108 The Conjugal Condition 



Art. IV. — The Conjugal Condition of the People of Victoria, 

 considered i^ relation to Laws of Divorce. 



[Read before the Royal Society, 16th July, I860.] 



A CONSEQUENCE of progrcss in speculative^science^ and one 

 which shows how circumscribed are the -^dews of the most in- 

 genious — hj how little any man can outstrip his generation 

 — ^is that new investigations in one direction lead to the re- 

 opening of inquiry in others. Matters which^ it might be 

 supposed^ had long since been viewed in every possible lights 

 and thoroughly exhausted^ are rendered capable of being pre- 

 sented in novel aspects, or in connexion with associations not 

 previously noticed, calling upon us to review conclusions, and 

 subject them to new tests. Thus inquiry into the economical 

 condition of nations, though its object is material, inevitably 

 turns upon the moral and psychological, because it is found 

 that the production of wealth is powerfully aflPected by insti- 

 tutions, habits, customs, and even by the principles of human 

 nature variously developed. Social science, which is so 

 rapidly rising to importance, may be said to have arisen out 

 of this connexion. Not merely from the sentiment of be- 

 nevolence does the social economist propose to enlighten the 

 ignorant, but because the more gentle any man is, the better 

 producer of wealth he is found to be ; and because it is be- 

 lieved that ignorance is productive of poverty and crime, 

 which in their turn are burdensome and oppressive; not 

 from the instinct of a charitable heart is he prompted to 

 improve the habitations of the poor, to cleanse the haunts of 

 vice, and to let the sun into the gloomy dwellings of the 

 miserable, but because disease impoverishes the community, 

 by disabling the strong arm of him who had heretofore kept 

 a wife from the workhouse, and children from the corrupting 

 patronage of the receivers of stolen goods; because premature 

 death deprives society of many of its most valuable contributors 

 to industrial progress before they have discharged the cost of 

 bringing them to man's estate. So long as it was supposed 

 that learning made the poor man discontented, and unfit 

 for daily toil, or so long as it was supposed that death 

 removed consumers rather than producers, so long were 



