264

DOMESTIC MANNEBS OF TUE PKUSSIAN8.

last for love, inseparably ties himself to a young woman,and finds out, when it is too late, the vast difference betweenan evanescent animal appetite and a pure permanent affec-tion. Then he soon gets to feel the bürden of a partner,for whom he has neither intellectual nor moral admiration;and then ensue all those domestic dissensions and that neglectof öffspring which proceed from ill-assorted natures at home.

Economists, therefore, think " public women" a lesserevil than either youthful alliances or illegitimate children —the latter being essentially the class from which the thievesand vagabouds of every Community are recruited, for it isproved by prison statistics that juvenile crime is simply theresult of defective parental control. Nor should the holdersof these opinions, in making such a selection among the threeevils, be considered as exhibiting a preference for immoralcourses. If they be wrong, their error can but proceed froma mistaken view as to what really constitutes the welfare ofa nation, since it is merely a sense of this welfare that promptsthem to make the choice; and assuredly they may, whileso doing, regret, as much even as clergymen themselves, thenecessity for the existence of any such evils.

Once more, then, we say, that Governments must make uptheir minds to submit to one of the above three social ills; andthough the authorities of Coblenz have decided that no publicwomen shall exist " within the walls," still it would appear,from the statistics of the town, that they have merely givenan undue impetus by such means,' not only to the maintenanceof private mistresses among the wealthier classes, but to theincrease of illegitimate children among the poorer; whilst fromthe latter result they must naturally expect to reap a moreabundant crop of paupers and criminals in after years.