[1396] Townshend, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 51-53.
[1397] The bill is to bring upon the people all these evils "that my young lord, or the young rich squire, forsooth, may not be induced to marry his mother's maid, or a neighbouring farmer's daughter, who may probably make him a better wife and render him more happy, than if he had married the richest heiress in the kingdom; or that young miss may not run away with her father's footman, who may make her a better husband, than any lord or rich squire she, or even her father, could have chosen." Such marriages "are rather an advantage than a prejudice to the community."—Nugent, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 20; cf. Fox, ibid., 71.
[1398] Nugent, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 15, 16; cf. the similar argument of Fox, ibid., 68, 69.
[1399] Haldane, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 35-39; cf. Townshend, ibid., 61.
[1400] This argument is also used by a writer in the Monthly Review, XL, 425, 426, who makes a violent attack on the bill: "Sir Robert Walpole" is declared to be "the first fool of a statesman who thought a kingdom might be too populous" (426).
Mr. Nugent, in the Commons, appears to think that increase of population among the poor must be promoted at all hazards. Even the judicially enforced marriages between wenches and their reluctant seducers are blessings which he fears the bill will put an end to: Cobbett, op. cit., XV, 18. With these conceits of the opposition compare the sound views of the Earl of Hillsborough (ibid., 63): "Poor servants and labourers ... are but too apt to run into matrimony, before they have considered how they are to support either themselves or their children ...; for the prosperity and happiness of a country does not depend upon having a great number of children born, but upon having always a great number well brought up, and inured from their infancy to labour and industry." Essentially modern opinions are likewise expressed by Mr. Bond: "For as to those rash and inconsiderate marriages ... between two poor creatures, sometimes before they have got clothes to their backs" or a lodging or means of support, "I think they ought all, if it were possible, to be prevented." Fleet marriages, he believes, have propagated "beggars, rogues, and the most abandoned sort of prostitutes;" and he appeals to the stricter laws of Holland which have not checked the growth of an industrious population: ibid., 46, 47.
[1401] A writer in the Monthly Review, XII, 115, speaks of the "minor's inalienable right to marriage as the proper remedy for chastity."
[1402] According to Mr. Haldane, banns are required by the bill "in order to render licenses necessary; and the only use of a license I take to be that of putting money into the pockets of our clergymen or some of their officers."—Cobbett, op. cit., XV, 40. On the too high cost of licenses cf. Townshend, ibid., 57, 58; and Fox, ibid., 70.
[1403] Haldane, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 39. He continues: "In my opinion the certain consequence will be that of rendering common whoring as frequent among the lower sort of people, as it is now among those of the better sort; and multitudes of wenches in all parts of the country, when they find they cannot get husbands according to law, will set up the trade; so that the Bill ought really to be called a Bill for the increase of fornication in this kingdom."—Ibid., 39. Cf. the similar arguments of Nugent (ibid., 17, 18), Townshend (ibid., 55, 58), Fox (ibid., 68-70), and Beckford (ibid., 80-82).
[1404] Compare the statements of Nugent, in Cobbett, loc. cit., 21.