Par. 18. “The above will clearly show that the Act recently passed by the Legislature does not, in any way, interfere with the Mahomedan religion, and no Mahomedan husband will be considered to have committed a sin if he abstains from consummating marriage with his wife before she is twelve years of age.”

(The pamphlet is published, as aforesaid, by the Mahomedan Literary Society of Calcutta, of which the patron is the Hon. Sir Charles A. Elliott, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., and the president Prince Mirza Jahan Kadar Bahadur (of the Oudh family), and is signed by the secretary, Nawab Abdool Luteef Bahadur, C.I.E.; Calcutta, 16 Taltollah, 22nd June, 1891.)

The italics, as above, exist in the original (with the exception of those in Par. 3), and serve, singularly enough, to point for us a moral very much deeper than that intended. It is a happy fact that British feeling, supported by the growing sentiment of the more intelligent and educated of the native population, has effected even so slight an amelioration of law and custom, and we may hope for and press forward to further improvement. Though the utterance quoted above is only that of the Mahomedan section, it is, of course, understood that the law does not apply or point to them alone, but to all the peoples and sects of India; and that the approval of this legislation is also general among the enlightened of those other creeds. (See end of Note XVII., 8.)

Singular confirmatory evidence as to the distressing prevalence of this child-marriage is incidentally given in the following paragraph from the Times of 31st March, 1892:—

“A correspondent of the Times of India mentions some odd instances of minor difficulties which have occurred in the working of the amended Factory Act, which came into force in India at the commencement of the present year. The limit of age for ‘full-timers’ in factories is fixed at fourteen years, and as very few native operatives know their children’s ages, or even their own, the medical officer has, in passing lads and girls for work, to judge the age as best he can—generally, as in the case of horses, by examining their teeth. If he concludes that they are under fourteen, he reduces them to ‘half-timers.’ In one Bombay mill recently a number of girls were thus sent back as under age who were actually mothers, and several boys who were fathers were also reduced; and one of the latter was the father, it is said, of three children. The case of these lads is particularly hard, for, with a wife and child, or perhaps children, to support, life, on the pay of a ‘half-timer,’ must be a terrible struggle.”

Lest it should be objected that such abuses—with their consequences—as have been instanced in India, are peculiar to that country or civilisation, and that their discussion has therefore no bearing on our practices in England, and the physical consequences ensuant here, it will be salutary to recall what has been our own national conduct in this matter of enforcement of immature physical relations on girl children or “wives” within times of by no means distant date. Blackstone tells in his “Commentaries,” Book II., Chap. VIII., that “The wife must be above nine years old at her husband’s death, otherwise she shall not be endowed, though in Bracton’s time the age was indefinite, and dower was then only due ‘si uxor possit dotem promereri, et virum sustinere.’” Whereupon Ed. Christian makes the following note, worthy of the most careful meditation:—“Lord Coke informs us that ‘if the wife be past the age of nine years at the time of her husband’s death, she shall be endowed, of what age soever her husband be, albeit he were but four years old. Quia junior non potest dotem promereri, et virum sustinere.’ (Coke on Litt., 33.) This we are told by that grave and reverend judge without any remark of surprise or reprobation. But it confirms the observation of Montesquieu in the ‘Spirit of Laws,’ Book XXVI., Chap. III. ‘There has been,’ says he, ‘much talk of a law in England which permitted girls seven years old to choose a husband. This law was shocking two ways; it had no regard to the time when Nature gives maturity to the understanding, nor to the time when she gives maturity to the body.’ It is abundantly clear, both from our law and history, that formerly such early marriages were contracted as in the present times are neither attempted nor thought of.

“This was probably owing to the right which the lord possessed of putting up to sale the marriage of his infant tenant. He no doubt took the first opportunity of prostituting (i.e., selling in marriage) the infant to his own interest, without any regard to age or inclinations. And thus what was so frequently practised and permitted by the law would cease even in other instances to be considered with abhorrence. If the marriage of a female was delayed till she was sixteen, this benefit was entirely lost to the lord her guardian.

“Even the 18 Eliz., cap. 7, which makes it a capital crime to abuse a consenting female child under the age of ten years, seems to leave an exception for these marriages by declaring only the carnal and unlawful knowledge of such woman-child to be a felony. Hence the abolition of the feudal wardships and marriage at the Restoration may perhaps have contributed not less to the improvement of the morals than of the liberty of the people.”—(Blackstone’s Comm., Christian’s Edition, 1830, Vol. II., p. 131.)

6.—“... manner ...”

“Manner,” or “custom” is the early Biblical definition for this habit (vide Gen. xviii. 11, and xxxi. 35). It may be noticed that the word is not rendered or translated as “nature.” It is also called “sickness” (Lev. xx. 18); and “pollution” (Ezek. xxii. 10). See also Note XXV. 8.