Nor does the difference arise from the prevalence of infanticide.
It appears from the statistique des tribunaux de la Belgique, that in the years 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829, there were in the provinces of Antwerp, Brabant, Flandre Orientale, Hainault, and Namur, containing 2,450,740 inhabitants, and possessing foundling establishments, 13 convictions for infanticide; and in Flandre Occidentale, Liege, Limbourg, and Luxembourg, containing 1,601,469 inhabitants, and no such establishments, only nine convictions, being a proportion slightly inferior. So far, therefore, from foundling hospitals having had a tendency to prevent desertion of children, or infanticide, it appears that their tendency is decidedly to promote the former, without preventing in any degree the latter. The real infanticides, strange as it may sound, are the founders and supporters of foundling hospitals. The average mortality in Europe of children during the first year does not exceed one in five, or 20 per cent. In England and Holland it is less: in Belgium it is 22⁴⁹⁄₁₀₀, per cent. But in the foundling hospitals of Belgium (and their mortality is below the average of such establishments), it is 45 per cent.[15]
In the foundling hospital in Brussels it is now 66 per cent., having been from 1812 to 1817, 79 per cent.
Nor is the fate of those who escape from these receptacles much preferable to that of those who perish there. M. Ducpétiaux, the inspector of prisons, states that, small as is their number relative to the rest of the population, they form a considerable proportion of the inmates of gaols and prisons, and a still larger proportion of the prostitutes.[16]
Such having been the legislation, and such being its results, an attempt towards its improvement was made by a law, dated the 30th July, 1834. That laws enacts, that from the 1st of January, 1835, the maintenance of foundlings and of deserted children whose place of settlement is not known, shall be supplied one half by the communes in which they shall have been exposed or deserted, with the assistance of their bureaux de bienfaisance, and the other half by the province of which those communes form a part, and that an annual grant shall be made by the State in aid of this expenditure; and that the expense of maintaining deserted children whose place of settlement is known, shall be supported by the hospices and bureaux de bienfaisance of their place of settlement, with the assistance of the commune.
The object of this law is stated in a circular from the Minister of Justice, dated the 23d January, 1834.
He directs, in the first place, the local authorities to provide for the subsistence of the foundlings with whom they may be charged, without reference to the proposed annual grant, since neither the amount of that grant, nor the mode of its distribution, is laid down by the law; and urges them to prevent the increase of their own burthens by endeavouring to prevent the abandonment of children born within their jurisdictions, and the exposure within their jurisdictions of children born elsewhere; and for that purpose to procure the punishment by law of those convicted of having exposed infants, or made a custom of taking them to hospitals. He admits, however, that the necessary investigations are matters of great delicacy; and he might have added that the punishment by law to which he refers does not exist, unless punishment by law means the arbitrary interference of the police, so much tolerated in continental Europe.
“These,” he adds, “are the wishes of the Government and of the Chambers; and this declaration will enable you to understand the motives of the silent repeal of the law, directing the establishment of tours for the reception of foundlings. The Legislature could not at the same time prescribe measures intended to diminish the exposure of children, and an institution by which it is favoured and facilitated. It did not venture to pronounce the suppression of the existing tours; but the silence of the law on this subject is the expression of its earnest desire that this institution should be discontinued; the mode of discontinuing it is left to the local authorities. The Government will require from you an annual report on these subjects, before it decides on the distribution of the annual grant; and the favour shown to each district may depend on its endeavours to comply with these instructions.”
This circular is a curious instance of an attempt to undermine an institution which the Government and the Legislature disapprove, but which they do not venture directly to grapple with. All that the Legislature ventures directly to do is to express its earnest desire (désir formel), by the silence of the law. The Government however goes further, and holds out hints, though it does not venture to hint very clearly, that the fewer the foundlings in any district, the larger will be the share of that district in the government grant. Under the influence of these double motives we may expect the tours soon to be closed.