marry ? 

 According to the recent Criminal Law Amendment 

 Act, no girl under sixteen can consent to illicit sexual 

 indulgence ; her consent in no way mitigates the 

 offence of the man who knows her carnally. Now, 

 if her consent to illicit intercourse be worthless, of 

 whafc value can be her consent to marriage ? It may 

 be argued that in the case of marriage the child is 

 guided by the wise counsels of parents or guardians, 



