We now see that the statesman who undertakes to deal with marriage will
have to face an amazingly complicated public opinion. In fact, he will
have to leave opinion as far as possible out of the question, and deal
with human nature instead. For even if there could be any real public
opinion in a society like ours, which is a mere mob of classes, each
with its own habits and prejudices, it would be at best a jumble of
superstitions and interests, taboos and hypocrisies, which could not
be reconciled in any coherent enactment. It would probably proclaim
passionately that it does not matter in the least what sort of children
we have, or how few or how many, provided the children are legitimate.
Also that it does not matter in the least what sort of adults we have,
provided they are married. No statesman worth the name can possibly act
on these views. He is bound to prefer one healthy illegitimate child
to ten rickety legitimate ones, and one energetic and capable unmarried
couple to a dozen inferior apathetic husbands and wives. If it could
be proved that illicit unions produce three children each and marriages
only one and a half, he would be bound to encourage illicit unions
and discourage and even penalize marriage. The common notion that the
existing forms of marriage are not political contrivances, but sacred
ethical obligations to which everything, even the very existence of the
human race, must be sacrificed if necessary (and this is what the vulgar
morality we mostly profess on the subject comes to) is one on which no
sane Government could act for a moment; and yet it influences, or is
believed to influence, so many votes, that no Government will touch
the marriage question if it can possibly help it, even when there is
a demand for the extension of marriage, as in the case of the recent
long-delayed Act legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister. When
a reform in the other direction is needed (for example, an extension of
divorce), not even the existence of the most unbearable hardships will
induce our statesmen to move so long as the victims submit sheepishly,
though when they take the remedy into their own hands an inquiry is soon
begun. But what is now making some action in the matter imperative is
neither the sufferings of those who are tied for life to criminals,
drunkards, physically unsound and dangerous mates, and worthless and
unamiable people generally, nor the immorality of the couples condemned
to celibacy by separation orders which do not annul their marriages, but
the fall in the birth rate. Public opinion will not help us out of this
difficulty: on the contrary, it will, if it be allowed, punish anybody
who mentions it. When Zola tried to repopulate France by writing a novel
in praise of parentage, the only comment made here was that the book
could not possibly be translated into English, as its subject was too
improper.