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who are exactly suited to each other, perhaps never meet, or don't meet often enough to bring things to a crisis. But even this obstruction to marriage is hardly worth taking into account. partly because it is one of an essentially unpractical nature, which nothing short of human ubiquity could entirely remove; and partly because, after all, few men need go out of their parish for a suitable wife. Witness the parochial clergy, compared with whom itinerant barristers and roving officers are a set of monks. We pass on, therefore, to the main causes of celibacy, which we affirm to be two-namely, marriage and civilization. Let us say a few words on each. The most obvious and immediate answer to the question Why are so many women unmarried?' is-Because so many women are married. To illustrate this, let us suppose that the Legislature had gallantly granted the Petition of the Ladies of London and Westminster,'* in 1693, that for the utter discouragement of celibacy it should be enacted that all men, of what quality or degree soever, should be obliged to marry as soon as they are one-and-twenty.' Had a law to this effect been in force down to the passing of the Reform Bill thirty years ago, the population of Great Britain, in the absence of Malthusian plagues and famines, would now, instead of being 24 millions,† be more than 124 millions. But estates would not have increased with the number of eldest sons, nor places' with the number of younger sons; church livings and curates' stipends would not have grown with the number of clergymen briefs and guineas would not have multiplied in proportion to the multiplication of barristers. The streets would be filled with really hungry attorneys. The public offices could contain no more clerks than they do now, but the candidates would be six times as many. Acres would not have increased with the number of ploughmen, nor cotton and wages with the number of operatives. There would be many more men, but fewer men able to marry. Instead of two million single women, there would be more than two-andtwenty million, and there would not be even as much work for the two-and-twenty million as there is now for the two million.

* Printed as such in the Harleian Miscellany.

† Ireland not included.

Men would take the work out of their hands, and the bread out of their mouths. Men can do the work of governesses, milliners, sempstresses, and housemaids, as well as of parlourmaids and shopwomen, and they would do it if competition were greater and wages were lower; just as men-servants have been commoner in Ireland than in England, because they have been cheaper.

But the world is wide, it has been said; the room for British families is not bounded by the British shores. The earth, as a whole, is underpeopled, and much of it is wholly uninhabited. This argument strangely assumes for our own countrymen a monopoly of the privilege of universal marriage. Had all nations been multiplying at the rate supposed, the whole world would be full. Already the Chinese have found themselves de trop in California and Australia, as well as at home. Moreover, a great part of the earth is no more available for the immediate support of the British population than the moon. Food, clothing, houses, roads, shops, and money are not ready waiting in every new country for a swarm of emigrants. In British Columbia, for example, thousands of Englishmen have found that they cannot live on rocks and forests, nor even upon rich unbroken meadows and gold-fields; and emigration, even when it succeeds, is so far from always making an immediate provision for marriage, that it has considerably increased the number of unmarried women in Great Britain, because men can go where women cannot follow. The number of women in the country accordingly exceeds the than half a million.

number of the men by more

It has been argued that marriages and population have increased with civilization, and that the people now in England are better off than their ancestors, whose number was comparatively small. But although civilization has made it possible for increased numbers to live, it has not made it possible for all our present numbers to live in health, comfort, and decency; and there is hardly a cottage in the kingdom in which there are not too many people to be properly lodged, clothed, fed, and educated, or even to breathe freely. And it is a misconception of the part civilization has played in increasing our numbers, to

suppose that it has increased the rate of marriages. It has, on the contrary, greatly checked the rate of marriages, but it has also checked in a still greater degree the rate of deaths; so that, married and unmarried together, we greatly outnumber our ancestors, and a goodly number of us are what the sneering world calls old bachelors' and 'old maids,' as if celibacy were something staie and antiquated, instead of being something quite fresh and modern. The Census Commissioners of 1851 probably took credit to themselves for liberality and indulgence when they said, 'If those of the age of 20 and under 40 years are called 'young,' and those of the age of 40 and upwards are called 'old,' it will be found that there are in the kingdom* about 1,407,225 'young' and 359,969 'old' maids; 1,413,912 'young' and 275,204 'old' bachelors.' But we object to this classification altogether, as an abuse of terms. Unmarried people do not become suddenly 'old' at 40; and those whose forbearance is the chief reason why their married neighbours are not starving, should at least be spoken of respectfully. Only for the celibacy of one part of the community, marriage would have to stop altogether for a quarter of a century every now and then; and, accordingly, our unmarried ladies ought to be held in honour as the bridesmaids of the nation. We might borrow instruction from a people of much longer experience in these matters than our own. In overpopulated China, as M. Huc relates, if a girl will not marry she is honoured after death with peculiar pomp, and subscriptions are raised for a monument to her virtue. At Ningpo, he adds, when the English took the town, they found a long street entirely composed of such triumphal arches, and they talked of carrying them all off and making of them a complete street in London. M. Huc remarks that such an enterprise would have been worthy of English eccentricity. We should say, on the contrary, that it would have been worthy of English prudence and patriotism to have brought home so excellent a model. Celibacy should be carefully fostered in England, as the effect of marriage and civilization, by all those who are not prepared to put a stop to either.

* Great Britain, exclusive of Ireland.

We appeal on behalf of celibacy, likewise, to all whose love of country leads them to hope that England will never be all town and market garden, of which it begins to show some signs already. There are some unreasoning beings whose doctrine, if it were carried into practice, would soon make England one great poorhouse. If these people are not paupers already, they owe it to those whom they call old bachelors and old maids before their time. Every form of expression which tends to bring the meritorious status of celibacy into disrepute should be especially discountenanced by all those who, like the writer of this essay, wish to be happily married themselves.

III.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE CROWD.

(Frazer's Magazine, May, 1861.)

Two interesting questions have been lately raised respecting the relation between society at large and its individual members. One is, whether the structure of the modern world tends to merge the individual in the crowd, to suppress originality and diversity of thought, character, and pursuit, to make all men closely alike, and history henceforward that of common rather than uncommon men. The other question is one closely related. It is, whether the history of nations, or of the human race, is susceptible of scientific interpretation, disclosing the action of general laws; or whether it is more properly a narrative of so many distinct beings, each in some respects unlike any other of the species, subject to no discoverable laws of variation, and including from time to time individuals who not only widely deviate from anything like a common type, but leave their own stamp upon the race instead of being moulded by it.

I. The first inquiry does not seem to involve a difficult argument. To the multitude, at least, the social economy of our own times must afford a freer scope for the exhibition of natural varieties of disposition and ability than the institutions of former ages permitted. For what was the condition of the bulk of the people, that is to say, of the whole rural population except the proprietary class, in the feudal period? From the village in which he was born, a peasant could seldom escape, unless by the gate of death. He was made prisoner there by the law of the land, by his own poverty and ignorance, by the dangers and difficulties of the road, and by the scarcity of other

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