Since that time the proportion has oscillated round 7.25 in France. But in Sweden, from 1776 to 1866, it has risen from 3.11 per cent. to 9.5. In Saxony the return has been 15.37 in 1862-1864.[497] At Paris, according to the calculations of A. Bertillon, more than a tenth of the couples (40,000) were living in free union. In fact, if we interrogate all races, all epochs, and all countries, we see that the concubinate and concubinage have flourished, and still flourish, by the side of legal marriage. One country alone is an exception to this--Kabyle. But the exception confirms the rule. If we find in Kabyle neither concubinage nor concubinate, neither free unions nor natural children, the reason is very simple. It is that outside marriage no sexual union is tolerated, and in case of illegitimate birth the mother and child are both put to death, whilst retaliation falls on the illegal father.[498] The concubinate is therefore, or at least has been till now, natural to man. One may say, borrowing a locution from Bossuet, that this is proved by “the experience of all the centuries.” It remains for me now to deduce from the facts I have enumerated a sketch of the general evolution which they represent, and to estimate their moral significance. The evolution is of the simplest. Sexual union, without restraint or law, has been the commencement. Then the right of the strongest or the richest has created polygamic households. In these households the priority was at last bestowed on one wife; but as the husband did not intend to curb his changing humour, he kept by the side of the chief spouse either slaves or “lesser wives,” to whom, in the end, a legal position was accorded. The monogamic _régime_ making more and more way, the time came--at Rome, for example--when this disguised polygamy was no longer tolerated, and the concubinate became a marriage of the second order, being unable to co-exist with the other. At length there was a pretence of abolishing it, and there was no other matrimonial type legally recognised except the monogamic union, lasting till the death of the husband or wife. But custom has rebelled against the law, and monogamy has been more apparent than real. Prostitution for the least refined, adultery and free union for the others, have served as safety-valves for inclinations too inveterate and too violent to be controlled by legal texts. Has moral purity gained thereby? Surely not. Moreover, there is in consequence a whole population of illegitimate children, too often abandoned by their fathers, and suffering from their birth a legal indignity of the most iniquitous kind. Hence arise a thousand unmerited sufferings, which legislation must some day or other remedy, and from which the legal concubinate has spared China, for example. Doubtless the ideal is a fine thing, but it is folly to sacrifice the real to it, and to legislate without taking into account the requirements of human nature. FOOTNOTES: