8 TlMEHRI. 
officers of justice for an offence against property, rather 
than incur the opprobrium which in their class always 
attaches to the name of an informer. 
Crime and immorality go often hand in hand. Not that 
immoral persons, that is persons who break what are called 
the Moral and Social Laws are necessarily criminals, 
but the practice of immorality in its broadest sense has 
a tendency to weaken the mental discrimination between 
what is evil and what is good, and so disintegrates the 
moral fibre of a man's constitution and makes him more 
susceptive of influences which tend to criminal expression. 
It is obvious that the herding together of people of all 
ages and both sexes in ill-ventilated and badly-drained 
rooms must tend to produce disease both of mind and 
body, disease of body by inhaling foul air, by contagion, 
by want of sufficient breathing space and other causes ; 
disease of mind by contamination of the less depraved 
and younger people by the indecency and impurity both 
in words and actions of the more depraved and older. 
Similarly the unhealthy lives of a nation or colony may 
equally tend to produce a low ideal of social life which 
may weaken the moral fibre of its people to the results 
before mentioned. The marriage laws of this colony are 
of such a nature as to put a premium upon vice and con- 
cubinage, and to throw every obstacle in the way of 
early and virtuous connection between the sexes. The 
old Roman-Dutch Law which enables parties who 
have lived together in concubinage for years to marry 
and at the same time legitimate their children so as to 
place them in the same position legally as children 
born after marriage has been most fatal in its results 
upon female chastity. 
