As regards Great Britain, I might quote the evidence delivered before a “Committee of the House of Commons, on Labourers’ Wages,” by Henry Drummond, a banker, magistrate, and large land-owner in the county of Surrey, in which the following question and answer occur: Q. “What is the practice you allude to of forcing marriages?” A. “I believe nothing is more erroneous than the assertion, that the poor laws tend to imprudent marriages; I never knew an instance of a girl being married until she was with child, nor ever knew of a marriage taking place through a calculation for future support.” Mr. Drummond’s assertions were confirmed by other equally respectable witnesses; and from what I myself have learnt in conversation with some of the chief manufacturers of England, I am convinced, that the statement, as regards the working population in the chief manufacturing districts, is scarcely exaggerated. I might go on to state, that the spot on which the Foundling Hospital in Dublin now stands, formerly went by the name of “Murderer’s Lane,” from the number of child murders that were perpetrated in the vicinity. I might adduce the testimony of respectable witnesses in proof, that, even among the married, the blighting effects of ergot are not unfrequently incurred; by those very persons, probably, who, in public, would think fit to be terribly shocked at this little book. But why multiply proofs? The records of every court of justice, nay, the tittle tattle of every fashionable drawing-room, sufficiently marks the real character of this prudish and pharisaical world of ours. Footnote 20: See letter of the Committee of the Typographical Society to Robert Dale Owen, published in the Commercial Advertiser of the 29th of September, and copied into the Free Enquirer of the 9th of October, 1830. For a statement of the circumstances connected with that letter, and which induced me, at this time, to write and publish the present treatise, see Preface. Footnote 21: I should like to hear these gentlemen explain, according to what principle they imagine the chastity of their _wives_ to grow out of a fear of offspring; so that, if released from such fear, prostitution would follow. I can readily comprehend that the unmarried may be supposed careful to avoid that situation to which no legal cause can be assigned; but a wife must be especially dull, if she cannot assign, in all cases, a legal cause; and a husband must be especially sagacious, if he can tell whether the true cause be assigned or not. This safeguard to married chastity, therefore, to which the gentlemen of the Typographical Committee seem to look with so implicit a confidence, is a mere broken reed; and has been so, ever since the days of Bethsheba.